As readers of the blog will know, here at BEEZHOUSE.com we have taken quite an active interest in matters of religion, more specifically evolution. (For those keeping score, examples can be found here, here, at Idle Thoughts and even over at WDBGTD). Thus, I took a keen interest in an article that appeared this week in L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper. The article was headlined ‘Aliens Are My Brother’ written by Fr. José Gabriel Funes, Director of the Vatican Observatory. Yes, the Vatican has a newspaper (and a website). Yes, the Vatican has an Observatory, and it’s run by none other than a Jesuit priest! And apparently, the Vatican now believes in little green men from distant solar systems.

Funes, appointed by Benedidct XVI in 2006, said that the search for forms of extraterrestrial life does not contradict belief in God. “How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?” Funes said. “Just as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ’sister,’ why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? It would still be part of creation”. Funes said that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like “putting limits” on God’s creative freedom, he said. The Bible “is not a science book,” Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most “reasonable” explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter. He did say however, he continues to believe that “God is the creator of the universe and that we are not the result of chance”.

That said, as one blogger wrote, if extraterrestrials did in fact exist, they had better not be homosexual, or practice abortion.

Fr. José Gabriel Funes is Director of the Vatican Observatory, which has sites in Rome and in Arizona. Funes obtained his doctorate in Astronomy with the study of the kinematics of the ionized gas in the inner regions of 25 disk galaxies. Funes specializes in extragalactic astronomy. His field of research includes the kinematics and dynamics of disk galaxies, the star formation in the local universe, the relationship between gravitational interaction and galactic activity. I have no idea what any of that means, but it sounds bloody impressive.

Sources: BBC News, Shakesville, Catholic News Agency

To read the full interview/article in English, click here.

Or more to the point, what are we inventing and to what end? Do we really need all of this shit?

My nieces were playing an Eye-Toy game recently which involved cleaning windows. You had to clean the windows really quickly in order to score. I asked why they don’t clean the real windows instead, and they all just looked at me like I was the oldest thing they’d ever seen.

Eye-toy and Wii sound like cool ideas for kids toys, but Adult applications conjure up all sorts of horrible possibilities. I have as much pervert in me as the next person, but this virtual life industry is really beyond the pale, particularly the plastic sex industry.

Teledildonics is where we are headed. Dildonics are electronic sex toys; the Tele- is added for the remote or Cyber use and control of them. It’s fake sex, Virtual sex and I guess it illustrates that one who needs them has only a Virtual Life.

I wrote about Real Dolls recently after seeing a documentary about men who prefer “Synthetic Women” to “Organic Women”. These Real Dolls are inert lumps of skilfully moulded plastic. They all resemble porn stars and Pamela Anderson (same thing?!?) and just lie there whilst these geeks treat them in ways I don’t care to imagine.

As a result of seeing the program “Love Me, Love My Doll”, I decided to research Real Dolls and one of the individuals in the show, a lonely soul named Davecat. Like many people Davecat has a Blog, and he shares it with his Synthetic lover, pictures of whom appear on the site in various states of undress and activity.

Davecat recently saw an article that I also saw, regarding robotic breakthroughs in Japan. Imagine the possibilities. These robots can talk and respond to commands almost replicating human behaviour. Facial expressions, voices and movements are all very lifelike, but still spooky.

Combine this with Real Dolls and Hondas latest robotic breakthroughs around robot mobility and you have a walking (running), talking, rooting, machine. Who needs to get out there and meet people when you can order one online?

As all of this stuff takes over, are we all going to turn into Davecat? He seems a perfectly nice enough person, but he has grown used to not dealing with real people. We can all do so much now without dealing with real individuals that we forget how to behave. This can turn quickly into fear and dread, until we long for solitude and a virtual word in which we are the controller.

I find the real world pretty scary as it is. Meeting people is hard and sex is a minefield, but surely a world with no skin is even scarier.

Teledildonics

Teledildonics on Wiki

Researchers move ever closer to making mechanical versions of us.

Honda’s robot is now faster, friendlier

As you already know there are two countries which haven’t signed the Kyoto Treaty, the US (surprise surprise) and Australia!

What a shame! Some 120 + countries managed to sign it!

For a country that is really quite mordern and forward looking in its approaches, it is unbelievable that Australia will not support such a treaty. And why?

Simple. “It would cost jobs”, according to John Howard. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that the US didn’t ratify the treaty either. Either way,what a joke, saying it would cost jobs. I remember years ago, actually now decades ago, someone saying Australia had the potential to become a banana republic. Maybe that comment, in light of its current stance on global warming is not so far from the truth.

Australia has so much potential to become a leader in environmental issues. It should already be leading the solar energy race, but it isn’t. It is far behind Western Europe on many other environmental issues. Australia is one of the highest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world on a per capita basis.

What a shame - isn’t it time to do something against this????

Well you can, but start small:

- Reduce your impact AT HOME
- Reduce your impact WHILE ON THE MOVE
- Help bring about change LOCALLY, NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY

Here are some quick facts about the affects of global warming:

- The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.
- Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level.
- At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles

For more info look here or here www.stopglobalwarming.org