Jesus Fish in Advertisement

While driving through Wasilla (couldn’t see Russia from there), I noticed a sign for an automobile repair place that had a Jesus fish symbol, apparently as part of the logo. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the Jesus fish on something other than a car. Back in West Lafayette a roofing company has it on all of their signs. In Seward I noticed it on a boat that was giving tours.

I’m not sure if this is a common thing that I just don’t notice so much because I’m not usually looking for it, but it strikes me as kind of strange. What’s their goal in putting a Christian symbol on their business that has nothing to do with Christianity? Is this a way of scaring off non-Christians, or trying to show that they’re a “good” or “honest” business because of their religion? I don’t really see another reason why you would put that symbol on your business unless you’re trying to attract or repel certain groups of people.

And how does that actually affect their business? I know I’d be a bit hesitant to use their services since it seems like I’m not wanted. I’m sure in places like Wasilla and West Lafayette it doesn’t really matter if you scare away the few non-Christians in order to secure the Christian business. But I really don’t know. Would you still get your car repaired at a place with a Jesus fish on its signs? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t appreciate my Darwin fish bumper sticker.

The most ironic part to me is that religious symbols used to be forced onto businesses as a form of punishment…the star of David in Nazi Germany. Kind of odd now that people are willingly labeling themselves, granted that they’re the majority. I don’t think minority religions will be following suit any time soon.

Harry Potter is an atheist – hooray!

Okay, okay – it’s just Daniel Radcliffe who plays Harry Potter – not the fictional boy wizard himself. But still pretty cool. Daniel has always mentioned that he’s not particularly religious, but in his latest interview with Esquire he officially “comes out” as an atheist.

“In an interview with Esquire magazine, Radcliffe risked the US box office prospects of the new Harry Potter film by declaring himself to be an atheist.

In a pronouncement that will dismay America’s religious Right, which has long voiced suspicions about Potter’s “anti-Christian” message, the 19-year-old actor said he did not believe in God.

He also expressed his admiration for Professor Richard Dawkins, the prominent atheist and bete noir of Evangelical Christians.

Radcliffe has been reticent on the subject of religion in the past, but in an interview to promote the latest instalment in the film franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, released on July 15, he said: “I’m an atheist, but I’m very relaxed about it. I don’t preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do. Anything he does on television, I will watch.”

He joked: “There we go, Dan, that’s half of America that’s not going to see the next Harry Potter film on the back of that comment.”

JK Rowling’s stories of the schoolboy wizard are taken very seriously by some Evangelical Christians in the United States. One of the largest Christian groups in the country, Focus on the Family, denounced the books as “witchcraft”.”

I wasn’t one of those fangirls who immediately thought Daniel Radcliffe was some sort of hottie. I was way too preoccupied oggling Alan Rickman (and I still am). But I have to admit, Dan has really grown on me. He’s getting cute now that he’s not jail bait anymore, and every time I hear him in an interview he’s witty, intelligent, and nice. But now he’s an out atheist and a fan of Richard Dawkins? Definitely going up on my list of cute famous atheist guys I have no chance with!

Q&A – Atheism & Sex

My two favorite topics!

“You describe yourself, presumably tongue in cheek, as a “perverted atheist”. I do think there is a special relationship between naturalistic thinking (inc. atheism) and sex positivity: how do you see the relationship? Have you encountered much sex-negativity in atheists that’s an underlying hangup from their religious days (or the religious tone society is drenched with anyways)? What’s your best counter to the related fundie claim that we’re all atheists to just “satisfy our sinful lusts”?

– Michael”

First, I do not describe myself as a “perverted atheist” as a joke. Nope, I’m really just a giant perv. I’m pretty sure I have the mind of a 16 year old boy, and if I was male, I would be destined to be a dirty old man. I’m constantly thinking about sex one way or another, and it takes a lot of self control to not always speak what dirty ways my mind is interpreting something. Unfortunately for you guys (or fortunately), typing things up is the ultimate filter, so my perviness doesn’t really come out on this blog. But give me a beer or two and you’ll see the dark side of Jen.

As for the relationship between sex and atheism, I do think naturalistic thinking leads to sex positivity. The vast majority of the weird social rules about sex are based on religion, superstition, misconception, or bad science. Why should you wait until marriage for sex? ‘Cause God told you to. Why is a girl a skank for sleeping with five guys, but a guy who sleeps with five girls still hasn’t gotten around enough? ‘Cause girls are supposed to be pure as snow…cause God told you to. Why are people too stupid to use birth control the first time they have sex? ‘Cause our sex education and scientific thinking sucks in the US. I could go on forever with this list.

But that’s not to say all atheists are going to be automatically sex positive. I think religious hang ups and society have a big part in it. While I was raised secular, I know people with religious upbringings who have certain things they’re weird about. Sometimes they feel guilty that they didn’t wait until marriage, or they’re not comfortable discussing the topic with people. Some still feel it’s wrong to occasionally have homosexual fantasies even though they’re basically straight (come on, who doesn’t do this?). But I also know formerly religious people who are even more sex positive than I am. So yes, religion influences it, but your personality has a lot to do with how you handle it.

Even without religious brainwashing, I think the way religion permeates culture still can affect us. I know I’ll still occasionally feel a twinge of guilt because I’ve slept with more than one guy. I mean, I’m not (EDIT: Whoops, left out a key word there) near the double digits yet, but there’s still this pressure for girls to keep guys out of their pants. But I deal with this guilt by taking a step back and dealing with it in a rational manner. One, it shouldn’t even matter if I do go into the double digits, because me making an arbitrary cut off for girls is an irrational thing to do. Two, if I find a guy who’s so backwards to care about how many men I’ve slept with, then I don’t want to date him anyway.

But that’s not just to say I go around constantly having sex with any stranger in some giant atheistic saturnalia. I have standards and rules, and some of them I guess were influenced by my parents. I’ll probably leave something out, but here are my general safety rules for sex:

1. Don’t be stupid. A general rule for life, thanks Dad.
2. You don’t have to wait until marriage, but you should wait until you’re mature enough to deal with sex and any of the consequences. Think how much better the world would be (and how many less teen pregnancies we’d have) if people followed this simple rule. I did wait until I was ready (well, at least for the Clinton definition of sex, which to me had the worst consequences…aka babies). There were times in high school where I was so tempted to “go all the way,” but I knew I would probably regret it. I’m glad I waited until I was more mature and had access to the pill. That’s not saying everyone should wait until college, but as a general rule, I think most high schoolers are too stupid to know if they’re mature enough to have sex.
3. For the love of FSM, use protection and birth control. It’s just irresponsible not to, for yourself and your partner.
4. If you’re not comfortable doing something, don’t do it. If your partner isn’t comfortable doing something, don’t make them do this. Within reason, of course. I agree with Dan Savage here. If someone doesn’t want to do something considered fairly normal (ie oral) and doesn’t have a good reason for it (ie rape memories) then you have the right to dump them for sexual incompatibility. But if someone wants you to wear a Ronald Reagan mask while pooping on your chest and you’re not into that, and then they badger you about it constantly, then they’re just an ass.
5. Don’t do anything that could potentially harm you or your partner. Knife play and autoerotic asphyxiation are probably bad ideas. For me, sleeping with strangers also falls in this category. As a girl (and a generally paranoid person) I’m way too nervous to go home with a random stranger, so I guess I’m just stuck doing all my friends. Poor them.
6. Numbers don’t really matter as long as you’re safe, and as long as you’re emotionally secure or dealing with emotionally secure people. What do I mean by that? If a guy has slept with 200 chicks because he’s picking up low self esteem 16 year olds behind the football field, that’s probably violating rule #4. If a guy has slept with 200 chicks because of some deep rooted psychological problems with commitment, his own self esteem, and his need for physical contact in order to be happy, that’s probably not healthy either. But if a guy has slept with 200 chicks who all happily and knowledgeably consented just because he likes sex, then go ahead.

You may see a trend, that my “rules” are very humanistic. Don’t hurt others and don’t hurt yourself. They’re also humanistic because they’re for me. I might suggest that they’re good ideas for others – I mean, if they were bad, why would I be following them? – but I won’t judge a person for not. Had a one night stand with a stranger? I don’t really care; that’s your own business. Now, will fundies still think I’m just coming up with excuses to satisfy my sinful lusts? Probably. But, like every other aspect of my life, until they prove that there is an invisible angry skydaddy, his rules won’t be touching my vagina. Nor will any body parts of fundies.

Q&A – Why Blag Hag?

“Query – Why ‘Blag Hag’? It is not the most flattering of pseudonyms. It does have tremendous rememberability (is that a word?) value though.

– Jeff”

I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me this! Like other internet nicknames I’ve chosen for myself, this just kind of sprung to life out of a joke. I had wanted to start a blog for a while, but I was agonizing over what to call it. I hate giving things titles. Whenever I had to name a piece of art or short story, I’d generally go with something minimalistic and obvious like “Cat” or “Bowl of Fruit” just because otherwise I’d suffer over it for days. But I think a name can make or break a blog, so I was fretting over it more than usual. I started brainstorming with a good friend of mine who happens to be gay (I promise this is relevant), hoping something would pop up.

Him: Hmm, well how about a pun?
Me: Ehh, I dunno, like what?
Him: Well my [now very defunct] blog is called “Honest to Blog.”
Me: Hmmm…
Him: How about “In Blog We Trust?”
Me: What am I, your blag hag? … *lightbulb goes on*

So yes, the name of this blog is based on a random joke about being another blog’s fag hag. For those of you who don’t think “blag” is a legitimate synonym for “blog”, I direct you to this and this. xkcd knows all. As for not being flattering, I’ve always used the term fag hag with a bit of pride rather than as an insult. And you know what? Recent research has shown that “fag hags” (aka women who associate with gay men) actually have higher body esteem and feel more attractive! So there!

And anyway, “Blag Hag” is better than the nickname I use on most sites, “Jennifurret.” That’s from a friend pointing out that Jennifer and Furret made Jennifurret. Yes, my internet nickname is based on a Pokemon. For shame. Hey, I was 13 and it stuck. At least it’s a cute one.

Q&A – Defeating Creationism

“Jen,

Hey, I’m a big fan of your blog. I just thought of an interesting Q&A for when you are taking your week off: How best can we defeat Creationism? Creationism was completely defeated in the scientific community more than a hundred years ago and in the US court system numerous times in the last 50 years. However, Creationism still has a very strong grip among everyday US Americans. The polls have consistently shown that roughly 50% of all Americans believe that humans were created in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. What can we do to reverse this trend?

thanks,

Jason

http://chaoskeptic.blogspot.com“

Wow, you know, you guys could have thrown me a couple gimme questions. Nope, right onto solving the creationism problem! Haha, well, I’m just an undegrad with some odd ideas floating around in my head, so I’m unlikely to have the best solution, but I’ll at least ramble about what I think for a bit.

I honestly don’t think acceptance of evolution will increase in the US until religious belief decreases. We already see this trend among young people, which gives me hope that it will continue with time. I know a lot of scientists will argue that acceptance of evolution (and science in general, for that matter) is compatible with religious belief – but I’m going to have to side with the likes of PZ and Coyne and Dawkins and say this isn’t true. Scientific thinking is inherently opposed to religious thinking. Science is based on facts and experimentation and tweaking our idea of what is true so it becomes more and more accurate. Religion is based on belief and faith, where even facts that prove you wrong can be brushed away with some nonsensical mental acrobatics.

So how do we defeat creationism and intelligent design? Defeat religious and supernatural belief. We need to promote skeptical, critical, scientific thinking, and that’s incredibly hard to do when people still believe in miracles and ghosts and heaven and all other sorts of nonsense. Thankfully as people become less and less religious, they’ll probably accept evolution more and more. I think there will always be the extreme evangelical creationists, but the best we can do it make it so they’re a crazy little minority. Once we get to that stage we can start bugging the liberal Christians (since we’re talking about the US) to really understand evolution.

What do I mean by that? There are plenty of Christians who do believe in evolution. While I’m glad they exist, they either don’t fully understand the implications of evolution, they interpret the Bible so liberally that what it says doesn’t even matter anymore, or they’re doing some impressive doublethink (which I think most liberal Christians get particularly adept at). Religious people who attempt to reconcile their beliefs by saying God “guided” evolution do not really believe in evolution by natural selection. They believe in evolution by some omnipotent being fiddling with mutations, which is not scientific thinking. At least they won’t get in the way of evolution being taught in schools, but they still don’t really understand it. I think the only religious people who can really accept evolution are the ones who take a deistic view of God – that he decided to let evolution be the mechanism of how all the variety of life came to be. But that still doesn’t make any sense. The whole beauty of evolution is that it is a natural process. It didn’t need some god to create it, because it works based on chemistry and physics and probability etc etc.

And now I’m just rambling. Let me summarize: It’s going to be freaking hard.

In Denali

In Denali, have one minute of internet left on my timer! At the conference a friend and I dubbed this skinky latino guy with long hair as the official hottest guy at the conference. Ended up running into him and having dinner with him. Ultimate win. He’s from Costa Rica, and turns out one of my close friends was his TA for a class. Small world.

14 hour adventure tomorrow!Woo!

Alaska photos!!!

Yay, I finally found a way to transfer photos! I’ll just share some of my favorites here with you:

Eating at Pike’s Place on the Chena River. Good food, but even better view.

This was so hilarious that I almost bought it. It was in the gift shop for the Alaskan Salmon Bake, which is basically this hokey gold mine theme park we went to that had all you can eat salmon, halibut, cod, prime rib, and all the fixings.

This was the best part of the theme park. Weeeeee!

I also learned that polar bears tend to spontaneously combust in Alaska.

Creepy human-turtle zombie sculptures on campus. Thankfully it’s daylight 24/7, so no real worries of zombie attacks.

Downy woodpeckers! I took about a billion photos of these two, it was impossible to just choose one.

Doing the touristy thing with the Alaskan pipeline. Kind of anticlimactic, actually.

Caribou at the Large Animal Research Station!

D’awwww baby caribou.

Muskox! And my new arch nemesis, the seventy bajillion zillion mosquitoes of Alaska.

Muskoxen sparring! I am SO lucky to have gotten this photo.

In the Army Permafrost tunnel!

Too soon?

Time to play Kill, Sleep With, or Marry:

(If you’re not familiar with this game, you were obviously never a teenage girl. Select one person for each action)

Farrah Fawcett
Michael Jackson
Billy Mays

As awful as it would have to be to tolerate a lifetime of Billy Mays’s yelling, I still think having sex with him would be more horrible. So I’m going to say kill Michael, do Farrah, and marry Billy. Unless we’re talking Thriller-era Michael, in which case do Michael, marry Farrah, and kill Billy Mays.

Thoughts?

Am I a horrible person?

EDIT:

Me: Having sex with Billy Mays would be fucking horrible
Friend: “HI, I’M BILLY MAYS AND I’M EJACULATING IN YOUR VAGINA!”
Me: LOL
Me: omg I hate you. I’m in a computer lab and trying not to tear up and die laughing
Friend: “AFTERWARD, WE CAN CLEAN IT UP WITH KABOOM!”
Friend: “BEHOLD, THE POWER OF OXYCLEAN!”
Me: STOP IT
Me: omg a professor is laughing at me

At least he’s more horrible than I am.

Never mind

Yeah, so that previous email was just spam. Got a couple other really similar emails later that were equally confusing. Man, I was hoping this would be some cryptic religious puzzle that would send me on a Da Vinci Code-like journey. Sadness.

In other news, I found a charger for my camera, woo! …But the camera shop was out of SD card readers, so still no photos for you. I may stop by a Radioshack on my way to the bird sanctuary tomorrow and try to grab one. I know it can theoretically wait, but 1) I’m going to need to get it eventually and 2) Some of the photos are too hilarious to wait a week to show. Wish me luck!

I get weird emails

Usually I would ignore these weird emails as nonsensical spam jibberish, but this one caught my eye for some reason:

from: Alana Madrid
to: jmccreig@purdue.edu
cc: [Other Purdue Emails]
date: Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 7:55 AM
subject: or art not thou the hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs

the sun descending in the west, earth rais’d up her head,the hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs his arm is withered to its root;

…

So after some googling, these random poetic sounding phrases are from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, which are essentially religious poems. And payvand.com is an Iran news site.

Can anyone make sense out of this, or should I just ignore it as some crazy email?