Friday, August 12, 2005

Well, the Book Cult meeting wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected it to be, seeing as only 1-1.5 Xians showed up. Okay, maybe 2.5, someone had to leave for tae kwon do before stuff got religious. Anyway, it started out simple: "Who finished the book?" (Everyone but the one sure Xian [Who got confused and put it down] and tae kwon do girl [who was "reading something else"]), "What character do you most Identify with?"(Me-Jason, God-The Ten Legged One, Stacy [High Priestess of the Book Cult]-the pods, and Spike just kept saying a bunch of characters that weren't even in the book), then it got into interesting stuff about souls, cloning, Xianity, Agnosticism, whether Atheism is nonbelief in dieties or the supernatural in general, and other theological stuff. It got to loud argument status at some points, but all in all it was good. Afterwords, those of us remaining began planning our Freethinking group, BLAM! We're thinking of holding it in the school, since there are already religious groups there. Hell, we could make it a Bible study group and be welcomed with arms wide open (so long as we didin't tell them just what parts of The Bible we're studying)!

Speaking of The Bible, I'm reading and annotating it. I'm only to Genesis 2, but it's still interesting. I'm trying to stay away from what the SAB has, since they've got it already. I'm doing a lot of stuff like translation checks ("God" ('Elohiym) in Genesis seems like it should be "gods", with "LORD" (Yahweh) being one of them) and confronting modern ideas within Bible-based religions (figurative creation, for example). I'm thinking of getting it published as a "Bible companion". I can just imagine the look on a Xian's face after buying it. "There's no way they actually meant that like it sounds. I thought 'generation' meant 'race'! That's what my pastor told me! Ahhhh!"

I also think I should learn those Biblical languages and translate it. It would be refreashing having a translation by a Non-Judaio-Xian, don't you think? See how this text fairs without the watchful eyes of the pious. Might as well try for The Qur'an while I'm at it. Of course this wouldn't get done anytime soon, but hey, a guy can dream.