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PhD, the easy way
May. 30th, 2003 09:16 amAccording to a recent Herald-Sun article, the University of Queensland has just awarded a PhD to one Rollan McCleary for a three-year thesis on homosexuality, in which he concluded that Jesus was gay. Google also has a cached copy of a UQ press release on the matter, although the press release itself no longer seems to be on the UQ site. Googling, I found McCleary seems to be a real person, with his very own website - if this is a hoax it's a very elaborate one.
Now, let me make myself perfectly clear. I am not offended that somebody should ask the question, "was Jesus gay?" IMHO, any healthy religion should be able to survive such questions, especially when they're asked by their own members (as this one was) rather than as an attack by their enemies. Being neither religious nor particularly fussed about other people's sexuality, this is not the sort of question that bothers me.
Nor am I particularly offended that somebody was given government funding to explore this question. It's very easy to point and laugh at individual research topics, without seeing how they might fit into the overall advancement of human knowledge. An individual piece of a jigsaw might look like nothing much, but it's an important part of the big picture.
And I will suppose, because I like to assume the best of people, that Mr. McCleary was genuinely willing to *question* his hypothesis and accept the results, either positive or negative, rather than heading for a predetermined conclusion decided by some personal agenda.
No, what has me furious is this:
"Dr McCleary said Jesus's astrological chart, clues in the scriptures to which the churches had been blind and accurate biblical translations had all played a part in his conclusions... He said the planet [snipped to avoid the temptation to really lame jokes, but it's in the article] figured prominently in Jesus's astrological chart, as it did with many gays."
ASTROLOGICAL CHARTS?
Dammit...![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msmanna, silmaril, turnberryknkn, theonementat, and anybody else I've missed... we've been wasting our time! Think, all this time we've been looking up papers and checking other people's methodology and examining our own arguments to make sure they flow in a logical fashion from solid, verifiable fact, we could have just grabbed the horoscopes from the daily paper, and *still* get a PhD.
( A note for those of you who believe in astrology )
Now, let me make myself perfectly clear. I am not offended that somebody should ask the question, "was Jesus gay?" IMHO, any healthy religion should be able to survive such questions, especially when they're asked by their own members (as this one was) rather than as an attack by their enemies. Being neither religious nor particularly fussed about other people's sexuality, this is not the sort of question that bothers me.
Nor am I particularly offended that somebody was given government funding to explore this question. It's very easy to point and laugh at individual research topics, without seeing how they might fit into the overall advancement of human knowledge. An individual piece of a jigsaw might look like nothing much, but it's an important part of the big picture.
And I will suppose, because I like to assume the best of people, that Mr. McCleary was genuinely willing to *question* his hypothesis and accept the results, either positive or negative, rather than heading for a predetermined conclusion decided by some personal agenda.
No, what has me furious is this:
"Dr McCleary said Jesus's astrological chart, clues in the scriptures to which the churches had been blind and accurate biblical translations had all played a part in his conclusions... He said the planet [snipped to avoid the temptation to really lame jokes, but it's in the article] figured prominently in Jesus's astrological chart, as it did with many gays."
ASTROLOGICAL CHARTS?
Dammit...
msmanna, silmaril, turnberryknkn, theonementat, and anybody else I've missed... we've been wasting our time! Think, all this time we've been looking up papers and checking other people's methodology and examining our own arguments to make sure they flow in a logical fashion from solid, verifiable fact, we could have just grabbed the horoscopes from the daily paper, and *still* get a PhD.( A note for those of you who believe in astrology )
