Mount Vesuvius or Mounting Ignorance
According to a TVM program that was broadcast around 9:30 this morning the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD that wiped out Pompeii was God's wrath and anger. Accompanied by still photos of the excavated ruins of Pompeii and a ghastly background music, the usual documentary narrator chap at TVM poured over page after page of religious hogwash about how the Pompeians were punished for their sins the same way the people of Lot's town in Biblical mythology. Not surprisingly sinfulness included sex, homosexuality, drinking, other pleasures and entertainment such as Gladiator death-matches at the amphitheater and the persecution of the original Christians. The latter, he said, was probably the main reason for the disaster.
There were translations of 2 or 3 verses from the Quran read by the narrator with the God-like echo effect that is a hallmark of the fear mongering prevalent in this type of programming.
What was not said in the program was that historical records of eruptions before and after 79 AD exists, many even in modern times. Some of the eruptions prior to 79 AD actually had wiped out bronze age settlements. Thousands from neighbouring city of Herculaneum were also killed during the eruption in 79 AD - apparently handpicked by God for their sins and proximity of their homes to the impending fallout. More important, recent eruptions (in 1631) were so powerful that the ash reached Istanbul some 1,200 km away.
This is exactly the problem that I have mentioned in the earlier post. We've been fed the fruits of countless hours of genuine scientific research stripped of its factual value and unashamedly dressed in religious garb making it devoid of any worthy substance - for decades! What was the informational value of this program? Nothing. What was the educational value of this program? Absolutely nothing. What was the moral message of this program other than that it is immoral for anyone, be it religion, to steal other people's hard work and use it for their own shallow gain? These programs are designed by uninformed people who are completely ignorant of history, who lack common decency to accept their failure to progress with times, for the express purpose of injecting fear into the public.
That way, our young will stop taking drugs and having sex and will make people more religious and morally higher beings; is probably the mentality behind the program. What idiocy! What nonsense! I am not talking about a TV program from a few years ago. This was just this morning, fresh from the filthy kitchen of the religious propaganda house that is TVM. The dumbing down of the public and creating people who are apathetic towards the environment and ignorant of history, science etc has been going on for decades.
These programs, produced by the TVM, are an insult to intelligence and should be considered as such by intelligent people everywhere. The story of Mount Vesuvius includes the tales of the proud and advanced Roman civilization and their magnificient contributions to art, science and modern thinking. The real story of Pompeii is a sad reminder that we are at the mercy of nature which makes no distinction between the adult and the baby. Which is more beautiful? A sense of wonder and excitement learning about the world or the sense of fear and brutality, of punishment and damnation?
Let me ask you then. Did the perpetrators of the genocide of 1 million Bangladeshis (mostly Muslims) by the Pakistan army in 1971 face a terrible calamity for raping and maiming hundreds of thousands of women and children? Of course not! Did an earthquake destroy Istanbul after the Ottoman empire carried out the genocide of millions of Armenians? No! What is Pompeii compared to these horrendous atrocities against humanity?
One has simply to abandon logic and let our ignorance prevail when viewing these TV programs. How they affect our compatriots whose brains are impervious to knowledge, is anyone's guess. We seriously need to ban these programs from public television. We need to change this muddled way of looking at the world. We need to stop viewing the world, it's wonderful natural beauty and colourful and bloody history, through the cataract ridden lens of dogma.
Perhaps then we can inch our way forwards instead of backwards.
References: Wikipedia entries Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii
mohamed | August 26, 2008 2:21 AM | Reply
hehe, yeah i've encountered these programs too. I call them "local science". They utter from the start to the end with bits of slow motion footage for that extra effect.
a | August 26, 2008 7:59 AM | Reply
(Last para, second sentence, 'who's'? or 'whose'?)
Sad there is no real science...
Are we not worried that Religion has made a compact with Money? Is there a more formidable force in the country now? Is anyone thinking about how worse this unreason would become in the coming years under a façade democracy? Should not we think about the roots, instead of the symptoms, of this unreason? I'm thinking of a society where there is real intellectual freedom of expression.
I suggest the time is it for us to combine our scattered forces to elect a government that tolerates reason.
clueless | August 26, 2008 7:20 PM | Reply
i just wonder what MY purpose is on earth? i wonder why i do not get stuck by lightning when i have 'unholy' thoughts? i wonder what will happen to me if i die? i wonder if i'll somehow be aware of my rotting body when i'm dead and feel that GOD has taken me away too early...i wonder if ALLAH is just an abstract notion passed down, way back when people didnt really grasp what SCIENCE was all about? i wonder if my little island will submerge into the ocean never to be seen, just because i've aired these thoughts? to tell the truth, i feel i just dug my own grave, thanks to the fear instilled in me by my very religiously strict parents (but in the back of my mind i know the probabiltiy is low). But does this make me an imbecile, an outcaste or a fanatic? no, it just means i still need time to really grasp what religion is all about....Born to this era when everything is explained by science does not help..eeeek.
Clueless,
The problem is no one is explaining everything using science. We're very much still living with one foot in the past and the other barely over the edge. Until very recent times we had more superstitious beliefs than one could possibly count. But this has changed and so can other things.
clueless | August 27, 2008 1:31 AM | Reply
ha! but our very existence IS explained by science. the world we live in, the galaxies, the universe and right down to the embryonic state we begin life (in the womb)itself. the problem is the no-nonsense-way science explains these phenomena while religion explains these using a belief system which revolve around a HIGHER entity which is Allah. to me, why i'm here on earth is of immense importance; according to Islam i'm being tested for Judgement Day (the real reason for my existence my parents remind me everyday) while according to science i'm just part of the food chain, a maggot fest and the like.this is scientifically proven, (those buried under the volcanic ash in pompeii were of course a window to a different civilization and a parody of emotions for the dramatically inclined) but what about my soul and the souls of pompeii.
if there is no purpose in death, what then is the purpose of life, i wonder. be it hitler, the prophets or simple me, in the end i'm just good fertilizer which i think is pathetic. religion provides a more agreeable answer but the problem of course is today we've distorted religion so much that there is little left to be desired. drawing the line between religion and science is rather difficult. for unseasoned thinkers like me, that is.