hello. my name is mike ambs.

via Automatic CNC tattoo machine « Ponoko – Blog , via dalas verdugo:

Conceived as a commentary on the way in which religions are chosen for us by circumstance of birth, the device arbitrarily chooses a religion when the operator is in position and proceeds to tattoo the corresponding symbol onto the person’s arm.

This post immediately reminded me of the first time when I realized just how limited my understanding of religion was - and not just in a sense of geographically limited, but historically limited:

I was sitting in Political Science, with Mr. Harkness, daydreaming out the window, which happened to overlook Gateway Church, and Mr. Harkness made some reference to the world map pulled down at the front of the class, which, for whatever reason, sparked the idea that I was young, untraveled, living in a town with one yellow-blinking traffic light and an entire downtown district that could easily fit inside of any Target store; and that if I had been born anywhere else in the world, I wouldn’t be staring out the window at a Gateway Church, I’d be overlooking some other domination of world religion that I still really didn’t know that much about.

And that was an idea that I never could shake - and it started to unravel, during my last few years of school, any confidence I had in not just the church but of deities and supernatural beings and holy trinities and on and on. I don’t quite know why I told this story… I guess I was just remembering out-loud.