1. "A Texas family says they are getting strength from an image of Jesus they found in the mold growing inside the shower of their home."
2. "The family of a 13-year-old Kansas boy who found a picture of a long-dead uncle inside a camera he bought at a garage sale said it may be a sign from beyond."
(These are the top 2 "Most Popular" stories at UPI.com right now.)
June 3, 2012
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55 comments:
I came to Althouse looking for meaning... Now, I will seek out mold elsewhere.
Looking for God in all the wrong places.
Human beings are profoundly disposed to see what they want to see. Even people who can do nothing else well are prodigies at rationalization. We're so ate up with this innate tendency that Jedi Masters of the Scientific Method fall prey to it all the time. Proper regard for skeptical inquiry and the methods of the same may be the most important thing a child can be taught. We see precious little of it and less all the time. Someone's feelings might be hurt, you know.
Do religious people realize how dumb they act?
When I look at the mold I see Frank Zappa.
I don't find meaning in mold.
Mildew, OTOH, is fraught with meaning. It means I've gotta clean the bathroom.
"Humans derive meaning the way birds build nests."
I forget who said that.
I wonder why.
I'll bet that means something.
When I look @ mold I see Fleming and chickelit.
Do athesit realize how negative and angry they are? There is not a more humorless negative group than atheists.
People are scared these days - thank you, Democrat Party - and are grasping at what they can. It sounds weird to us, but I hope they find what they need.
Andy R. said...
Do religious people realize how dumb they act?
Do brain-dead, uncritical Leftist homosexual bigots know how dumb they are?
Polaroid cameras have to eject the image for it to be developed and to avoid accidental double exposure. No way was that picture in the film pack unless deliberately put there. I'd be curious to see if the picture even was a Polaroid print.
While I consider signs from God to be manifested in other ways (loved one survives cancer, getting that job you always wanted, etc), I am a bit resistant to the idea that such people in the articles above should be ridiculed.
What?
Garage is an Althouse mole from Texas who's really a Jesus freak?
I'm getting a ton of strength from that ;)
I guess when your life is based around being dumb enough to think a fairy tale actually happened, then finding meaning in some moss makes perfect sense.
Frank Zappa in mold is the only thing keeping me from going back to prison.
Andy R. said...
I guess when your life is based around being dumb enough to think a fairy tale actually happened, then finding meaning in some moss makes perfect sense.
Especially when there's all kinds of physical and historic evidence the "fairy tale" did happen.
The real fairy tale, if Hatman ever pulls his head out of his froth to see it, is that the doctrines of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao ever worked or did anybody any good.
But religion is for all the dumb bigots and Occupying everything and buying into doctrines that are failing is for all the sophisticated intellectuals, right?
"Do religious people realize how dumb they act?"
Do you? Lots of self unaware people out there. You all should form a club.
"Polaroid cameras have to eject the image for it to be developed and to avoid accidental double exposure."
No kidding. My old one must have been defective. I had to pull a tab to pull the picture out. Unless.......there were more than one model of camera. But that's just crazy talk.
People find meaning in all sorts of places. Some find it in mold in the shower. An old picture in a camera. Others find it in words printed on paper written by someone they've never met. Or on a screen filled with images. Or doing some job that won't mean a thing in 10 years. Some find meaning in a picture painted hundreds of years ago or in a piece of marble made to look like a man. Some find meaning in their memories of their past others find meaning in where they want to put their penis in the present.
People find meaning through arranging bits of cloth and fabric in certain ways around their body. Or bits of electronics that light up in different ways and answer all the questions they wouldn't have thought to ask.
People find meaning in all sorts of goofy places if we think about it. Mold, being alive, is actually a fair bit more complicated than many other sources of meaning.
The real question isn't where someone finds meaning from, but what they do with that meaning.
If a bit of mold or an old photo inspires someone to live in a better way that contributes positively to those around them, then hooray for mold and old photos.
DWS and jeff have it right.
Polaroid technology involved a gell-pack of developer which was squeezed as the photo was ejected from the camera (SX-70 types, earlier Polaroids required that you pull a tab and draw the film through some rollers to burst the pack and spread the developer.)
I'm not saying it was impossible to take a photo with an SX-70 type camera, have it ejected and developed, and then put it back into the film pack (by pressing down on the spring loaded feeder in the film pack. I just think it is very unlikely that this was done, so I am calling bullshit on this particular story.
Its Sunday morning and Andy is preaching the Atheist gospel. Trying to get converts to his religion.
I know a liberal who sees Global Warming everytime he sees a hurricane.
The meaning I find in mold is it's time yo rip out the wall and find the leak.
I guess when your life is based around being dumb enough to think a fairy tale actually happened, then finding meaning in some moss makes perfect sense.
I guess when your life is based around being an ass enough to think your atheism makes you somehow superior to others, then finding meaning in pretty much anything is impossible.
"Do religious people realize how dumb they act?"
Andy: can I get you to stop trolling long enough to answer a simple question: What are you trying to accomplish here?
Because I don't believe that you could think your comments are in any way persuasive, funny, or thought-provoking.
So what's the point? You just like insulting people you've never met that much?
So what's the point? You just like insulting people you've never met that much?
It's the larval stage of old queen, genus bitter.
I pulled a crumpled receipt from my pocket and tossed it on the coffee table. Crumpled receipts bug me. It was almost flat but still wrinkled and the shadows it cast looked exactly like Jesus, and I mean exactly.
I marveled at that. The people I know who would have loved that would have assigned personal meaning to it, certainly. I thought of them loving a thing like that, maybe too much, and maybe just fun, but I didn't have a digital camera and Facebook wasn't invented but if that crumpled receipt happened today I'd open a Facebook account just to show my relatives, where it would be widely circulated beyond to their congregations.
I thought it temporary due to the present light, but the next day the same thing. And the next night. And the next day when I turned the receipt around. The image was inherent in the wrinkles not dependent on the shadows, it didn't matter how I turned it. It was my little marvel that I kept for a week or so, and it worked on other tables, but it had no meaning other than coincidental wrinkles and eventually the table must be cleared. Focus.
Andy R. said..." I guess when your life is based around being dumb enough to think a fairy tale actually happened, then finding meaning in some moss makes perfect sense."
I find that Andy is less likely to make sense than some mosses I've seen. He's better than the Lichenotheliaceae, however. I'll give him that.
Sweet post, Paddy O.
Andy R. said...
guess when your life is based around being dumb enough to think a fairy tale actually happened, then finding meaning in some moss makes perfect sense.
Andy's fairy tail credo: "In Bog We Tryst"
Other than (as Synova would put it, ie Secret Service) eat, shit, sleep and fuck.. life produces little meaningful events.
We have a capable brain.. and all we do is eat shit sleep and fuck?
Sports and the arts can only do so much.
Some of us want more.. and yes, Obama was born in Kenya ;)
Proper regard for skeptical inquiry and the methods of the same may be the most important thing a child can be taught.
"Skeptical inquiry?" You mean like inquiring into the extent to which philosophical materialism has corrupted science?
Just askin'.
Most of the time when the world hands us meaning we don't wanna know. Out here in the country once every few nights high pitched blood curdling screams, like a human baby in extremis, come through my bedroom window. It's a rabbit or a squirrel or a wild turkey being killed by a coyote or a fox or a farm cat. A whole lotta meaning that I DON'T WANNA KNOW ABOUT...so I don't.
The finding of meaning is a huge stumbling block for atheists.
Rational thought would find only an undigested bit of beef or a blot of mustard in the ephemra of everyday life. There's only gravy and nothing grave about things,, whatever they are.
A rather bleak existence, that.
Polaroid cameras have to eject the image for it to be developed
Only in later models. The early Land cameras, one had to pull out the film manually and separate the layers, and spread this pink goo over the top of the picture to protect it.
The SX-70 introduced in 1972, which used an all in one film and ejected it out. My grandfather, who loved all things photo, had a Land camera which he used throughout the 70s because he just didn't want to discard it when it continued to work just fine.
I still have his old Bell&Howell 8mm "magic eye" movie camera, too.
Darleen, you shoot with the camera I hope to buy. I think you posted a portrait, a very nice portrait, shot with a D3. If not you then apologies, I'm often wrong. At any rate, the portrait convinced me the camera really is worth having.
I thought lib lefties were all for respecting the less forunate, those enlightened in other ways, the wonderfully culturally diverse peoples of the world.
That serves to demonstrate how tolerant and enlightened they, the lib lefties are. Their respect for all cultures shows up in the embracing of traditional medicine of the elders and the shamans and the barefoot doctors, the acceptance of tribal practices, the cultural quirks of genital mutilation, the exotic taboos, the respecting of the burqa covered women's choice to wear the burqa. (We think they are women, who knows for sure)?: The quaint traditions which define them as "other" (than the lib lefty smartest people in the world).
They live across the pond, or in the deepest darkest or most arrid wastelands of the world.
Mere Americans who believe something a bit more on the outlying end of the curve? Silly. Stupid. Fairy tale believers. Worthy of mocking and ridicule.
I am not particularly impressed by the Texas story (says more about the people than it does Jesus) but what it really tells me is that the MSM and lib lefties have to highlight things to ridicule and mock.
Can't turn the spotlight on the Muslims who can trample each other getting to bow down to a meteorite in Mecca. They might kill you.
Seriously.
And yeah, I know this was about how people demonstrate finding meaning (hat tip to Paddy's take) but Andy's arrogance just can't let him find a kind word any where in his vocabulary. Pick on the little people, fellow. It shows off your talent so well.
From the link about the camera story:
"Jeff Logan thought Susan, who long ago married and moved away, may have lived somewhere in the neighborhood in those days."
This MUST tie in with Scott Walker somehow.....
If a man were the sort of person to find great strength in an image of mold, might not the divine use just that thing to reach him? I wonder.
In the meantime, I don't see it. Unless a thick mustache is involved.
Only in later models. The early Land cameras, one had to pull out the film manually and separate the layers, and spread this pink goo over the top of the picture to protect it.
I remember as a kid seeing one of these. I don't remember if the photo was ejected but I do remember that the photo was sort of peeled off like a banana? I mean, obviously not like a banana. But it was peeled off a protective plastic like cover and then shaken to dry off.. slowly the magic of a still photograph would reveal it self.
I remember liking the chemical smell it had too.. kind of like nail polish.. glue.
It's not a fairy tale, Andy. Not even close. I'm sorry you see it that way. If you aren't willing to accept that the supernatural exists it will never make sense to you - and that is sad because much of the church today doesn't believe it either and instead only believe it in the head instead of in the heart.
It's sad it's come to this, and it's no one's fault, because in the end it is a choice of every individual. It really comes down to whether or not you are willing to be open minded, believe, and then humble yourself before God and admit you are a sinner and want to change and see Truth. Many people have too much pride to admit this though - they think because they've been blessed and successful their whole lives that they've done it solely on their own.
I was totally lost before Jesus saved me. I went to a cathedral near my house several times because I literally did not know what to do any longer. One day I sat down and saw a prayer book put away incorrectly so the pages were being bent. I picked it up and it opened to prayer for the confession of sin. I started reading it and felt my head being lifted up, and when my eyes met with Jesus' the most amazing feeling of God's pure Love exploded like an atom bomb made of honey coursing through the deepest recesses of my mind, brain, soul, spirit, everything. It poured down my shoulders and out my hands. I got up and walked outside in a strange 100% blissful but 100% shocked feeling because the right side of my face was paralyzed. However, the muggy July weather had never felt so incredible. My life has been changed so drastically it is impossible to describe it in any way that totally makes sense for a non-believer. Before it happened I didn't realize their was a supernatural gift that humans can receive. My Christian school was too concerned about political correctness to teach us about any of it. The change is real, it is free, and every ounce of it is a blessing.
Hm, well I failed the log-in attempt the first time and the word test once. I must have failed to copy the whole post before the comment box emptied of all my writing. Before I wrote, "It's sad it's come to this, it is no one's fault..." there was at least another paragraph which is now missing. Oh well, take it for what it is - I just wanted to clarify.
"Looking for meaning" defines the human endeavor.
It drives us to slowly unlock the secrets of nature, to learn the how of what is, such that we can then adapt what is to our needs.
But it also drives us to seek the why of what is, and this search has resulted in religions and philosophies.
However, "meaning" is no more to be found for our existence than is Jesus in a homeowner's shower mold. Or rather, any meaning we find is that which we create for ourselves and assign to the universe around us. There is no innate meaning external to our consciousness.
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Karl Marx, 1843
That's how communist's think of people in general and religion. Not being a religious person, I think it stands for spirituality, wanting to be reminded, that in one's daily ordinary life, we can see evidence that life has a spiritual side to it. The "people" should be pitied for their attempts to find meaning, solace, and strength in their lives. No, far more rational to set your goals on government, intellectualism, and striving toward an unattainable Utopia here on Earth.
And then there was one.
Two hawks gone from the nest. There were three just 10 minutes ago and one took off again and disappeared. Possibly (presumably) the same one who'd left earlier. Then, about two or three minutes later, started some serious flapping and lifted off. He sort of paused halfway up the frame like he was going to come back down but then flapped again and disappeared from view. That happened right around 16:29:15.
I thought the remaining one was going to go, too, because just a couple minutes later he(she) started flapping and made it near the top of the frame on the picture but then gave up and settled back down. Now he(she) is just looking around.
Edit: Then, about two or three minutes later, another one started some serious flapping and lifted off.
Oh noes. At first there were four birds and then there were three birds birds and now there is only one little penguin up there in the nest. All in one hour. This is a critical moment in penguin life, they're getting ready to fly away and start hunting seals. And pies. Did I ever show you the nature pop-up card I made for a sister in law to describe birds scientifically? She told James, "that brother of yours is a genius," she added that she learned so much about penguins that she did not know.
"Looking for meaning" defines the human endeavor.
I knew that sounded familiar.
Lem, thanks for pointing me to that article. I hadn't seen it before..
When I was about 13, I found a camera in my great aunt's stuff with a half-exposed roll of film in it. The photos shot in the 40's turned out fine, the ones in the 70's were a blur.
The photos shot in the 40's turned out fine, the ones in the 70's were a blur.
That's probably because the 40s photographs were shot when the film emulsion was fresh. By the time the 70s photographs were shot, the emulsion was 30 years old and had lost much of its sensitivity. Exposed film will, generally, retain its images without too much degradation even if a long time passes between exposure and development. But unexposed film suffers a lot if you don't use it before the emulsion grows stale.
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