How would Freud and Jung interpret my bit of bad driving?

I recently hit a curb with my right front wheel, on the way to a counselor’s appointment, and bent its rim, though not too badly.

Since I was going to a counselor, I wondered what Freud and Jung would have said about this.

Freud would have seen the round wheel, with its opening in the center, as vaginal. And the curb, hard and out-thrust, is obviously then penile. So, I have anger at women by bending the edge of a vagina. Since I was on the way to see a counselor, this was obviously arising in my mind at that moment.

Jung would see the wheel in its roundness as symbolic of reincarnation, eternal recurrence, or perhaps the Buddhist wheel of fate. The curb? The legal restrictions of the father-god. So, in this case, I’m still angry at the father-god, partially as represented by my minister father, and still “wreck” my spiritual enlightenment on the shoals of this anger.

It’s gay-baiting Texas State Sen. Warren Chisum who’s pushing this baby, so when he claims this is to treat the Bible as only literature “and not a worship document”, don’t believe him for a second.

Besides, IMO, this still runs into church-state separation First Amendment issues if the Bible is the only scripture so treated. (And, please do NOT trot out the “Judeo” fig leaf of “Judeo-Christian” beliefs, scriptures, etc., because it is, ultimately, just that — a fig leaf.)

So, if I counter Chiusm by saying, fine, let’s also teach the Quran as literature, including the sections about jihad, or if I say, fine, let’s teach the Norse Elder Edda, about Ragnarok and Valhalla, what then?

First, I’ll say, let’s teach the Bible as myth (by literary definition), alongside the others. Then let’s watch him blow his stack.

Then, I’ll say, Warren, are we going to have kids reading Song of Songs? The passage in Genesis where Lot is willing to substitute his daughters to rape rather than visiting angels? The passage in Judges where a man abandons his concubine, then, after finding her raped to death the next day, dismembers her body and sends pieces around tribal Israel as a cry to jihad of his own? The chapter after that, where the tribe of Benjamin is left so male-decimated they are officially encouraged by other tribes to abduct women from a village that didn’t show up for battle, as a means to replenish their numbers?

So, yes, Warren Chisum, Bible as literature? Bring it on. I’ll go get my teaching certification and gladly teach the most juicy parts as literature.

What a nutbar.

I want a lover …

I want the love of a true lover.

I want the love that, when I look in her eyes, I feel like I’m swimming 10 miles deep.

I want the love that, when I hear her voice with just the right tone, I feel like I’m going 20 miles deep.

I want the love that, when I touch her skin and run my hands through her hair, I feel like I’m diving to the center of the earth.

I want the love that, when we talk, before during or after all that, we have shared hearts, minds and spirits so much that I feel I’m swimming back up to the far side.

I’m asking.

I want to make myself available.

I am making myself available.

I am available.

It was/wasn’t “meant to happen” — I think not

A few weeks back, I posted about how karma might be worse than Christian fundamentalism.

On the same axis, but “neurotic” to karma’s “psychotic,” would be the New Age idea that things are/aren’t “meant to happen.”

Meant by whom? And, unchangeable by us?

Now, I firmly believe I can be an atheist of some sort and still appreciate life’s mystery, dynamism, ebbs and flows of time and more. But I don’t have to believe in something like this, which is almost as cruel as karma, but as the death of a thousand New Age cuts.

Call it “karma light,” perhaps.

A birthday poem for “Pharyngula,” aka P.Z. Myers

A Pharyngula, like an amygdala,
Can be emotionally powerful,
Generating fear
In illogical creationists.

His mind is still evolving
(And, yes, it’s real!)
At the ripe young age of 50,
His questing, unlike his work study
Is not a fossil.

So if you value reason,
The penetrating mind of science,
And know the human mind
Can be special
Without a primum mobile,

Then go to his blog,
Read his posts,
And give him the kudo
That is his definite due.

A nice birthday e-mail
That says:
“Pharyngula, I dig ya.”

Happy 50 and many more in the “crusade” against illogic and illiberality, P.Z.
Oops, did I say “crusade”? Forgive the W talk.

Steve Snyder aka Socratic Gadfly

The Titanic, yes; Jesus’ tomb, I don’t think so

James Cameron of Titanic discovery fame claims he has found the tomb of Jesus as well as a son, Judah.

He claims he has verified the discovery in part through DNA analysis. Supposedly it took 20 years.

First, with whom did he compare DNA? If you’re Catholic, he didn’t have anybody in his lineage, so Cameron has no point of comparison.

Speaking of this, he claims Mary Magdalene is the momma of Judah, but says here this isn’t some Da Vinci Code nonsense.

But, out of 10 stone caskets supposedly found 27 years ago when construction workers were cutting out space to lay a foundation for an industrial park building. Those 10 caskets were named: “Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua.”

But:

Israel's prominent archeologist Professor Amos Kloner didn't associate the crypt with the New Testament Jesus. His father, after all, was a humble carpenter who couldn't afford a luxury crypt for his family. And all were common Jewish names.

I totally agree. Why Cameron would be peddling this, I don’t know. And I can’t believe the DNA comparison part of it, period.

Reason No. 972 astrology is nutbar: What the hell is a “stealth Leo”?

Helen Mirren talks about being an astrological Leo, then about her latest director, Stephen Frears, being a stealth Leo. Is that like being a “stealth INSF” in Jungian personality typecasting? It just goes to show that, if you want to salvage some faith-based idea out of pseudoscience, you’ll bend your mind far enough to do so.