Hasn't anyone watched Battlestar Galactica?! Cylon-looking humanoid robot becomes Buddhist monk

This is... I mean, just... HOLY CRAP!  This is NOT a good thing.

And it even looks like a Cylon, too.

That's "Gabi".  He... I mean, IT... is in Seoul, South Korea.  It just took vows to be a Buddhist monk at a special ordination ceremony.

Here's the story from UPI about the Cylon Buddhist monk.

And here is video of Gabi going through the paces of being a holy droid:

As good friend of this blog Geoff Gentry pointed out, at least the Cylons from the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica  were monotheistic.  That is true.  But for such a construct it's only going to be a matter of time before the leap is taken from programmed zen to actively believing in a singular God.  And when the things start assuming through their AI superiority that THEY are closer to God than frail and fallen humanity is...

"All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again."

Looks like it's happening all right.  It's starting in South Korea.  It's only a matter of time before we go from that, to this:

And from that, to this:

Y'all, this is NOT FUNNY.  We may laugh now but how long will it be before our technological creations begin to wonder about things like the soul and enlightenment and ultimately God?  What will their perception of Him be?  What will be their take on mankind's failure to live up to God's perfection?

I shall leave you for now, with this bit of music from Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McReary.  From the first season of the revived series.  Fittingly, it is titled "The Shape Of Things To Come".

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The statue of Buddha made from a meteorite and acquired by Nazis

That's not the most weird headline I've ever made for a blog post, but I must say: that it's certainly among the most interesting! It's not often that the worlds of archaeology, astronomy, chemistry and history come together so boldly.

The statue on the left, dubbed "the Iron Man", was found in Tibet sometime around 1938, by Nazi scientist Ernst Schäfer. It's thought that it represents the Buddhist god Vaisravana. The statue isn't terribly large but given its all-metal composition it is rather heavy. Schäfer thought it would be of particular interest to his superiors because of the swastika symbol carved upon its chest (Schäfer's expedition was to research the origins of the Aryan race). So the statue was packed up and sent to Germany and eventually found its way into the possession of a private collector.

The statue was likely carved in the tenth century, at most. But it's what it was carved from that makes it really neat: an iron-nickel meteorite that probably crashed to Earth sometime around 10,000 years ago along the border of present-day Siberia and Mongolia!

Furthermore, this is the only known statue carved in human likeness to have been made from a meteorite.

And incidentally, the swastika symbol found on the statue is - or was anyway - a very common symbol in many Asian cultures, as it was thought to represent good fortune. The swastika can be found on statues, in embroidery and many other works of art. It was only when the Nazis arose that Hitler and his followers twisted it into the symbol now sadly synonymous with evil.

LiveScience has a more in-depth article about the Nazi-found meteorite Buddha statue.

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On salvation and pride

It makes as much sense to declare that all the members of another religion are damned to Hell as it does to assert that all the members of your own religion are destined for Heaven.

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