buddhism

Chris Knight's avatar

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 ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

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 ...

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