Friday, November 4, 2011

The Metaphorical Illuminator.

With great trepidation we, the assembled editorial team of The Sneer Review, are proud to announce the greatest advance in the practical exposition of religious knowledge since the invention of the printing press – the Metaphorical Illuminator.
For many years, despite the many advances made possible by the increase in human knowledge since the enlightenment, the role and value of religion has remained a contentious point for one reason: the lack of a means of distinguishing within scriptural texts, the historical facts from the poetic metaphors.
While practically every religious group agrees, amongst their own brethren, at least, that their sacred book contains both literal fact and non-literal metaphor, their existed no agreed methodology to tell which was which.
Many of the great schisms of the major faiths could have been avoided if only they had what is now in our possession – the ‘Metaphorical Illuminator’.
The Illuminator, the culmination of ten years of dedicated work by the Sneer Review Theological Institute (kindly supported by a grant from the Templetown foundation), at last provides a foolproof mechanism to determine which parts of a holy scripture are possibly historical and which are definitely metaphorical.

As a demonstration of the power of the Metaphorical Illuminator we have now processed the most important scriptural text of Roman Catholicism, the worlds largest Christian denomination – namely the Nicene, or Apostle’s Creed - revealing once and for all the historical and poetic aspects to the primary statement of faith of this religion.


Original text

I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting. Amen



Processed by the ’Metaphorical Illuminator’

I believe in a metaphor,
the metaphor,
A metaphor of a metaphor and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his metaphor, our metaphor,
who was metaphored by a metaphor,
born of the metaphored Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he metaphored into a metaphor;
on the third day he metaphored;
he metaphored into a metaphor,
and is a metaphor at the metaphor of a metaphor;
from there he will metaphor and metaphor.
I believe in a metaphor,
the metaphorical catholic Church,
the communion of metaphors,
the forgiveness of metaphors,
the metaphor of the body,
and life metaphorical. Ametaphor

Although an upcoming technical paper on the Metaphorical Illuminator will describe in detail how the technique works we can reveal that it is primarily based on the application of a simple textual algorithm:
“If the action described would sound completely crazy if applied to any religion that is not your own, then that section is a metaphor”

14 comments:

bubuka_visszater said...

hilarious!

thanks God I have found this very blog :)

Tige Gibson said...

Jesus Christ should have been metaphor too.

Anonymous said...

As Unknown points out - if you translate "Jesus Christ" from its mashup of Hebrew and Greek (rather than pretending that we're talking about Mr. Christ) you get "Anointed Savior". At the very least people should be consistent with the Greek and translate it as "Anointed Jesus"

So it should probably be "and in metaphor, his metaphor, our metaphor", or at a minimum "and in Jesus metaphor, his metaphor, our metaphor".

Anonymous said...

Holy metaphor!

But I don't see where the tea fits in… A metaphor do you think?

Unknown said...

"Unknown" has very nearly pegged it with his etymology and is bang on in his conclusion. Jesus Christ does indeed translate as "anointed savior" but the etymology is all Greek. No need to invoke the Hebrew.

Unknown said...

Correction. I should have said it was Anonymous who hit the nail on the head. :)

Anonymous said...

What the hell?!

Who Am I?

Unknown said...

Still trying to figure out what appears to be a non intuitive tool.

Ben Ji said...

What do I know?

Jaco said...

Nice way to make a point!

But why is conceiving also a metaphor? It felt real when it happened to my wife ;)

Ken Pidcock said...

Hey, that ain't the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed is the one with And in one Lord metaphor, the Son of metaphor, begotten of the metaphor, metaphor of metaphor, very metaphor of very metaphor, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the metaphor.

Anne Crumpacker said...

This is brilliant. Just yesterday I was sharing the Truth of the Flying Spaghetti Monster with a christian friend. She said, do people really believe this?" I replied, "I could ask you the same question. Isn't it all just metaphor?" She reluctantly agreed. Some times we can accomplish much more via humor than argument. Thank you for this- it made my day!

Bamboo Dreams said...

Metaphory metaphor! That is hilarious!

Frontrow7 said...

Brilliant! Thanks for this, it made my day!

http://frontrow7-thepalebluedot.blogspot.com/