The crucifixion is often depicted with a certain sentimentality. This painting is designed to use as an aid in stirring up our imaginations and increasing our devotion to Christ. Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has to do with the human and Divine Heart of Christ, particularly as it represents and recalls His love for us. In this depiction, Jesus has classic European features but is somewhat effeminate looking. One stylized depiction is called The Sacred Heart of Jesus, and is often used by various Roman Catholic Churches. This Jesus is seemingly not engaged with us he does not look at us with either compassion or judgment.īy contrast, Roman Catholic versions of Jesus are often more sentimental. While we are gazing at Him, He is gazing elsewhere. In addition, the Protestant Jesus is not looking at us. This is a Jesus you could have a crush on, a Jesus who would not be out of place in People magazine. He is clearly human this representation provides no clue to His divinity. If you think about this theologically, you’ll notice that the Protestant Jesus looks like us. (Arthropods are a phylum of invertebrates which currently is made up of spiders, insects, crustaceans, and myriapods like centipedes.) These different body plans died out in the Late Devonian extinction, leaving only the current four families of arthropods. After the Cambrian explosion, there were more than twenty kinds of arthropods that have no living descendants. In fact, as Stephen Jay Gould likes to point out, evolution looks more like a bush (although I think it looks more fern-like). Modern paleontology had to undo and reinterpret much of the work done by earlier scientists who were wedded to the idea of evolution as the March of Progress, and who therefore tried to fit morphologically distinct organisms into the Tree of Life. It hides the actual complexities involved, and causes scientists to try and shoehorn fossils into a place on the tree of life as ancestors of modern creatures. It promotes the idea of evolution as a progression from disorder to order, from simple to complex. The March of Progress, along with its analogue, the Tree of Life, is wrong. This trope is used in popular culture a lot, as in this amusing example I included for the Dr.

Iconography mary