Tertullian was an asshole

Next in my ongoing ____ was an asshole series, we turn to African church father Tertullian. In addition to having a name that sounded like an adjective form of "turtle," this lionized theologian is known as one of the most prolific assholes in early Christendom. Born around 180 A.D., Tertullian composed apologetic treatises and introduced the term "Trinity" into the church lexicon, bequeathing a legacy of utter confusion and monotheistic handwringing to the generations that followed.

Though Tertillian urged mercy and toleration for Christians, his ecumenical impulses didn't travel much farther than the edges of his own doctrines, a fact on plain display in this first quote:

You are fond of spectacles, expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, and fancied god, groaning in the lower abyss of darkness; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with the deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal of Christ.

Not content to merely muse on the heavenly delights he'll earn after death, Tertullian waxes orgasmic over watching his enemies writhe in the infernal pit below. Gee, what a swell guy. Bitter much?

Speaking of orgasms, the teenage mutant ninja Tertullian nursed a few suspicions about them as well - specifically the ejaculatory variety, which he warned serious followers of Christ to eschew if possible. In de anima, he writes:

In that last breaking wave of delight, do we not feel something of our very soul go out from us?

Yes! Oh god, yes! Harder, Trinity! Sorry, my Carrie Ann Moss crush slipped in there for a sec.

What with Tert's highly controversial anti-orgasm stance, you probably won't be shocked to discover he wasn't exactly gung ho for the fairer sex:

Do you not know that you are Eve? The judgment of God upon this sex lives on in this age; therefore, necessarily the guilt should live on also. You are the gateway of the devil; you are the one who unseals the curse of that tree, and you are the first one to turn your back on the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the devil was not capable of corrupting; you easily destroyed the image of God, Adam. Because of what you deserve, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.

Some people claim that there's a woman to blame... but I know it's every goddamned woman's fault that we live in a corrupted world of shit and herpes! Accursed whores of Babylon, why do you mock the Lord your God with your vile boobs and their satanic milk of deceit?!

Eat your heart out, Jimmy Buffett.

Tertullian's most quoted line, however, is probably this little doozy:

Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. (It is to be believed because it is absurd.)

In Tert-in-a-punchbowl's defense, this quote has been taken out of context more often than Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark. Tertullian was not suggesting that absurdity generally lends credence to arguments - only that the unthinkably fantastic nature of the gospel meant that men alone could never have dreamed up such a story. Of course today a casual stroll through the sci-fi, fantasy, or New Age section of any bookstore should render this theological defense... well, absurd.

Then again Tert didn't major in reason, or at least anything resembling our modern idea of it. In this asshole's world, God and reason were as inseparable as Ted Haggard and his beefy, meth-dealing masseuse:

Reason, in fact, is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason— nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason. All, therefore, who are ignorant of God, must necessarily be ignorant also of a thing which is His, because no treasure-house at all is accessible to strangers. And thus, voyaging all the universal course of life without the rudder of reason, they know not how to shun the hurricane which is impending over the world.

I'm not sure that word means what you think it means, Tert Plus.

As for all you whiny rationalists concerned about religion and its effect on the population, well, don't you worry your pretty little educated noggin over that.

One man's religion neither harms nor helps another man.

At the risk of sound like Rudy Guiliani, 9-fuckin'-11, dude.

In addition to the mountain of wisdom above, Tertullian also made a radical contribution to the field of geology. In one of his marvelous treatises he revealed that volcanoes are actually vent-holes of hell. Not metaphors for hell. Tertullian actually thought that if you peered down the crater at the summit of a volcano you could glimpse Beelzebub's eternal lake of fire. Some crackerjack scientific hypothesizin' there, asswipe.

One last bonus: Tert also thought Christians should avoid theater. His reasoning? Believers should stay away from the corrupting influence of non-Christian culture (which we all know was code for "teh gay.")

In summary, Tertullian was a soul-ejaculating, volcano-fearing, vagina-hating, reason-redefining, vindictive asshole.

A joke is made about bestiality

One of the charming things about Christianity's obsession with sex is that it drives their more rabid members to notice sexual details even the most horny teenager would miss.

Take these snippets from Plugged In's music and movie review section:

On The Fray's How to Save a Life:

Two cryptic lines could be interpreted as promoting an if-it-feels-good-do-it mentality.

Amidst the massive scenes of worldwide destruction in the Nicholas Cage sci-fi crapfest Knowing, the reviewers took home this insight:

A remark is made about somebody thinking somebody else was "gay." We see John's upper body in the shower.

Like the new Star Trek movie? Be forewarned...

A joke is made about bestiality.

Imagine a future where sexual partners could, by some artificial means, ensure with 100% accuracy that no pregnancy or transmission of STDs would occur as a result of their fucking. Of the modern concern police who push abstinence-only programs and call to complain about half-second shots of a pop stars' tits during the Super Bowl, how many of these people would still, in this hypothetical future, hate sex?

What is "It"?

The signs are inescapable, and tantalizingly vague. They've been peppered throughout town on posters, bumper stickers, and yard signs for weeks - Look for It, It Happened Once and It Will Happen Again, Whatever It Takes, Love It, Share It, Quit Picking It Or It Will Get Infected, Fuck It, etc.


The questions abound. What exactly is "it"? Why is everyone looking for it? Did Pennywise the Dancing Clown open up a fucking real estate firm?

Those sufficiently consumed by curiosity soon discover that the link (itlexington.com) leads to a website run by Southland Christian Church. The fiends! Even the congregation, it seems, was kept in the dark as to the meaning of the puzzling pronoun. While the marketing team at Southland deserves a golf clap for this inventive little campaign, some sober reflection might also be in order. After all, what does it say about their organization that the most effective promotion they could dream up involved specifically avoiding any mention of their mission?

For more on that mission, look no further than their "welcome" page:

Southland exists to make Jesus famous. It's all about Jesus. It's only about Jesus. It's always about Jesus.

That's great, but will there be any mention of Jesus?

(I hate to break it to them, but as name recognition goes, Jesus already ranks pretty high on the list. Few things irk me more than this constant pretense from churches that people still need to "hear the good news," as if the Bible just hit the shelves last Tuesday. This is no doubt driven by the erroneous assumption, widespread in the Christian community, that anyone who listens with an open heart to the message will be helplessly convinced.)

With that out of the way, drum roll please...

The identity of "it," or at least the initial answer to the question, was recently revealed in the first sermon of the series. "It" is a radical intimacy, the need to give and receive love, probably with guess-who.

So that's it. Love.

Damn it! And I had $20 on those new Skittle's Crazy Cores™ with the dual flavors on the inside and outer shell. Those things are almost better than sex.

If Christians ran into this dude...

... what would they think?
If it were on an airplane, I'm guessing they would be shooting uneasy glances at him whilst prayerfully clutching their plastic dinner knife in case he made any sudden moves. For those who haven't already guessed, above is the BBC's best guess as to what Jesus really looked like. Not exactly Jim Cavieszuohfuckit, is he?

Comedy Off Fraudway

Back the fuck up, Judd Apatow. Comedy's got a new name: Birthers.

That's right, the circus is coming to town. And these carnies don't so much suffer from small hands as small frontal lobes. You see, a certain segment of the American population, confounded by what they see as the de-white-ification of the country, have latched onto the barely Snopes-worthy theory that Barack Obama fails the "natural born citizen" test.

I'll leave it to John over at LumgoweeLand to dissect the goings-on:

The real motivation behind this non-starter of a movement is a lot darker and stickier. Not only did America elect a black man President, we elected a black man with an exotic-sounding name. There’s an uncomfortable fudge ripple swirl of racism and xenophobia mixed into this vanilla ice cream of a movement. If you recall, some of the more desperate on the right began saying Obama was a secret Muslim planted into mainstream American politics—a Manchurian Candidate from Mecca, as it were. When that didn’t work, they began unfolding grander and more loony conspiracy theories that seemed to come right from the Fox News cutting room floor.

How am I going to tie this in with this religion? Patience, young padawan. It gets better.

Leave it to the brain trust known as WorldNetDaily to crank this amplifier up to 11. There columnist Joe "Etymologist Extraordinaire" Kovacs moves the discussion into a realm of otherworldly bullshit by seriously entertaining the claims of a half-cocked YouTube video. A word of caution. Don't stand up too fast after reading this or you might get lightheaded.

"When I started doing a little research, I found the Greek word for 'lightning' is 'astrape', and the Hebrew equivalent is 'Baraq,'" said YouTube contributor "ppsimmons," a self-described Christian with a theological education and many years in the ministry, who spoke to WND under condition of anonymity out of concern for members of his local church. "I thought that was fascinating."

As he continued looking into the rest of the words in the phrase, he focused on "heaven," and found that it can refer not just to God's dwelling place, but also "the heights" or "high places."

He then recalled Isaiah 14:14, where Lucifer, another name for Satan, is quoted as saying, "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High."

"I wondered what the word 'heights' is," said ppsimmons, "and I looked it up in the dictionary, and it's 'Bamah.'"

Thus, on the video, the announcer notes, "If spoken by a Jewish rabbi today, influenced by the poetry of Isaiah, he would say these words in Hebrew ... 'I saw Satan as Baraq Ubamah.'"

Fascinating. (One sidenote: If translated from Hebrew via Mandarin Chinese then recited by an autistic Inuit through a broken vocoder, "ppsimmons" sounds somewhat like "Resident of Bullshit Cove." This too could just be a coincidence.)

Mark CC over at Scienceblogs runs a nice autopsy on this theory and - surprise - finds it wanting. Though claims of this sort should come as no shock really. The same mode of reasoning that produces the birther mentality is operative here, namely "conclusions first, evidence second."

But I can't complain too much. Watching this movement fart out like a half-filled balloon is, as far as I'm concerned, the comedy event of the season.

In lieu of something original...

... here's a Seth MacFarlane cartoon.