...and I feel fine.

In a thinly-veiled critique of the Evangelical stream of Christianity popular in the U.S., the Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland have published a document which warns Catholics--and, by extension, Western monotheists everywhere--against literal interpretations of the bible. The Gift of Scripture focuses on Genesis and Revelations, the fire-and-brimstone coda which has fuelled an entire cottage industry of crappy, low-rent eschatological melodrama like the Left Behind series (which seems to have made a virtue of self-righteous schadenfreude).

Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools, believing “intelligent design” to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began.

But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country’s Catholic bishops insist cannot be “historical”. At most, they say, they may contain “historical traces”.

The authors of the paper go on to argue that, when taken literally, the Bible can be (and has been!) used to justify the most virulent anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism. Duh.

Thanks to Pacanukeha for posting the link.

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In the same vein, Aislin wonders if Bush II's crusade may alienate some of the world's faithful, perhaps even chasing them into the cold arms of godlessness:

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Naturally, I was going to talk about DC Comics' Y: The Last Man at some point, though it won't be today--it fit in with the apocalyptic theme I had going, so I figured I'd mention that I'm reading it.

I'm though the first book and skimmed the next two; so far, I'm interested, but only just. The art is crisp and clean, but not particularly compelling. The dialogue seems a little forced and I'm totally turned off by the sidekick device manifesting as a "surly male helper monkey" named Ampersand.

I'm not panning the series--like I said, I haven't really read it yet. Once I have, I'll talk about it in a little more depth.