In which my imagination rampages outside the edges of the mundane facts

They’re handing out Rubik’s Cubes to octopuses. This is good training in logic and pattern recognition, and the next step will be to hand them wrenches and welding torches and put them to work assembling underwater habitats for mankind (so think the deluded hu-mans anyway — they’ll actually use them to build lasers and water-filled assault tanks). Brilliant!

Oh, wait. Never mind. It’s actually simply a test for handedness among the octopuses, and they don’t actually expect them to solve the puzzles. Darn. That’s not as exciting.

The reason they don’t expect them to solve the puzzles, of course, is that the octopod solution would probably involve alien geometries and produce a result that might drive anthropoid brains mad.

(via The Great Beyond)

Oh, crap, no…not another poll

You people keep sending them to me, and as long as I’m swamped with work they’re at least a quick and easy blog post. So forgive me, but when I saw the results on this poll that asks,
“Should prayer and the Ten Commandments be allowed in schools?“, I couldn’t resist.

92% say yes. I know that not all Kentuckians are that dumb. Help their image by adjusting these poll results to something more sensible.

You need a poll to start the week

This one is on CNN: Is it OK for states to issue car license plates with religious messages?

Boy, when you put it that simply, isn’t it obvious? Since when should a state government be in the business of promoting religious slogans? Let people buy a nice religious license plate frame from a private business, or slap a bumper sticker on their car.

(It’s good to see that “no” is in the lead, but this poll is about evenly split so far.)

Atheist, here’s God

We seem to be having a light incursion of evangelical Christians. Here’s some advice for them, on how to convert an atheist. It’s a very silly article, I’m afraid, because while it says all these sensible things about being polite and getting to know them and leading them gently to church, it never addresses the key stumbling point for atheists: that their religion is wacky, nutty, insane, internally inconsistent, and illogical. The very elements that Christians think makes their faith unique and special and powerful are the pieces that make us wonder what damaged Christian brains.

For instance, here’s what we’re told is going to happen to us when we die:

I don’t know. I don’t see how any response, no matter how polite and friendly, is going to overcome the inherent goofiness of the religion.

Pamphleteering

Rick was handed a nice tri-fold glossy pamphlet as he was walking to a fireworks display. It’s titled “What If”, and what it is is a collection of — you guessed it — bible quotes to extort your obedience to a goofy religion. Rick has handled the details, so I’ll just cut to the conclusion. It asks, “Based on the authority of these Scriptures, just think, WHAT IF you received Christ today? Just think, WHAT IF you don’t?”

The opening clause covers my response pretty well. “Based on the authority of these scriptures,” which is nonexistent, I don’t have to accept anything they say, and can throw it away. Or, at least, I’d reduce it to the one phrase in the whole mess that I do think is good advice.

“Just think.”

Now, where is our glossy pamphlet like this — only, like, not stupid — that we can give out to glad-handing god-dabblers?

Atlanta Pharyngufest!

All right, I think I have a decision: we will meet at 6:00pm or thereabouts on Saturday, 12 July, at Manuel’s Tavern, 602 N. Highland Ave., and have a grand old time for as long as you all can handle it. Remember, those Denverites could barely make it to 10pm — I think Georgians have to show that they can both party and offer entertaining rational conversation as good as the Coloradans gave. The honor of the South demands it!

Oh, and look: Atlanta skeptics are meeting at the same place and roughly the same time. It should be an excellent crowd.

Jefferson was a freethinker

If you’re listening to Atheists Talk radio right now, you’ve been hearing a lot about the secular intent of the founding of the US government. The LA Times has an article on the Jefferson Bible — that greatly abridged version of the Bible that Jefferson made by chopping out all the miracles and unbelievable stuff, reducing it to a work of New Testament philosophy. The article asks,

“Can you imagine the reaction if word got out that a president of the United States cut out Bible passages with scissors, glued them onto paper and said, ‘I only believe these parts?'”

My reaction would be “Hallelujah!” The Religious Right ought to be experiencing some sever cognitive dissonance, since they both revere the founding fathers to a ridiculous degree and insist that this is a Christian nation…but they avoid it by deluding themselves about the radical nature of some of the founding fathers’ religious belief.

We need a president who can do this:

In Jefferson’s version of the Gospels, for example, Jesus is still wrapped in swaddling clothes after his birth in Bethlehem. But there’s no angel telling shepherds watching their flocks by night that a savior has been born. Jefferson retains Jesus’ crucifixion but ends the text with his burial, not with the resurrection.

Stripping miracles from the story of Jesus was among the ambitious projects of a man with a famously restless mind. At 71, he read Plato’s “Republic” in the original Greek and found it lackluster.

We won’t be getting one in the next election.