The godless are getting rambunctious

We’re getting rude, we dare to criticize the theistic evolutionists, and now Ophelia has done gone and poo-pooed the distinction between methodological and metaphysical materialism. I love it! Rise up, all ye fierce and firebreathing atheists!

Much as I’d enjoy the squeals of agony from the usual protesters, I’m going to suggest that you might be better off arguing over it at Ophelia’s. I’m doing a bit of traveling over the next two days, my access to the net might be spotty, and so I’ll probably be slow to approve any comments that our annoying spam filters might hold up.

Can I trade the cat in for one of these?

i-f253e0593ce41801f29014b99a5d3e03-california.jpg

John Bentley sent me an issue of Seven Days with this interesting illustration on the cover: it’s titled “California”, by Chris Varricchione. Excuse the smudginess, but I just scanned it in from newsprint, so it isn’t exactly the cleanest image to start with. Still, I had to make it my desktop image—who can resist a flying mollusc/bird chimera? Now if only someone would point me to a sharper original source…

Thanks, John!

Lunch with PZ

I’m going to be giving a talk tomorrow and Tuesday in St Paul and Minneapolis—if you’re free at the noon hour, stop on by! The title of the talk is “Science and Secularism in a Demon-Haunted World,” and it’s sponsored by the Atheists for Human Rights.

On Monday at noon I’ll be at the St Paul Landmark Center, 75 West Fifth Street, in the Ramsey County Room.

On Tuesday at noon I’ll be in the Minneapolis Downtown Public Library, in the Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi Room.

If you aren’t in the Twin Cities area, be patient…I just agreed to do an interview with the Infidel Guy sometime in August, so you might be able to hear me over your computer then.

Gods for everyone!

Thank you for the concern about my spiritual well-being, Craig Clarke! Usually I just get promises to pray for me and bible quotes and suggestions to bring a big bottle of aloe vera with me when I go to hell, but Craig gave me choices. He sent me a link to the Godchecker, an online searchable database of deities. It currently contains 2,850 gods in its listings (which are not complete—there is no Echidne, for instance), all of which have been worshipped by people at some time in history. Craig sent me a few recommendations, and I searched for a few of my own.

There is one squid god, Kanaloa. He’s described as nasty, smelly, and squidgy, which is a good start, but I can get that if I just don’t bother to clean out my refrigerator for a month, so I don’t see why I should worship him. Then there’s the tentacled octopodal war god Fe-E, but it says he has retired. Na-Kika is also an octopus god who pals around with a spider god, Nareau. I rather liked Jari, a snake goddess who knows what a man really needs, but you know, when you get right down to it, they’re all rather silly, and I don’t have much interest in believing in any of them, let alone giving them my attention for a few hours a week.

At least now I can send the annoying evangelicals off to a list of gods and ask them how many they disbelieve…and call them lousy atheists when they tell me they disbelieve nearly all of them.

Meet “Pete”

Salon has an interview with “Pete”, the blogger who mistook an Onion humor piece for a real article.

Reached by phone at his Virginia home a week after his initial post about the Onion story, Pete said, “You write some article off the cuff and throw it out there and you never know what’s going to happen. The next thing I know there are people calling me from all over the world and telling me what an idiot I am!” It was surely the most public of embarrassments, an example of how the intersection of varied voices and ideologies and sensibilities in the brutal wild West of the new, new blogosphere can go tragically wrong. Or right. Depending on your sense of humor.

It humanizes the poor doofus, which is a good thing…but he still comes off as totally clueless.

Praying for the mushroom clouds

i-4c75a4266bc5bd0e0bf43756348121ae-mushroom_cloud.jpg
Praise Jesus!

The Talent Show had to ruin my morning with a revelation: check out this evil thread on Rapture Ready—these kooks are overjoyed at the war and mayhem and death in the Middle East, and treat every catastrophe as a sign of their imminent ascent into heaven.

I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what’s going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, Ohappyday, like in your screen name , it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!

There are a few people late in the long, long thread who express some reservations, but it’s like this person, who thinks they have to wait longer…because there aren’t enough potential nukes involved.

I’m excited just to be alive! I love life! I still got all of it to look forward to! Getting married this summer, third year of university etc… I live everyday as though Jesus was coming back (at least I try to), yet I plan as if I will be here until I die. Personally, I still think there is years left and much much more wars and rumors of, and natural disasters, and hatred…sigh. I think it will get much much worse, even so that those of us in the west are struggling to survive! The middle east will most likely stay tense, even tenser than ever before. I dont think Iran has nukes yet, so it wants to wait to start a war with Israel. Same with Syria. They need more weapons of mass destruction before theyll start anything…which is dumb cause they will just get oliberated in return!

Oh, but I forgot…these are just healthy religious views that we must respect. I should tread lightly lest I offend.

The Rapture Ready link is dead—the administrators yanked the thread. It must be painful to be so crazy, yet not quite so crazy that you don’t notice that the rest of the world thinks you’re crazy.