John Holbo of Crooked Timber has newly acquired a wonderful old book, in which he finds a poem, “The Atheist and the Acorn” (hat tip to PZ for the link). Go read it! Then maybe my little verse will make more sense.

Methinks this “God” is strangely made
For something of such worth,
An introspective theist said
As plucked he up a single blade
Of grass, from off the earth:

Behold, quoth he, this tiny thing,
This single blade of grass,
Enough to make Walt Whitman sing—
They grow in millions every spring
Unnoticed as we pass.

But God counts every single leaf,
Each hair upon your head
(For bald men, he just counts their grief)
The reason that we know? In chief,
It’s what the Bible said.

But where is God when good men die
In wars, fought in His name?
He counts the grass—He can’t deny
He hears the wounded moan and cry—
He sits there, to His shame.

He mustn’t think; he mustn’t doubt,
This theist on the lawn;
His worship must remain devout;
One thought that he might do without
And poof—his God is gone.

He cannot help but smile and nod
It feels so good; so right.
He’d looked upon the face of God
And found it merely a façade—
And now he’s seen the light.

“Hold up your hands before your eyes. You are looking at the hands of God.”
– Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

If my hands are god’s hands, and god’s hands are mine,
And god has no hands of his own
There’s nothing that I can achieve with god’s help
I can’t do myself, all alone.

I’ve heard that he once had unlimited power
I don’t really see it today;
It seems he grows weaker with each passing hour
And now he just gets in the way.

I’m taking the middleman out of the picture—
This “god” isn’t pulling his weight—
He doesn’t do well with corrections or stricture
And doesn’t show up much, of late.

If I did my job the way god’s doing his
I would surely expect to be fired;
Omnipotent? Impotent! All that he is
Is a loser; it’s time he retired.

If god’s hands are my hands, and my hands are god’s
But wait—there’s one thing to recall—
The truth is, it’s infinitesimal odds
There was ever a god there at all!

If my hands are my hands, and your hands are yours,
And god’s hands—let’s face it—are none,
There’s a long list of problems that god just ignores:
Come on, then—there’s work to be done!

Via Effect Measure, a story of a religiously-motivated culinary revolution–or, at least, a taste revolution. Reuters reports:

NEW DELHI, Feb 12 (Reuters Life!) – A hardline Hindu organisation, known for its opposition to “corrupting” Western food imports, is planning to launch a new soft drink made from cow’s urine, often seen as sacred in parts of India.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Corps, said the bovine beverage is undergoing laboratory tests for the next 2 to 3 months but did not give a specific date for its commercial release.

they expect big things:

“Cow urine offers a cure for around 70 to 80 incurable diseases like diabetes. All are curable by cow urine,” Om Prakash, the head of the RSS Cow Protection Department, told Reuters by phone.

Prakash, who is based in Hardwar, one of four holy Hindu cities on the river Ganges where the world’s largest religious gathering takes place, said the product will be sold nationwide but did not rule out international success.

And here some people thought Pepsi Clear was a daring move.

Anyway, I have been working on their jingle, should they decide to enter the US market.

I don’t like the taste of Pepsi,
I don’t like the taste of Coke;
Dr. Pepper’s not the drink for me right now.
7-up and Sprite are dreadful
Every Root Beer is a joke;
What I really want is urine. From a cow.

If you like the taste of urine, you’re in luck!
If you think the taste of piss is bliss, it only costs a buck!
If you want to float your kidneys, you can buy it by the truck—
If you like the taste of urine, you’re in luck!

I don’t want to drink the Kool-Aid
I don’t want a mug of juice;
I don’t even want a tall glass of iced tea.
I’d really hate a cold V-8—
That’s vegetable abuse—
What I really want’s a cup of bovine pee!

If you like the taste of urine, you’re in luck!
If you think the taste of piss is bliss, it only costs a buck!
If you want to float your kidneys, you can buy it by the truck—
If you like the taste of urine, you’re in luck!

It’s a cure for diabetes,
It’s the finest healer known—
You will never need another drink than this!
In the battle of the soft drinks
This elixir stands alone,
And I guarantee it really tastes like piss!

If you like the taste of urine, you’re in luck!
If you think the taste of piss is bliss, it only costs a buck!
If you want to float your kidneys, you can buy it by the truck—
If you like the taste of urine, you’re in luck!

As I mentioned on Pharyngula, I was invited by a philosopher friend to attend the Darwin Day talk by Daniel Dennett, at Framingham State College. The talk, “Darwin and the Evolution of Reasons”, was interesting, and meta-interesting; it not only was a good presentation of memetic evolution, it was a good demonstration of it as well, with successful elements of his earlier talks replicating themselves in this one. (Also, in a vivid display of horizontal meme transfer, I invite any who saw Dennett’s talk to also watch Sue Blackmore’s TED talk, to count the number of similar memes. For those who did not see Dennett, the Blackmore talk will give you the gist of it. No, they are not identical; variety exists among members of this species.)

After the talk (and the exodus of rude students who must have been there only for class credit), Dennett invited questions from the audience. Two (or maybe three; my notes are not clear) questions stood out for me, questions which explored Dennett’s claim that, despite our robots-made-of-robots-made-of-robots bodies, and the unthinking replicant memes infecting our brains, we humans have free will–a free will of the sort worth having. The last questioner asked whether we were actually free moral agents, or whether we were the hosts to parasitic moral memes; Dennett’s reply did not really satisfy me (nor my philosopher friend). Dennett made the analogy (a big part of his talk, too) of eukaryotic cells enjoying the benefits of the combined prokaryotic cells which compose them, and of humans enjoying the benefits of our symbiotic memes. All well and good, as far as that goes, but it seemed a strain to speak of memes as evolving separately, substrate-free, not caring about their human hosts other than as a means to reproduction, and then to turn around and claim that as a portion of our free will!

Perhaps I am misunderstanding him, but I have certainly read enough of his writing to doubt that, and I have read enough to know that Dennett misunderstands some aspects of some areas of my own expertise (which I would go into detail about, but it would rather get in the way of trying to remain an anonymous cuttlefish), so I have no illusion that he is infallible.

In another example of memetic transfer, I offer a replicated song. The structure (and tune, if you are inclined to sing it) are replicated from the original by Joni Mitchell; the first replication by Judy Collins shows that structure, descended with modifications in the chords, can successfully sell. Both versions are beautiful. Mine, less so.
Memes, it seems, are parasites
Inside our minds, so Dennett writes;
Poetic turns, and verbal flights
Evolving in our brains
But then he claims that we are free
To choose among the things we see
It doesn’t fit, it seems to me,
His explanation strains

I’ve looked at memes and at free will
From every way I can, but still
In spite of Dennett’s siren call
I don’t believe we’re free… at all

Memes are things that replicate
At really an astounding rate
From blind selection, they create
A culture that evolves
But now the concept gives me pause
I’ve got to stop and look for flaws
This explanation—might it cause
More problems than it solves?

I’ve looked at memes and at free will
From every way I can, but still
In spite of Dennett’s siren call
I don’t believe we’re free… at all

Love and hate and peace and war
Are memes that were selected for
Dreams and themes you can’t ignore—
Memetic, every one.
It seems the memes are in control
They take the place, they play the role
We used to say required a soul
Now souls are all undone

I’ve looked at memes and at free will
From every way I can, but still
In spite of Dennett’s siren call
I don’t believe we’re free… at all

I don’t think I’ll ever quite get the hang of this time-space continuum thing. Here in the real world, it won’t be Valentine’s Day for many hours yet, but in the mystical Land of Oz, Valentine’s day has been either here for hours or done and gone some weeks or years ago, I can’t keep it straight. But just as ScienceWoman’s boots inspired a verse, Podblack Cat‘s time-space coordinates, and her mere existence, inspired another. Happy Valentine’s Day, Kiddo!

A Valentine’s poem for my sweetheart Down Under
Where summer is winter, and springtime is fall,
Where lightning is loud as the brightest of thunder
And dangerous drop-bears are feared most of all.

Down Under, where everything’s mixed up or backwards,
You have to be careful to mean what you say:
A whispered “I love you” is vicious attack words,
So what should I write on this Valentine’s Day?

I’ve heard it’s romantic, in Western Australia,
To bash someone’s head with a didgeridoo;
And a compliment—one guaranteed to not fail ya:
“Your lips are the bung of a red kangaroo!”

I’ll romantically fasten this poem to a brick,
And lovingly toss it through her window-glass:
“G’day to my sweetheart who’s making me sick:
Happy Valentine’s Day, you old pain in the ass!”

In the “small town news” file, this story made the front page!

Evelyn Ferland’s Valentine’s Day gift came two days early this year after the 70-year-old Newington resident woke up Thursday morning to find a giant heart shape had frozen into her backyard pond.

Ferland, along with eight other women in her Bible study group, all fell witness to the spectacle Thursday and have each deemed it to be “a Valentine’s Day miracle.”

I love the “fell witness to the spectacle” rather than “saw”, and “deemed it to be” instead of “called it”. Gotta have the right miracle language, after all.

Even Denise Williams-Labbe, 47, said she believes the formation of the heart shape was a gift from God.

“God made it and gave it to her (Ferland) as a Valentine,” she added.

Because Ferland’s home is located near the Pease Tradeport and planes carrying troops fly over the property all the time, Labbe said she believes the godly creation could be a special gift for the troops as well.

Ah, well, there you have it. It all makes sense now.

When Evelyn Ferland glanced out of her window
The ice on her pond looked a little bit odd;
In perfect proportions, a heart on the surface—
A valentine message, delivered by God.

Eight women, who gather to study the Bible
At Evelyn’s cabin each Thursday, agreed:
The image was clearly a Valentine Miracle;
God was the one who accomplished the deed.

The valentine sits where the planes fly above it,
Where troops from the tradeport could see it below.
One woman believes that’s the point of the message—
So soldiers can see that God loves them, you know.

How sweet, that this kind and omnipotent being
Should carve such a message, a beautiful heart
To lighten the spirits of soldiers returning
From war-zones, where God must refuse to take part.

I picture a soldier, returning from duty
Who looks out to see a heart, carved in the ice—
He scratches the stump where his leg once continued,
And knows that God loves him, and murmurs “how nice.”

Omnipotent God could bring peace to the people,
Iraq, or Afghanistan—far, far, beyond—
But God, it appears, is too busy to do it;
He’s carving a miracle heart on a pond.

Ok, this guy is either my new hero or my nemesis. I haven’t decided yet. (video at link)

Related story:

“Everyone should find his own Darwin,” Mr. Milner says. “The man was so large. He was a zoologist, a botanist, an explorer, a travel writer, a philosopher, an abolitionist, a doting father, a radical intellectual revolutionary with an utterly conservative and blemish-free lifestyle. He revolutionized every field he touched, and he was trained in none of them.”

O.K., he was large. Granted, there are many Darwins to find. But until Mr. Milner came along, no one had ever found Darwin the Singing Comedian. There were not a lot of laughs in “On the Origin of Species,” and its author said that just the thought of public speaking made him sick to his stomach. He had such bad stage fright that he asked someone else to read his landmark paper to the Linnean Society.

Somehow, though, Mr. Milner has turned the shy naturalist into a suavely bemused performer doing patter songs about trilobites, garfish and tortoise shells. (You can see excerpts at nytimes.com/science.)

My Darwin song will be up on or before Darwin Day, this Thursday.

PZ reports on Daylight Atheism’s recent emails…

Y’know what’s fun? Putting yourself into the mindset of someone who writes that sort of letter. Imagining that every time you see someone whispering in someone else’s ear, they are talking about you. Imagining that a national press conference contains secret messages, if only you can decode them. Imagining that there is this vast conspiracy of competent government workers, running the world from behind the scenes, and you are the only one who sees the puppet masters at work. Imagining that the buildings you don’t go into don’t even have to be finished on the inside, since the outside is all you will see. Imagining that just outside of your line of sight, people are planning what will happen to you. Paranoid, yes, but delusions of paranoia go hand in hand with delusions of grandeur. How important you must be, to have discovered this plot. How important you must be, to have such a vast conspiracy attempting to fool you.

Y’know what’s not fun at all? Thinking that way all the time.

Dear sir–

I am writing this, in secret, with a pen dipped in my blood–
There are mind-controlling substances in ink–
To expose the vast conspiracy, existent since the flood,
That controls the way the common people think.
I have stumbled, inadvertently, upon the subtle plan,
And I’m worried that my life may be in danger;
It’s the greatest vast conspiracy in all the reign of Man,
Which is why I’m writing you, a perfect stranger.
When I tell my friends and family, they merely roll their eyes–
They are clearly in the Legion of the Beast–
And I’d never tell the Media-it doesn’t fit their lies–
And the Military surely are policed.
As soon as this is posted, I will change my hiding-place;
I’ll find a way to read how you condemn
And expose the Evil Legion; rip the Mask off of their Face!
Unless… Of course!… Oh, Shit!… You’re one of Them!