I’m normally a fan of the United Nations — I think more international cooperation is important — but they’ve just made a bad decision, voting in favor of a measure to condemn “defamation of religions”. It’s another example of the way religion tries to preserve its inanities by restricting criticism since, after all, it cannot survive any kind of critical thinking. And then there’s this comment:

And don’t forget that no less an authority than Canada’s own Louise Arbour, former UN high comissioner of human rights, wrote in response to a complaint about the publication of those famous Danish cartoons “I find alarming any behaviours that disregard the beliefs of others. This kind of thing is unacceptable.”

We have to respect the beliefs of others? Well, I think my belief that Canada needs to send me one million dollars is far more deserving of respect than the idea that torturing and killing incarnations of a god somehow exempts me from punishment for something my many times great grandmother did while frolicking naked in a garden. SO WHERE’S MY CASH, LOUISE?

I’ll be spending my day at this symposium, “Understanding evolution: the legacy of Darwin”, most of today. It’s about to start, so I’m not going to say much before I focus on the lectures, but it is open to the public, so if you’re in the Penn neighborhood, come on down to Claudia Cohen hall, room G17 (which we have since learned is the famous old surgical demonstration auditorium), and listen in. I’ll report later on the contents of the talks.

I’m attending a lecture by Janet Browne at the University of Pennsylvania, and the organizers asked me if I’d be willing to do something a little bit unusual — if I’d be willing to blog the talk. Obliging as always, I said yes, so here I am in the front row with a borrowed laptop typing away.

I’m practicing my art in public…should I ask for an honorarium? Tips from the crowd afterwards? At least I expect to be so boring that I won’t detract from the Janet Browne show.

The introductions are going on. As many of you know, Dr Browne is a distinguished historian of biology who wrote what is probably the best biography of Darwin ever. Tonight, she’s talking about “The Many Lives of Charles Darwin”.

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It’s annoying. I got another copy today of Joan Carroll Cruz’s Eucharistic Miracles, a typical collection of credulous fables about crackers behaving oddly, and I don’t need any more. This very silly book sent someone back about $16.50, plus postage, and it was a total waste since I already have several copies, and I just laugh at each of the ridiculous stories, anyway.

I’m going to get rid of them, though. I’m going to bring one copy along with me on my trip to Kearney, Nebraska tomorrow, and the first person to tell me he reads the blog and wants this book will get it. I’ll even desecrate it with my signature, if you want.

I’ll also bring a copy with me to Philadelphia next week, same rules.

I am not coming home with this trash. If nobody wants ’em, they’ll find their way into a hotel dumpster. Take note, devout Catholics: if you keep sending me this kind of stuff, it will just end up in a landfill somewhere, or worse, in the hands of laughing heathens.

Don’t do this. Don’t steal crackers.

During mass at around 9 AM, Ricci accepted a wafer on the Communion line, but “walked away without taking the communion into his mouth.” After refusing a priest’s requests to “accept” the wafer,

If he’d just stopped there, all would be well, but then he did this:

Ricci “turned to the priest and grabbed a handful of the wafers from the plate and attempted to leave” St. Martin de Porres Church, according to the report.

Sorry, but that is unacceptable. Blasphemy is something you can feel free to do on your own, but not when you’re disrupting other people’s rituals, no matter how silly they are.

Besides spending some time with the good people of Americans United, I’ll be giving a talk at George Mason University at 7pm on Saturday night. Here’s the flyer:

If you can’t quite read that tiny print, the information is also online at the Beltway Atheists Meetup Group and on Facebook.

Say, does anyone want to invite Obama to show up?

By the way, you should read AU’s post-election analysis of the state of the religious right. You will be disappointed to learn that they did not simply evaporate after the election.

I’m going to be in Toronto this weekend, and everyone wants a piece of me. I’ll tell you right now that I’m letting Larry Moran referee some of my time. I’m getting into Toronto in the early afternoon, checking into my hotel, and going off with Larry and a few other people for dinner before my talk. And then there’s a catered reception at 6, the talk, and then free time afterwards — go ahead, drag me off somewhere nearby and force me to drink that dangerous Canadian beer.

On Saturday afternoon, I’ll be at the University of Guelph for an informal discussion, so you can ask me questions there. Once again, afterwards I believe is fairly wide open, although I do want to spend some time with the Gregory lab…but I’m sure we can arrange something for the evening.

By the way, Skatje will be with me, and will be there at Guelph for the Q&A. I think the students at those universities might have plans for her, but you can also meet up with the godless daughter at these events.

Stuff is accumulating in my mailbox far faster than I can put it out here with commentary, so I’m just going to dump the recent pile of links here rather than my usual tactic of simply letting them disappear by neglect.

• John McCain may not be the biggest jerk in his family.

• The McCain campaign is handing out Christian voter guides. Vote for McCain because he’s not immoral!

• Chuck Norris’s nephew got an F in fifth grade because he wrote an essay on evolution that instead said god created the earth…and the teacher had a degree from the “University of Berkeley”.

• Christopher Hitchens denounces Palin. No surprise, but the man can turn a phrase.

• At least one time when a Democratic president was accused of treason, it did not end well.

• Scott Bloch was too radically conservative for even the Bush White House. Things could be worse.

• In the annals of crazy Catholicism: “Judgment Day for us is on its way. Those 47 million children our nation destroyed are still living. We have destroyed their bodies, but their souls are still alive. When our Lord comes again, they may very well be there to judge us.”

• Did you know there was a Creation Festival Tour, a planned nationwide Christian rock tour celebrating Genesis? Neither did I. Neither did anyone, apparently: it was cancelled for lack of interest.

• In the ongoing saga of Webster Cook and the forces of Catholic darkness at UCF, his impeachment from the student senate has been overturned.

• Where did Palin come from? Ambition and gullible conservative pundits.

That’s what Greg Laden says, and he wouldn’t lie. If you’re wondering what you can get her for her birthday, I’m sure she’d love it if you’d join the National Center for Science Education. It’s much better than diamonds, and cheaper, too.

Jesse Bering has an interesting article on why many people have so much difficulty holding a realistic view of death — why they imagine immortal souls wafting off to heaven, and why they can’t imagine their consciousness ceasing to exist. He’s trying to argue that these kinds of beliefs are more than just the result of secondary indoctrination into a body of myth, but are actually a normal consequence of the nature of consciousness. We never personally experience the extinction of our consciousness, of course, except for the limited loss of sleep — and we always wake up from that (at least, until the last time), so we at least have personal evidence that would inductively imply immortality.

It’s also a set of beliefs that are remarkably pervasive. Our language and culture and habits of thought make the idea of survival after death continually crop up.

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