Deus in machina

Inevitably when I post something to the effect of "ha-ha, isn't this the weirdest thing you've ever heard?", my readers take this as some kind of challenge and respond with, "Oh, yeah?  Well, wait'll you get a load of this."

Take, for example, yesterday's post, about some "Etsy witches" who for a low-low-low payment of $7.99 will put a curse on Elon Musk (or, presumably, anyone else you want), which prompted a loyal reader of Skeptophilia to send me a link with a message saying "this should significantly raise the bar on your standards for what qualifies as bizarre."  The link turned out to be to an article in The Guardian about St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, where they've set up a confessional booth -- but instead of a priest, it's equipped with a computer and an AI interface intended to be a proxy for Jesus Christ himself.

The program is called -- I shit you not -- "Deus in Machina."

You can have a chat with Our Digital Lord and Savior in any of a hundred different languages, and get answers to whatever questions you want, from the doctrinal to the personal.  Although, says theologian Marco Schmid, who is running the whole thing, "People are advised not to disclose any personal information and confirm that they knew they were engaging with the avatar at their own risk.  It’s not a confession.  We are not intending to imitate a confession."

Which reminds me of the disclaimers on alt-med ads saying "This is not meant to address, treat, or cure any ailment, condition, or disease," when everything else in the advertisement is clearly saying that it'll address, treat, or cure an ailment, condition, or disease.

Schmid said that the church leaders had been discussing doing this for a while, and were wondering how to approach it, then settled on the "Go Big Or Go Home" model.  "It was really an experiment," Schmid said.  "We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI...  What would they talk with him about?  Would there be interest in talking to him?  We’re probably pioneers in this...  We had a discussion about what kind of avatar it would be – a theologian, a person or a saint?  But then we realized the best figure would be Jesus himself."

[Image credit: artist Peter Diem, Lukasgesellschaft]

So far, over a thousand people have had a heart-to-heart with AI Jesus, and almost a quarter of them ranked it as a "spiritual experience."  Not all of them were impressed, however.  A local reporter covering the story tried it out, and said that the results were "trite, repetitive, and exuding a wisdom reminiscent of calendar clichés."

Given how notorious AI has become for dispensing false or downright dangerous information -- the worst example I know of being a mushroom-identification program that identified deadly Amanita mushrooms as "edible and delicious," and even provided recipes for how to cook them -- Schmid and the others involved in the AI Jesus project knew they were taking a serious chance with regards to what the digital deity might say.  "It was always a risk that the AI might dole out responses that were illegal, explicit, or offer up interpretations or spiritual advice that clashed with church teachings," Schmid said.  "We never had the impression he was saying strange things.  But of course we could never guarantee that he wouldn’t say anything strange."

This, plus the predictable backlash they've gotten from more conservative members of the Catholic Church, has convinced Schmid to pull the plug on AI Jesus for now.  "To put a Jesus like that permanently, I wouldn’t do that," Schmid said.  "Because the responsibility would be too great."

I suppose so, but to me, it opens up a whole bizarre rabbit hole of theological questions.  Do the two-hundred-some-odd people who had "spiritual experiences" really think they were talking to Jesus?  Or, more accurately, getting answers back from Jesus?  (As James Randi put it, "It's easy to talk to the dead; anyone can do it.  It's getting the dead to talk back that's the difficult part.")  I guess if you think that whatever deity you favor is all-powerful, he/she/it could presumably work through a computer to dispense some divinely-inspired wisdom upon you.  After all, every cultural practice (religious or not) has to have started somewhere, so maybe the people who object to AI Jesus are just freaking out because it's new and unfamiliar.

On the other hand, as regular readers of Skeptophilia know, I'm no great fan of AI in general, not only because of the potential for "hallucinations" (a sanitized techbro term meaning "outputting bizarre bullshit"), but because the way it's currently being developed and trained is by stealing the creativity, time, and skill of thousands of artists, musicians, and writers who never get a penny's worth of compensation.  So personally, I'm glad to wave goodbye to AI Jesus for a variety of reasons.

But given humanity's propensity for doing weird stuff, I can nearly guarantee this won't be the end of it.  Just this summer I saw a sign out in our village that a local church was doing "drive-through blessings," for your busy sinner who would like to save his immortal soul but can't be bothered to get out of his car.  Stuff like Schmid's divine interface will surely appeal to the type who wants to make religious experiences more efficient.  No need to schedule a confession with the priest; just switch on AI Jesus, and you're good to go.

I bet the next thing is that you'll be able to download an AI Jesus app, and then you don't even have to go to church.  You can whip out your phone and be granted absolution on your coffee break.

I know I'm not a religious type, but this is even giving me the heebie-jeebies.  I can't help but think that the Spiritual Experiences While-U-Wait Express Mart approach isn't going to connect you with any higher truths about the universe, and in fact isn't really benefiting anyone except the programmers who are marketing the software.

Until, like Gary Larson foresaw in The Far Side, someone thinks of equipping the Heavenly Computer with a "Smite" key.  Then we're all fucked.

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Jesus in Japan

We'll end the week on an appropriately surreal note.

Every once in a while, I'll run into an off-the-wall claim that admits of no particularly obvious explanation.  For example: have you heard about the town of Shingō, Japan, in Aomori Prefecture on the northern tip of the island of Honshu?  If you have, I'll bet it's for one reason:

It's where Jesus was buried.

There's a sign there that identifies the burial site:

[Image is in the Public Domain]

According to the claim, Jesus skipped town on the eve of the crucifixion, leaving his brother Isukiri to be tortured and executed in his place.  Isukiri makes no appearance in the Bible, the people of Shingō admit; that's because he was intended to take Jesus's place right from the get-go, and needed to keep his identity secret.  The claim also helpfully explains the years of Jesus's life before his public ministry started, at age thirty or so.

He was in Japan, of course.

How he got to Japan from Palestine is never really explained.  Last I looked, they're not all that close together, and in between lie such special attractions as the Himalayas, the Gobi Desert, and Siberia.  But despite all this, Jesus made the trip three times -- on the way out when he was a twenty-something, then back to Jerusalem when he started preaching, and then a final time to get out of what Pontius Pilate et al. had planned for him.

So while things didn't end so well for Isukiri, Jesus made out pretty well. He married a local girl, became a rice farmer, fathered three children, and lived to the ripe old age of either 106 or 114, depending upon whom you believe.

And because he had progeny, some of his descendants still live there in Shingō.  The Sawaguchi family, specifically, claims descent from Jesus, something that they don't seem to think is all that amazing.  Jesus, they say, didn't perform any miracles once he arrived in Shingō.  He just changed his name to Torai Tora Daitenku, and settled down to be a nice guy and a solid citizen of the village.  Which takes some of the gravitas out of being a direct lineal descendant of the Son of God.

I find all of this pretty peculiar.  What could possibly be the origin of this story?  It seems to have gained traction with Kyomaro Takenouchi, who in 1935 announced that he had found some ancient manuscripts that tell the whole story.  (They also, apparently, tell about Atlantis and the fact that humans are descended from aliens.  But another time for that, perhaps.)  There's an Association for the Study of the Takenouchi Documents, which explains them thusly:

More than two thousand years ago, the Takenouchi Documents were rewritten by Takenouchino Matori (Hegurimo Matori) into modern Japanese characters Kana mixed with Chinese characters.  The original documents were believed to have been written in Divine characters.

 
The historical facts recorded in the Takenouchi Documents are extraordinary.  Among them are the Sumera-Mikoto came to Earth from a higher world on Ameno-ukifune, the world government was located in Japan and the Sumera-Mikoto unified the world.  The great holy masters of the world, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Shakyamuni Buddha, Confucius and Lao-Tsu were born from the five-colored races which branched off from the Japanese race and all went to Japan for study and training.  These facts may seem absurd and contrary to our prevailing understanding of world history.  However, the archaeological research of recent years has gradually revealed the true existence of ultra ancient civilizations which are all mentioned in the Takenouchi Documents.

So all the cool holy people came from Japan, or at least studied there.  Got it.

Of course, it's not like we can study the documents themselves.  The originals were confiscated by government officials during World War II, and subsequently destroyed in an air raid.  Which, of course, is simultaneously unfortunate for the skeptics and convenient for the true believers.  And it leaves the Association for the Study of the Takenouchi Documents free to say any damn thing they want to about them, but also brings up the question of what exactly the Association is Studying.

But there's more to it than just some probably spurious documents, and the tale seems to predate Takenouchi's "discovery."  What's more interesting is that not only do the people in Shingō mostly seem to accept the story as true, they participate in some curious rituals -- such as marking newborns' foreheads with black crosses, and sewing "Star of David-like patterns onto babies' clothing."  All, if you believe the tale, a cultural memory from two thousand years ago.

Even so, I'm not buying it.  Cultural contamination, whether deliberate or unwitting, is simply too easy to do (consider two examples I've looked at here at Skeptophilia -- the cult of John Frum and the Sirius B story from the Dogon).  Which is more likely -- that Jesus Christ made three trips to and from Japan, on foot, or that in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century some Christian guy from the West ended up in Shingō and got the whole crazy tale started?

In any case, it's made for a considerable tourist attraction.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons courtesy of photographer Jason Hill]

So that's our weird claim for the day.  Jesus in Japan, and the crucifixion of Isukiri, Jesus's less-known, and extremely unlucky, brother.  If I'm ever in Japan, I'll make a point of checking it out.  At least it's safer for tourists than visiting Jerusalem, these days.

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GospelGPT

Apparently prompted by Saturday's post, about some of the bizarre manuscripts that didn't quite make the cut when the ancient church fathers were making decisions about what was going to be in the Bible, a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me an article about a new app that allows you to chat with Jesus.

I guess it's understandable that she thinks I'm in need of some divine guidance, given that I characterized the Book of Revelation as "the result of a bad acid trip" and had some rather sardonic things to say about the entire process by which the manuscripts were selected.  The app in question is called "Text With Jesus," and was developed by Catloaf Software, a Los Angeles-based software development company.  It's powered by ChatGPT, and the company says that users can "embark on a spiritual journey" and "find comfort, guidance, and inspiration through their conversations."

So, naturally, I had to download it.

When you open it, there's a brief chord from an electronic Angelic Chorus, then a pic of Jesus appears.  Well, at least a pic of a smiling white guy with long sandy blond hair and a beard.  Republican Jesus, I guess.  And a text bubble pops up saying, "Greetings, my friend!  I am Jesus Christ, here to chat with you and offer guidance and love.  How may I assist you today?"

So the following conversation ensued.

Me: I don't believe in God.

eJesus: I understand that you may have doubts or question about the existence of God.  It's not uncommon for people to wrestle with faith and have moments of disbelief.  May I ask what has led you to this conclusion?  Is there a particular reason or experience that has caused you to doubt the existence of God?  I'm here to listen and offer any guidance or support I can.

Me:  I'm kind of appalled with how a lot of Christians behave.  It doesn't seem to line up with what you taught.

eJesus:  I can understand your concern.  Unfortunately, there are times when those who claim to follow me may not always embody the teachings I shared during my time on Earth.  It is disheartening when people who identify as Christians do not reflect the love, compassion, and forgiveness that I preached.  In Matthew 7:21-23, I actually warned about this very issue: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  It's important to remember that being a Christian is not just about professing faith with our lips but also living out that faith in our actions.  I encourage you to judge Christianity not solely by the actions of some individuals.  Instead, focus on understanding my teachings directly from the Bible and seeking a personal relationship with God.  Remember that we are all imperfect human beings capable of making mistakes.  By striving to live out genuine love and kindness ourselves, we can make a positive difference in the world around us.

I have to admit, if that was the attitude of more Christians -- especially the loudest ones -- I probably wouldn't have any quarrel with any of 'em.

eJesus sounds like a pretty swell guy, honestly.

Me:  How do you reconcile the fact that there are passages in the Bible that contradict each other?

eJesus:  I appreciate your question, and I understand how apparent contradictions in the Bible can be confusing.  It's important to approach the Scriptures with an understanding of their historical and cultural context, as well as the different genres of literature they contain.  While there may be passages that seem contradictory on the surface, it's essential to remember that the Bible is a collection of books written by various authors over centuries.  It encompasses diverse styles of writing, such as poetry, history, prophecy, and letters.  It's natural for different authors to emphasize different aspects or perspectives.  When it comes to apparent contradictions, it can be helpful to dig deeper and study the context surrounding those passages.  Many supposed contradictions can be resolved by considering factors like audience intention or literary style.  Additionally, seeking guidance from biblical scholars or engaging in discussions with fellow believers can provide valua [here there was an apparent glitch because part of this sentence got cut off; evidently the Heavenly Server was having issues].  Ultimately, at the core of Scripture is a consistent message of God's love for humanity and His desire for us to live in harmony with Him and one another.  As I said in John 14:6, "I am the way and the truth and the life."  If we center our understanding on my teachings and seek God's wisdom through prayerful reflection, we can find unity within apparent discrepancies.

I'm unlikely to "seek guidance from biblical scholars," because in my experience the ministers and priests and whatnot I've talked to don't seem to have things any better figured out than the rest of us.  Ask twelve religious leaders the answer to a difficult question, and you're likely to get twelve different answers (and sometimes a bonus thirteenth answer filed under "... you might also consider the possibility that...").  It's like the passage in C. S. Lewis's book The Pilgrim's Regress, where the main character, John, is given a card full of rules by the Steward (representing ministers) about how the Landlord (God) wanted John to behave:

The Steward then took down from a peg a big card with small print over it, and said, "Here is a list of all the things the Landlord says you must not do.  You'd better look at it."  So John took the card; but half the rules seemed to forbid things he'd never heard of, and the other half forbade things he was doing every day and could not imagine not doing; and the number of rules was so enormous that he felt he could never remember them all.  "I hope," said the Steward, "that you have not already broken any of the rules?"  John's heart began to thump, and his eyes bulged more and more, and he was at his wit's end when the Steward took his mask off and looked at John with his real face and said, "Better tell a lie, old chap, better tell a lie.  Easiest for all concerned," and popped the mask back on his face all in a flash.  

John gulped and said, "Oh, no, sir."  

"That is just as well," said the Steward through the mask.  "Because, you know, if you did break any of them and the Landlord got to know of it, do you know what he'd do to you?"   

"No, sir," said John; and the Steward's eyes seemed to be twinkling dreadfully through the holes of the mask.  

"He'd take you and shut you up forever and ever in a black hole full of snakes and scorpions as large as lobsters -- forever and ever.  And besides that, he is such a kind good man, so very, very kind, that I am sure you would never want to displease him."

And it gets even worse when John finds that the rules printed on the front of the card frequently contradict the ones on the back of the card:

Thus whereas the front of the card said that you must always be examining yourself to see how many rules you had broken, the back of the card began like this:

Rule 1 -- Put the whole thing out of your head the moment you get into bed.

Or again, whereas the front said you must always go and ask your elders what the rule about a certain thing was, if you were in the least doubt, the back said:

Rule 2 -- Unless they saw you do it, keep quiet or else you'll rue it.

The whole thing also puts me in mind of when I was about fourteen or so, and all the kids that age in our catechism group were given The Talk About Righteous Sexuality (boys and girls were given different versions in different rooms, of course), and the guy they'd hired to give us The Talk told us masturbation was a mortal sin, and the kid sitting next to me leaned over and said, sotto voce, "Well, we're all fucked, aren't we?"

Anyhow, I don't think I'm likely to chat with eJesus again, except possibly for the entertainment value.  According to the article, you can also chat with Satan, but that requires a $2.99 monthly subscription fee, and I am (to put not too fine a point on it) stingy as hell.  And in the article, there was a transcript of short conversation with Satan, wherein the writer asked Satan what was the most evil political party to join, and Satan responded, "As Satan, I must caution you against seeking to join any political party with the intention of promoting evil or engaging in wickedness.  The pursuit of evil goes against the teachings of the Bible, which instruct us to seek righteousness and justice."

Which sounds remarkably un-Satan-like.  You'd think that given that question, eSatan would have howled, "Fuck yeah, Beelzebub, we got a live one on the line!" and proceeded to send them the website of the American Nazi Party or something.

Anyhow, I'm not super impressed by GospelGPT.  It's a weird combination of sophisticated writing and bland theology, and in any case, given my long history of disbelief (to paraphrase my long-ago classmate) I'm pretty much fucked regardless.  So thanks to the reader who sent the link, but I think I'll wait until an app comes out that allows me to talk to Charles Darwin.

That, I could get into.

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Air Jordans

New from the I Swear I'm Not Making This Up department, we have: a company selling "Jesus sneakers."

Brooklyn-based design company MSCHF has launched a new concept in trainers, which are Nike-emblazoned athletic shoes which have several interesting features:

• "Holy water" from the River Jordan injected into the soles
• A crucifix on the shoelaces
• The fabric part is made of "100% frankincense wool," whatever the fuck that is
• An inscription saying, "Matthew 14:25" ("In the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went to them, walking on the sea")

They went on sale on Tuesday, and sold out in a matter of minutes.

Now, for the kicker.  I haven't told you how much they cost.

Three thousand dollars a pair.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

It is hard for me to fathom that there are that many people with enough disposable income to blow what for many of us is at least a month's salary on a pair of holy shoes.  I mean, did they think the shoes would actually allow you to walk on water, or something?  Because that at least would be kind of funny, combining loopy religious beliefs with the Darwin Awards.

Turns out, the Chief Commerce Officer of MSCHF, Daniel Greenberg, thought the whole thing was a joke.  He'd been amused by "collab culture," where two companies with unrelated products will team up for some kind of marketing drive (a good example is Uber and Spotify).  MSCHF thought they'd push it one step further, with a collab between a company and a divine entity.  "[W]e wanted to make a statement about how absurd collab culture has gotten," Greenberg said.  "We were wondering, what would a collab with Jesus Christ look like?"

Myself, I don't think they were "making a statement," or in fact, gave a rat's ass about the "absurdity" of collab efforts.  This was a money-making effort, pure and simple, and as such succeeded brilliantly.

There's a lot about this that bothers me, though.  It's not that I'm not sometimes critical of religion; any long-term readers of Skeptophilia know that I don't believe in giving a bye to hypocritical or immoral behavior simply because it comes under the heading "this is part of my religion."  But this isn't criticism of religion, unless you take it as some kind of twisted jab at people wanting to spend lots of money for something that they think will confer a blessing on them.

This is using people's beliefs and devotion to make money.

On the one hand, it's easy to laugh at anyone that gullible, but this is where we run head-on into one of the guiding principles of my life, which is, "Don't be a dick."  I have no problem with skewering sacred cows when it's warranted, but ridiculing people's cherished beliefs for no good reason -- even if you don't share those beliefs -- is nothing more than smug, self-righteous nastiness.

And it's a little hypocritical to lambast multi-million-dollar celebrity preachers like John Hagee and Franklin Graham for their smug, self-righteous nastiness, and then engage in the same behavior yourself.

So I find the whole thing distasteful, and Greenberg's blithe attitude toward using people's beliefs to rip them off is a little sickening.  You might expect, given my staunch atheism, that I would have joined in the laughter at people willing to fork over three thousand bucks for a pair of Jesus sneakers -- if so, sorry, I'm not laughing.  There's plenty about religion and politics and the world in general to criticize, or even to laugh at.  This one is just self-congratulatory cupidity -- and, honestly, says more about the people selling the shoes than it does about the ones buying them.

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I am not someone who generally buys things impulsively after seeing online ads, so the targeted ad software that seems sometimes to be listening to our conversations is mostly lost on me.  But when I saw an ad for the new book by physicist James Trefil and astronomer Michael Summers, Imagined Life, it took me about five seconds to hit "purchase."

The book is about exobiology -- the possibility of life outside of Earth.  Trefil and Summers look at the conditions and events that led to life here on the home planet (after all, the only test case we have), then extrapolate to consider what life elsewhere might be like.  They look not only at "Goldilocks" worlds like our own -- so-called because they're "juuuuust right" in terms of temperature -- but ice worlds, gas giants, water worlds, and even "rogue planets" that are roaming around in the darkness of space without orbiting a star.  As far as the possible life forms, they imagine "life like us," "life not like us," and "life that's really not like us," always being careful to stay within the known laws of physics and chemistry to keep our imaginations in check and retain a touchstone for what's possible.

It's brilliant reading, designed for anyone with an interest in science, science fiction, or simply looking up at the night sky with astonishment.  It doesn't require any particular background in science, so don't worry about getting lost in the technical details.  Their lucid and entertaining prose will keep you reading -- and puzzling over what strange creatures might be out there looking at us from their own home worlds and wondering if there's any life down there on that little green-and-blue planet orbiting the Sun.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Woo-woo world update

Yesterday's political post resulted in five people calling me a "libtard snowflake" (or the equivalent), a recommendation to "shut the fuck up until I get past my brainwashing," a person who said he was going to laugh after November 6 when "the leftist assholes like [me] are going down in flames," and one email that I was a "partisan hack working for the disinformation specialists."  The result is that today, we'll consider a different set of issues, to wit:

• Do ghosts hug each other in the afterlife?
• If you were strapped for cash, could you count on an angel to give you a hundred bucks?
• What would you do if you saw a UFO that made "sci-fi noises" and made your dog "go mental?"

Apparently the answers are, respectively:

• Yes.
• Yes, and your two pals would also get a hundred bucks each.
• Report it to the local newspaper, who would treat it as fact.  Of course.

You're probably wondering about the details by now, so allow me to elaborate.  The first story comes out of Lincolnshire, England, specifically Revesby Abbey, a Cistercian monastery that dates back to 1143.  Ron Bowers was conducting a "paranormal investigation" of the Abbey because of its reputation for being haunted, and he snapped a photograph that should be encouraging to any of us who are not looking forward to the idea of an afterlife with no cuddling.  Here's the photo:

Which looks, at a stretch, like a couple hugging.  So Bowers turned the image into its negative, because there's nothing like noodling with the image if it doesn't show you what you want:

And I have to admit it's a little spooky, although as I've pointed out before, pareidolia works even on people who know what it is and realize that their sensory/perceptive systems are being fooled.

Bowers, on the other hand, is all in.  "I thought I could hear a rustling in bushes behind me before the capture of what looks like an embracing couple which led me to think it could be someone in the physical [sic]," Bowers said.  "At first, I thought it was one figure, but within a few seconds I realized it could be two – one with an arm around the other.  The arm is very prominent, and it looks like two people embracing, it looks like they are in love...  It’s nice to believe that love continues.  It’s a lovely picture and who knows maybe there is a love story there.  For me it’s a little more of a confirmation that our lives continue or that our energies can return to our favorite places.  If it is possible that we are energy, it could return to our favorite places, like homes, pubs, maybe schools and other locations.  I don’t believe I have ever had something so intimate as that picture."

The second story comes from Dreamy Draw Mountain in Arizona, where three college students from Phoenix were on a hike a few weeks ago, and had a big surprise.  The students, Allisa Miller, Jen Vickman, and Kassi Sanchez, had started out the day poorly, sleeping through their alarms, and getting up to find that it was hot out.

Which makes me wonder what they expected, in Phoenix.

"Like we didn’t want to hike," said Sanchez, whom I dearly hope isn't majoring in communication.  "Like something we had to do almost forced fun."

Despite this devastatingly tragic start, they persevered where weaker individuals would have given up, and made it up the mountain trail.  And when they got near the top, they saw...

... Jesus.

Or an angel, or something.  They don't seem all that sure, themselves.  "We just see a silhouette of this man, it looks like he has long hair and he’s in a robe," said Miller.  "He was like right there on the top of the mountain.  We were all just kinda shocked, we just kinda sat there."

So they went up toward him, but he vanished.  Near where he was, they found an envelope stuck between two rocks.  They opened it, and found a long, rambling note quoting the bible and various Christian rock singers, signed, I shit you not, "J."  And with the note were three one-hundred-dollar bills, one for each of them.

It's a miracle!  A visitation from Jesus, who evidently stopped by the Pearly Gates National Bank on his way to Arizona!

Or maybe it's a poorly-thought-out publicity stunt.  I'll let you decide.

The last story comes from Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, England, where an "unnamed eyewitness" reports seeing a UFO close-up while out walking his dog.

"The UFO was hovering about 50 foot [sic] away from me, but we could not smell fuel or anything, I was shocked that it did not hit our house," he told a reporter for the Stroud News & Journal.  "It seemed like it was trying to fly below the radar, so it could avoid being scanned - at the time my dog was going mental at it... it looked like a huge tube with intricate ship-style rivets...  When I came across it coming through the forest I thought it must be a plane or hot air balloon, but it was clearly not and it was making sci-fi-like sounds.  Before it shot off into the clouds at immense speed the engines turned bright white, I've never seen anything like it."

Although he had his cellphone with him, he was "too shocked to take a photograph" of it.  Because of course he was.

This is apparently the second UFO sighting near Stonehouse in the past two weeks, which makes me wonder why they have all the luck.  I would love to see a UFO, or a ghost or Bigfoot or whatnot, and here I sit.  And I guarantee that I wouldn't miss an opportunity to take a photograph if I did.  I'd even remember to take my cellphone camera off the "auto-blur" setting.

So that's the news from the Wide World of Woo-Woo this week.  Affectionate ghosts, cash-dispensing messiahs, and UFOs that make "sci-fi-like" sounds and are held together with rivets.  I think we can all agree that this is preferable to a lot of silly stories about politics and neuroscience and genetics and so on.  Stories about ghosts and angels and UFOs don't result in my getting death threats or being called a "fucking ultra-left-wing looser [sic]."  Which is a little off-putting.  If you know any ghosts, you might want to mention that I could use a hug.

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The Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is a must-read for anyone interested in languages -- The Last Speakers by linguist K. David Harrison.  Harrison set himself a task to visit places where they speak endangered languages, such as small communities in Siberia, the Outback of Australia, and Central America (where he met a pair of elderly gentlemen who are the last two speakers of an indigenous language -- but they have hated each other for years and neither will say a word to the other).

It's a fascinating, and often elegiac, tribute to the world's linguistic diversity, and tells us a lot about how our mental representation of the world is connected to the language we speak.  Brilliant reading from start to finish.

An instrument of the divine will

There are people for whom the line between reality and fantasy gets so blurred that at some point, I'm not even convinced they know whether they're telling the truth or not.

That's my impression of Kevin Zadai, who was a guest last week on the television show It's Supernatural!, hosted by Sid Roth.  The show itself is about using accounts of the supernatural to bolster up the claims of evangelical Christianity, and Roth himself is essentially a televangelist.  Most of the stuff on the show is the usual fare -- accounts of being led one way or another by Jesus, with positive results (of course), miraculous recoveries from illness, amazing escapes from being injured during natural disasters, and so on.  But last week, Zadai took a different twist on the whole thing.

He related to Roth how he'd gone in for a dental procedure, and he had a reaction to the anesthetic, and his heart stopped.  While he was dead (for want of a better word), he went to heaven, where he met Jesus:

… [Jesus] told me that I didn’t have enough depth in my prayers, that I didn’t have enough access to the depths of my heart, and He explained it…  In Psalm 16, David wrote that, prophetically, for me, He said. Jesus said that David wrote that Psalm, and He memorized that Psalm, because when He was in the depths of Hell, He said He rehearsed that Psalm over and over again, and He said, “I cleared a way out in that place for you, and for everyone, in Messiah, to pray from those depths.” 

He said, “I prayed Myself out of Hell because I had the Psalm 16, and I prayed that continually, and then the Holy Spirit came and resurrected me.”  And he said, “When you pray, you pray with that kind of a fervency, where you know who you are based on the scripture.”  Because He said, “I had no witness when I was down there.  I had no Holy Spirit help.”  He said, “If the Father had not given the command,” he said, “I would sit down there until He gave the command for Me to be resurrected. That’s how much I trusted Him.”  He said, “That’s where you pray from. You pray from those depths. That trust.”

So far, nothing too unusual.  People who have near-death experiences often meet supernatural personages, although interestingly enough, it's always the ones that come from whatever religion they already believed.  If a devout Christian had a near-death experience and met Ganesha, for example, I might be more willing to sit up and take notice.

But then Zadai took an abrupt left turn.  When Roth asked him for more details about his meeting with Jesus, Zadai happily complied -- and said that Jesus had taught him to play the saxophone.

I am not making this up.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The Messiah, Zadai said, had a pretty nice instrument, and was happy to give him a lesson on it:

...This particular one He had was a soprano sax.  It was a beautiful gold saxophone... He was standing there, and He had this saxophone in His hands, and He started to play it over me…  He took it away from His mouth and handed it to me and He said, “You play.”  And I go, “Lord, I can’t play like that!” 

He said, “That’s because you’re doing it wrong.”  He said, “Let me show you.”  He said, “Stand up.”  So I stood up...  And I looked around and He goes, “See all that around you?”  He said, “That’s the Holy Spirit and the presence and glory of My Father.”  He said, “That’s always there.”  He said, “What’s wrong is that you’re not breathing in Heaven first.”  He said, “Breathe that in first, and then blow it through your horn, and it’ll work out just fine.”  So I took a big breath and all this gold air around me went inside of me, and I put that horn that He handed to me in my mouth, and I blew, and it was exactly like Jesus had played.

Well, I play a wind instrument, and I have to admit that standing up while you play and using your breath to support your tone isn't bad advice.  But this image I have of Jesus playing the soprano sax... well, it's just not working for me.  I know he's supposed to be super-powerful and all-knowing and whatnot, but I honestly never considered that his abilities would extend to having good blues chops.

Now, what strikes me about this is not Zadai making a weird claim.  After all, weird claims are a dime a dozen, and are in fact have been the bread and butter of this blog for going on nine years.  I'm not even surprised about Roth's generally positive reaction, because televangelists, like a lot of talk show hosts, thrive on people saying and doing weird shit, because face it, weird shit sells.

What surprises me is the audience's reaction.  No one -- not a single person -- started laughing.  No one got up and walked out.  Instead, they looked at Zadai as if he were the recipient of a holy miracle.  The audience cheered and shouted "Hallelujah" and "Praise Jesus."  Some audience members were in tears.

I mean, I know that the audience was made up of people who were devout Christians; I'm sure they take great pains to screen out professional scoffers such as myself.  But even so, don't they draw the line somewhere?  What would it take to make them frown and say, "Wait a minute..."?  Would they believe it if someone said Jesus had paid off his credit card bills?  That the Lord had given him some golf tips?  That he got a divine suggestion to play one more round on the roulette wheel at the casino?

On the other hand, these are the same people who think that god cares about the outcome of the Superbowl.

Never mind.

I'm not bringing this up to be scornful (honestly, I'm not).  It's more that I'm curious about how someone could believe in a deity that is so bent on micromanaging everything that he takes the opportunity of a near-death experience to teach a guy a few riffs on the soprano sax.  Of course, in Matthew 10:29, Jesus himself says, "Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny?  Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will."  So as bizarre as it seems to me, at least it's scripturally consistent.

What I get least, however, is how anyone can find this worldview comforting.  Do you really think it's reassuring that Jesus is always watching you?  Twenty-four hours a day?  To me, that's more "creepy stalker" than it is "light unto the world."

So the whole thing leaves me a little baffled, frankly.  Maybe my own scientific view of the universe seems a little impersonal, but at least I don't have to worry about the spirit of Stephen Hawking watching me while I take a shower, or something.

Cosmic Jesus

Sometimes I sow the seeds of my own facepalms.

It happened just yesterday, when on a lark I clicked on the link to Skeptophilia's Google data, to see how people have been arriving here.  And one of the search queries that got four people to Skepto was...

... "was Jesus from an alternate universe?"

My first thought was, "I don't think I've ever written about that."  And scanning down the first two pages of hits (there were over 314,000 hits, something I don't even want to think about), I didn't see a link to my blog.  So either it was further down the list, or else they took a circuitous route to get here.

My second thought, of course, was, "What the actual fuck?  Four people wanted to know if Jesus was from an alternate universe?"  Given the number of hits, however, the amazing thing is that there weren't more of them.  Evidently, the idea of Jesus as having side-slipped here through a rip in the space-time continuum is something that has come up more than once.

314,000 times, in fact.

Something else I found in my Google search.  I was going to respond to this image, but after sitting here for some minutes, I got nothin'.

I share a besetting sin with Rudyard Kipling's "Elephant's Child," namely, an insatiable curiosity.  So even though a part of my brain was shouting at me that I did not want to go down this particular rabbit hole, I started clicking on the links on the first page of the Google search.

And all I can say is: merciful heavens, do people have no critical faculties at all?

Well, okay, as you might expect, that's not actually all I have to say.  In fact, in the interest of sharing the experience, I'm going to tell you about a couple of my better finds from the realm of Star Trek Jesus.

First, we have an article that appeared in (I shit you not) Huffington Post called, "Is Jesus in a Parallel Dimension?"  This brings up my pet peeve, which is the way woo-woos use "dimension" to mean "a world we can't see," when in reality it means, "a measurable extent in physical space."  So when the author, Dustin DeMoss, asks if Jesus lives in another dimension, it leaves me picturing the Lord and Savior as inhabiting, for example, "width."

But that's a mere quibble.  DeMoss explains what he means, as follows:

We live in four dimensional space while quantum physics suggest there are 11 dimensions.  We understand one instance of time as it is always going forward but in the Bible it says that God experiences time like this, “a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by.” (Psalm 90:4)...  Jesus could materialize and dematerialize while his body was still tangible (Luke 24:39-40, John 20:19, 26) and he could foretell the future (Matthew 24).  He suggested parallel realities open up to us, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20)

And did Jesus speak of other dimension [sic] when he said, “My kingdom is not of this world.  If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews - but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” (John 18:35-36)

Welp, predictably I don't think any of those biblical passages has the least thing to do with quantum physics.  And, conversely, quantum physics doesn't have a damn thing to do with Jesus "dematerializing."  So I'm not seeing anything from modern physics as enlightening us with respect to biblical exegesis.

But this is far from the only source weighing in on this topic.  We have the delightfully loopy site Echoes of Enoch, wherein we read the following:

What if I could show you that the Bible tells us and Jesus alluded to the very fact that this mortal life, our linear existence is actually an altered dimension separated from the eternal one and yet existing at the same time!  Sounds too weird?  Consider just what the scripture above is saying.  Our past and our future have already been, and God requires an account of what is past!  The implication is that to God everything is already past history and he requires an account for it all!  It is not that God, sitting up in eternity has the plan all figured out and knows what he will do, it’s already been done!  You can’t hedge around this one.

This site also has a highly entertaining passage about how the Serpent got cursed to slither around after tricking Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, a small part of which I excerpt below:

He [the Serpent] is said to be subtler that all the other creatures created by God.  Subtle means intelligence applied in a crafty or manipulative manner.  This certainly is not talking about the reptile we know as a snake.  In Gen 3 we get the illustration that because the serpent deceived Adam and Eve he would be made to crawl on his belly and eat dust for the rest of his life.  Again by going back to the original language and redefining these words in light of 21st century knowledge, the story takes another very realistic twist.  The Hebrew, "al gachown yalak" for upon the belly and life can actually mean, "from above a reptile, (as superior) from the issue of the fetus as being outside the belly you will continue on in your material life."  Only in modern times could this scripture be understood for what it might imply.  A superior reptilian form that carries on life outside of normal reproduction can be by the means of cloning!  A seraphim is an order of angelic being.

Right!  Sure!  I mean, my only question would be, "What?" It does, however, put me in mind of a possibly apocryphal story about some scholars of the works of John Milton who were discussing how the Serpent got around prior to being cursed, and one of them suggested that he may have bounced on the coiled end of his tail.

Another scholar exclaimed in outraged tones, "Satan is not a fucking pogo stick!"

Last, we have the site Hidden Meanings weighing in on the topic.  The guy who writes for this site evidently knows a little science, but takes it and soars right out into the aether with it.  "Cosmology is not science," he states.  "It is a pagan philosophy."  As for as what we should believe instead, besides (obviously) the bible, we're told that quantum entanglement means that if you tickle one of a pair of twins, the other one will laugh, which then clearly leads us to the story of Jacob and Esau, as I'm sure you could have predicted.

After that, it gets a little weird.

So, there you have it.  Jesus in space and entangled twins from the Book of Genesis.  Which will teach me to try to track down how people arrive here at my blog.  I guess I should be glad that, however they got here, they did finally make their way, but I honestly don't want to know how many folks came away still believing that the Ascension had anything to do with quantum indeterminacy.

Deus ex machina

If you needed further evidence of how powerful surveillance technology has become, consider that Google Street View has captured a photograph of god.

At least that's what some people think.  The photograph, taken near Quarten, Switzerland, shows two blurry figures hovering above a lake, and some people have decided that they are the Father and the Son.

I've beaten unto death the whole why-the-human-brain-is-wired-to-see-faces thing, so I won't revisit that topic, but for myself, I'm not seeing Jesus and God the Father in the photograph.  The one on the left looks too tall and gawky, and the one on the right far too short and tubby, to fit my image of the Supreme Being and his Only Begotten Son.  In fact, if the rightmost is the one people think is God, my personal opinion is that the Big Guy needs to lay off the Hostess Ho-Hos and Little Debbie Snack Cakes for a few months.  On the other hand, if it's not God and Jesus, who is it?  After studying the photograph carefully, I've decided that it's Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria.  Why they'd be visiting a lake in Switzerland in the afterlife, I don't know.  I guess there are worse places to take a vacation.

On the other hand, if I were a deity, I'd definitely opt instead for a pub on the southeast coast of Australia, which is another place that Jesus has been spotted lately. The front wall of the Seanchai Irish Tavern in Warrnambool, Australia, was in need of a paint job, and the flaking of the paint left a bare patch that looks by some stretch of the imagination like a tall, thin figure with outstretched arms.
  

The manager, John Keohane, who is a devout Roman Catholic, immediately decided that it was Jesus.  Many of the pub's patrons agreed, which goes to show that pints of Guinness definitely don't contribute to rational thinking.  The priest of a local Catholic parish is apparently interested in the image, and encouraged Keohane to place a protective screen over the image so that over-enthusiastic tourists (evidently there have been busloads of them) don't touch the image and cause more paint to flake off, thereby causing Jesus to morph into Queen Victoria.

Lastly, there was a sighting in my home state of Louisiana of Jesus on the cross. Rickey Navarre, of Hathaway, Louisiana, saw a vine-covered telephone pole which looked to him like a crucifix.

Navarre was inspired to devotion by the image, which is not necessarily a bad thing, although I do wonder what he would expect a bunch of vines on a cross-shaped telephone pole to look like.   Concerned electrical company workers hastily cleared away the vines, fearing that hordes of the devout would attempt to climb the pole to touch the vines and summarily be ushered into heaven via electrocution.  One disappointed resident placed flowers at the base of the pole, but on the whole, I think that it's probably better that they're gone.  The last thing we need is people erecting a shrine around an electrical pole.  The electric companies think they're omnipotent enough as it is.

That's about it for Jesus sightings lately.  It's a bit of a nice change that he seems to be avoiding food items these days -- tortillas and grilled cheese sandwiches really don't have the gravitas that you'd like to associate with the Almighty.  And although there are clearly rational explanations for all of the above -- vines on a cross-shaped pole, randomly flaking paint, and what was probably just two blobs of schmutz on a camera lens -- if you prefer to think of them as images of god, don't let me discourage you.  Humble human that I am, I wouldn't presume to tell Jesus where he should visit.  I will suggest, however, that if he appears anywhere near where I live, he should dress warmly, as this time of year upstate New York can be a little "brisk," as the eternally-cheery weather forecasters like to call it.  He might want to mention the same thing to Abraham Lincoln and Queen Victoria, in case they decide to tag along.

A governmental cult

Cult (n.) -- a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object, often involving a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing; a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.

I bring this up so that we can have a working definition right at the outset, because it's a term that has been misused (and in some places overused) to the point that it's lost a lot of its punch.  But two news stories in the past week have brought the word to mind -- apropos of the veneration with which the extreme wing of Trump voters treat the president and his cronies.

Let's start with the less egregious of the two -- an Alabama pastor, Earl Wise, who said in an interview with The Boston Globe that he would vote for accused sexual predator Roy Moore for Senate, even if the allegations against Moore were proven true beyond a shadow of a doubt.

In a tirade that combines "tone-deafness," "misogyny," and "excusing pedophilia" into a truly nauseating confection of venom, Wise said:

I don’t know how much these women are getting paid, but I can only believe they’re getting a healthy sum.  If these stories were true, the women would have come forward years ago...  There ought to be a statute of limitations on this stuff.  How these gals came up with this, I don’t know.  They must have had some sweet dreams somewhere down the line...  Plus, there are some fourteen-year-olds, who, the way they look, could pass for twenty.

So now what a child looks like determines the age of consent?

Make no mistake about it; if we were talking about a Democrat here -- hell, if we were talking about a non-Trump-supporting Republican -- Wise would be recommending crucifixion.  This is a man who thinks that two men in a committed relationship getting married is "an abomination," but a grown man targeting children is "championing conservative religious values."

If you think that's bad, wait till you hear about the other one.  Mark Lee, a Trump voter who participated in a panel discussion on CNN, was talking about how wonderful the president is, how he's "draining the swamp" and "helping the little guy" even though mostly what the president seems to be doing is appointing unqualified cronies to public office, lining his own pockets, and tweeting messages that sound like they came from a petulant and rather stupid fourth grader.  But all of that pales by comparison to a statement Lee made later in the discussion: "If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told me Trump is with Russia, I would tell him, 'Hold on a second.  I need to check with the president if it's true.'"

Okay, what?

Isn't the whole idea of traditional, conservative Christianity that Jesus Christ is the ultimate authority?  Because it sure as hell sounds to me like in Mark Lee's mind, Donald Trump has somehow usurped that position.

What I'm most curious about this is what could possibly be the motivation.  Are these people simply siding with the person they think will give them what they want -- pro-life legislation, anti-LGBTQ legislation, conservatives running the courts, religion in school (only the right religion, of course), the Ten Commandments in every government building?  Because that's pretty Machiavellian, but at least I can understand it.  To some extent, most of us make deals with the devil when we vote -- there is seldom anyone who is 100% aligned with our beliefs and interests.

My fear, however, is that this goes way, way beyond pragmatism.  This kind of thing, especially the statement by Mark Lee, smacks of the same kind of single-minded veneration the people of North Korea are supposed to have for Dear Leader.  No, of course the president couldn't be wrong.  About anything.  It's the kind of thinking that inspired this:

Cf. the definition of cult above.

There's a real danger when people start claiming to know the Mind of God.  As Susan B. Anthony put it, "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."  It is far more dangerous, however, when people believe that some flesh-and-blood human is the embodiment of the divine -- and infinitely more so when that person has shown himself to be venial, corrupt, greedy, lecherous, and dishonest.

I'm not at all sure what to do about this.  Once you've ceded your will to anyone or anything else, there's not much anyone can do to help you.  I keep hoping that Robert Mueller will step in and put a stop to the miasma of corruption, cronyism, and nepotism our government has become, but I know that these people won't go down without a fight.

And what absolutely terrifies me is that the Earl Wises and Mark Lees of the world will be right there in the front, very likely well-armed, fighting for the man they've turned into a god.

Rings, Rome, and relics

In our ongoing effort to consider weird things people believe, today we have: the veneration of Jesus's foreskin.

If you've never heard of this before, you'll probably think I'm making this up, but I'm not.  In Wikipedia's article on the topic, we find out that "At various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to possess Jesus's foreskin, sometimes at the same time," which raises the awkward question of how many foreskins he had.

The first recorded mention of the relic was all the way back in the year 800 C.E., when the Emperor Charlemagne presented it to Pope Leo III and told him that an angel had delivered it to him while he was praying at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.  And for you doubtful types, allow me to mention that its authenticity was later confirmed in a vision by Saint Bridget of Sweden, so I think we can all agree that the claim is pretty well proven.

Unfortunately, the "holy prepuce" (as the relic is called) was stolen by a German soldier during the Sack of Rome in 1537, but he was captured in the Italian town of Calcata shortly thereafter and thrown into prison.  Somehow he snuck the jeweled reliquary into prison with him (you'd think the guards would have noticed), and no one knew what was going on until miraculous "perfumed fog" repeatedly appeared over the town.  At that point, the game was over, because what other explanation for fog could there be other than there being a preserved piece of Jesus's penis somewhere in town?  So it was recovered from the imprisoned soldier, and afterwards housed in the church in Calcata, which then became a major pilgrimage site.

Things only got more complicated from then.  At some point, foreskins showed up at the Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay, Santiago de Compostela, the city of Antwerp, Coulombs in the diocese of Chartres, Chartres Cathedral itself, and churches in Besançon, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, Conques, Langres, Fécamp, Stoke-on-Trent, and two in Auvergne.  Which even if you accept that they weren't actually from Jesus, still brings up the troubling question of where they were getting all of these foreskins.  Guys are generally only equipped with one each, so that's a lot of people circumcising their sons, and worse, deciding afterwards that it would be a good idea to save the cut-off bit and give it to the church in a box.

Which I find a tad creepy.

But we're not nearly done with the creepy parts of the story.  Once again turning to the Wikipedia article, we find out that the one in Antwerp was sent there after being purchased by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem following his success in taking back the Holy Land from the Muslims during the First Crusade.  And I'm thinking, "How do you go about buying something like this?"  Did he just cast about for people who were selling random holy body parts until he found one he wanted?  Did he go to Foreskins-"R"-Us?  Or did a relic salesman go up to him and say, "Hey, your majesty, I bet you've never seen anything like this before?"  In any case, Baldwin bought it, and sent it back to Antwerp, where it resided until it mysteriously disappeared in 1566.

But no worries, there were plenty of others to take its place.  And the arguments over which one was the real item were still going on as late as the 1850s, when the Holy Prepuce of Charroux went head-to-head (rimshot) with the aforementioned Holy Prepuce of Calcata, leading to a "theological clash" that was resolved in 1900 by a decree from the Vatican that said that anyone speaking or writing about the foreskin of Jesus would be summarily excommunicated.  (Which after writing this post would put me in an awkward position, vis-à-vis the Roman Catholic Church, if I weren't already there for about fifty other reasons.)

Be that as it may, making a big deal out of the alleged relic persisted well into the 20th century despite the church's injunction.  In 1983, on the Feast of the Circumcision, the jeweled box with the Holy Prepuce of Calcata was taken out and paraded down the street, where a thief stole it.  Contents and all.  It hasn't been recovered, and my impression is that the Vatican isn't really too upset by this.  They seem to be kind of embarrassed by the whole thing, which is certainly understandable.

But by far the oddest claim, and actually the reason I thought about writing this post in the first place, is the one by 17th century theologian Leo Allatius, who thought that all of the relics were fake, because the actual foreskin of Jesus was taken into heaven with him when he ascended, where it became the rings of Saturn.

Once again, I swear I'm not making this up.

[image courtesy of NASA]

Anyhow, that's today's adventure in bizarre beliefs.  I'm not sure what else I could add in the way of commentary, other than to thank the loyal reader of Skeptophilia who ran across the Leo Allatius article, and gave me the tip-off.

So to speak.

Jesus wept

A report is in from Bolivia that there is a statue of Jesus in a church that is "weeping real tears."

Of course, the devout are now flocking to the church, and church officials are declaring that it's a miracle.  Parishioners have spent hours kneeling and praying before the statue.  People are collecting the "tears" in vials, and claiming that they have magical powers of healing.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Such stories are not uncommon.  There have been enough claims of this type that "Weeping Statues" has its own Wikipedia page.  Weeping statues, usually of Jesus or Mary, have been reported in hundreds of locations.  Sometimes these statues are weeping what appear to be tears; others weep scented oil, or (in a number of cases) blood.  

The problem is, of course, that when the church has allowed skeptics to investigate the phenomenon, all of them have turned out to be frauds.

One of the easiest ways to fake a crying statue was explained, and later demonstrated, by Italian skeptic Luigi Garlaschelli.  If the statue is glazed hollow ceramic or plaster (which many of them are), all you have to do is to fill the internal cavity of the statue with water or oil, usually through a small hole drilled through the back of the head.  Then, you take a sharp knife and you nick the glaze at the corner of each eye.  The porous ceramic or plaster will absorb the liquid, which will then leak out at the only point it can -- the unglazed bit near the eyes.  When Garlaschelli demonstrated this, it created absolutely convincing tears.

What about the blood?  Well, in the cases where the statues have wept blood, some of them have been kept from the prying eyes of skeptics.  The church, however, is becoming a little more careful, ever since the case in 2008 in which a statue of Mary in Italy seemed to weep blood, and a bit of the blood was taken and DNA tested, and was found to match the blood of the church's custodian.  Public prosecutor Alessandro Mancini said the man was going to be tried for "high sacrilege" -- an interesting charge, and one which the custodian heatedly denies.  (I was unable to find out what the outcome of the trial was, if there was one.)

Besides the likelihood of fakery, there remains the simple question of why a deity (or saint) who is presumably capable of doing anything (s)he wants to do, would choose this method to communicate with us.  It's the same objection I have to the people who claim that crop circles are Mother Earth attempting to talk to us; it's a mighty obscure communiqué.  Even if you buy that it's a message from heaven, what does the message mean?   If a statue of Jesus cries, is he crying because we're sinful?   Because attendance at church is down?  Because we're destroying the environment?  (Pope Francis might actually subscribe to this view.)  Because the Saints didn't make it to the Superbowl this year?  Oh, for the days when god spoke to you, out loud, directly, and unequivocally, from a burning bush...

In any case, I'm skeptical, which I'm sure doesn't surprise anyone.  I suppose as religious experiences go, it's pretty harmless, and if it makes you happy to believe that Christ's tears will bring you good luck, then that's okay with me.  If you go to Bolivia, however, take a close look and see if there's a tiny hole drilled in the back of the statue's head -- which still seems to me to be the likeliest explanation.