Meditations upon Blasphemy and Idolatry

I can understand not wanting to represent Mohammed or any other living being as a way to avoid worshipping idols.  I think it’s a bit of an overreaction, personally, but I can understand the reasoning behind it.

I can also understand having a feeling of reverence and respect for someone who is important to you and your belief system.  Furthermore, I can understand feeling upset or even angry when you feel that others are not showing that person—be it Mohammed, the Buddha, Saint Paul, Pope Francis, Joseph Smith, or whoever—the proper degree of respect and tolerance.

But when you declare that any word spoken against a person is blasphemy, have you not, in your mind, at least, raised that person’s importance to something like that of a god?

When you declare that any slight, real or imagined, against your designated object of veneration must be punished swiftly and by violence, has your reverence not crossed the line into worship?

Isn’t that a form of idolatry too?

That’s the horrific irony of the atrocities perpetrated against the French people this week.  A small group of religious terrorists—let’s identify them for what they are—killed nearly twenty people for the commission a sin of which they themselves were guilty:

Idolatry.

Playoffs? You're talking about playoffs?

At the end of the regular season, there were two obvious choices for the BCS Championship game: defending champion Florida State, who was riding a two year, 29-game winning streak, and top-ranked Alabama, who had just blown out Missouri in the SEC title game. Sure, Oregon, TCU, and Baylor all had great seasons, and I guess you could mention Ohio State (although that loss to VaTech was ugly), but Alabama and Florida State were locks for the title game.

Under last year's system, that is.

This year there's a playoff. And when faced with the task of playing their way into the national championship game against top-level competition, neither Alabama nor Florida State could pull it off.

This is why a playoff is better. There are no "could'a, would'a, should'as". Either Ohio State or Oregon will be the undisputed national champion because they won the title on the field, not in the polls in November.

Now let's get that playoff expanded to 8, 12, or 16 teams so that ALL the great teams have a chance to play for the title.

And That's How We Start 2015

Okay, so I've officially had my first weird dream of the new year.

I was driving around town in our newly-registered minivan (we literally got it registered the day before yesterday) when I got pulled over. The officer asked for my license, registration, and proof of insurance, all of which he took back to his police cruiser. Several minutes later, he returned with a very expensive ticket for "Operating an Unsafe Vehicle".

I read over the ticket (which was four pages long) and couldn't make sense of it, so I decided to ask the officer for an explanation.

"Can you tell me why I'm getting this ticket?"

"Your vehicle has an unsafe driving control system," he told me.

"I don't understand what that means," I countered.

"Your vehicle has a CRX-{something unintelligible} driving control system. It's outdated, and it makes your vehicle a hazard to all the other vehicles on the road."

"So," I said, trying to understand, "is it because it's an older car? Do a lot of cars have this system?"

"Not many," he said. "It's mainly just yours."

"So what do I do about this? How do I fix it?"

"You can have your vehicle retrofitted with an updated driving control system. But it'd probably be more economical just to buy a new vehicle."

"So just to be clear," I inquired, "this ticket has nothing to do with my driving. It's just about the car. If I were driving any other car, I wouldn't be getting a ticket right now."

"That's correct."

"That's crap."

The officer suddenly got rather red in the face and clenched his teeth. "What did you say?"

"I said I disagree with your assessment of my vehicle and your interpretation of the law, and that I intend to challenge this citation in court."

He glared at me. "That's better," he grunted, and stomped back to his patrol car.

And that's when I woke up. Seriously, what the heck was that?