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

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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.

The Neoceratodus campaign

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Hug a lungfish!

I’ve had about 8 requests for further information on saving the Australian lungfish. That’s a good start, and thanks to everyone who wrote in, but it’s not enough. Look at that beautiful finny beast to the right; do you want them all to die? And seriously, look at those fins: aren’t they spectacular? Don’t you want to know how they develop and how they evolved?

The Australian government is planning to dam the last rivers on which these spectacular vertebrates live, and that will be it for them. We’ll be left with nothing but bones and tissue samples and few relics in aquaria.

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Those sure are beautiful, informative bones…but we can learn so much more from the living animal.

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So let’s make one more big effort to let the Australian government know that there is international opposition to their cavalier destruction of an important and unique habitat. Losing these special creatures is a loss of scientific information and a loss of an unusual element of the Australian ecosystem.

If you’ve got a moment, write a polite and considerate letter to one or all of the following members of the Australian government. Let them know that they are planning to do irreparable damage to their environment, and the world is watching them.

It doesn’t have to be a long letter, it would be sufficient to write a brief note that says the the world values these remarkable, unique animals, and that you think more effort must be made in cooperation with the scientific community to find alternatives. Remember, though: politeness and sincerity are paramount. Don’t give them an excuse to dismiss the email as the work of cranks.

Moran on theistic evolution

Eugenie Scott is going to have to increase the length of her list of scientists out to “destroy religion.” Larry Moran (fans of Talk.Origins will recognize the name) has posted an article, Theistic Evolution: The Fallacy of the Middle Ground.

There is no continuum between science and non-science. You can’t practice methodological naturalism 99% of the time and still claim to be a scientist. It’s all or nothing. Either your explanations of the natural world are scientific or they are not.

It’s too bad his site isn’t set up like a blog—you can’t make comments there, so you’ll have to settle for making howls of outrage here, or tracking him down on usenet to complain there.

I also like this wonderful quote:

My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.

J.B.S. Haldane

Words of wisdom

Fewer open threads and more of this would make it clear why Atrios is popular.

I started this blog and adopted this style in part because I thought it was important to introduce a more combative and caustic discourse on our side. I’d be quite happy and comfortable in a world where politics more closely resembled an academic seminar – that is where I come from, after all – but we don’t live in that world and it’s a tragic mistake to pretend we do.

It’s a tragic mistake to think most creationists will be won over by kind and supportive conversation over a cup of coffee, too, or by any kind of smokescreen argument presented because we think it’s what they want to hear.