http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/KDIimS6yo5E/mr_deity_brings_me_solace_and.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/mr_deity_brings_me_solace_and.php

To get this, you may want to look at the last episode of Mr Deity, in which Jesse and the Deity struggled with the implications of the trinity — it was hopelessly confusing. This is the blooper reel from the making of that episode.

That was hard. It makes me feel good, though, because these guys are pros…and my little incursion into their world left me impressed with how difficult it is to put together even these shorts.

If they ever put out the bloopers from my episode, though, I'm going to have to cry.

warren_ellis

Ariana Osborne, designer of this place, SHIVERING SANDS, etc., talking about POD and the book, because:

…apparently, there’s a bunch of folks paying close attention to how Shivering Sands does so they can figure out if POD is “worth their time.”

And I have absolutely no fucking clue what that means, so I’ve just got to talk about it…

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/2ZChFYxHmvg/the_deep_rifts_simply_call_us.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/the_deep_rifts_simply_call_us.php

I hereby declare this the official theme of the whimpering, pathetic, anti-atheist backlash of 2009: there are Deep Rifts in atheism. It's all over the place, and it's a little weird.

YOU would think, wouldn't you, that one of the principal attractions of atheism would be the complete absence of schisms. Where the devout always seem to be working themselves up into a frenzy over some obscure theological point, non-believers can glide through life, absolved, as they are, of the need to negotiate the terms of their disbelief. If there's no God, there is no message. And if there's no message, then there's nothing much to argue about.

Well, we do have a complete absence of schisms, because we don't any central dogma or doctrine. I wish this weren't so difficult for the believers to understand. Each of us has our own, individual goals and follows their unique paths to understanding. Nobody is looking at Paul Kurtz and Christopher Hitchens and saying that they're so different that they can't both be atheists. There is no atheist pope, no atheist catechism, no atheist holy book.

And nothing to argue about? Oh, we have and always will have a million things to argue over — it's just that they tend not to be whether Jesus was of the similar or same substance as God, but instead about real world politics and about ideas that matter. As anybody who has attended a meeting of atheists knows, we love to argue. We're ordinary human beings in that regard, despite repeated claims by apologists for religion that godless and faithful are different species. Really, when I'm on my deathbed, if my wife wants to keep me going for a little longer, all she has to do is bring in editorials like that by Dani Garavelli, and I'll cling to life as long as my middle finger and my snarling muscles are still functional.

This Garavelli person is so oblivious to reality, though, it's the kind of thing to keep me jazzed up for whole minutes.

Despite this, atheism was last week rent by disagreement, proving that the need for petty, internecine squabbling runs deeper in the psyche than the need to find meaning in existence. The question that is dividing its leading proponents is how much they should be evangelising about their lack of faith. Should they adopt a live-and-let-live approach to the religious? Or should they be shouting their atheism from the rooftops in an attempt to get all the blinkered throwbacks to see the light?

Oh, just last week. We've been unified, until just then, huh? So Madalyn Murray O'Hair, to name one example, united all atheists under one banner, and no one ever criticized her approach? We've been bickering over strategy as long as atheists have been a visible part of the culture; Garavelli is remarkably uninformed if he thinks dissent just popped up last week. One of the things that has provided fuel for discussion on this blog has been constant disagreement with other godless partisans who want the mob to go one way (usually to a more complacent silence) than I want them to go — so we engage in healthy, sometimes ferocious, open argument. So what? This is our strength. We offer competing solutions, and we'll see in the end which one is most successful.

Go read Ophelia Benson's discussion of this issue. It ain't a schism. It's not something that should provide apologists any solace at all; they should regard us atheists as diverse barbarians who gird themselves for war at birth, and train themselves with a lifetime of fierce strife among themselves and against our weak, whiny foes. It's our nature to wield a wicked pen and rouse ourselves to rhetorical battle at the flimsiest slight; it should be no comfort to the frightened faitheists and followers of cultie fallacies. They should fear us, instead.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/fTW9Og5Ridc/correcting_ken_hams_standard_o.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/correcting_ken_hams_standard_o.php

I'm feeling a bit nauseous right now. I'm not sure whether I'm coming down with the flu, or whether it was merely the monthly arrival of answers update, the newsletter from Answers in Genesis, which is mainly a catalog selling garish lies.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this instead of either puking into the ceramic shrine or tossing the rag into the trash is that Ken Ham has pulled his usual stunt of pulling a quote from some godless critic of his "museum" and wrapping a pious sermon around it, without attribution or linkage. In this case, the quote is from someone Ham refers to only as "a secular humanist" or "this secularist", and here it is:

For me, the most frightening part was the children's section. It was at this moment that I learned the deepest lesson of my visit to the Museum: It is in the minds and hearts of our children that the battle will be fought; and it is they who will suffer the most because of this.

Helpful fellow that I am, I will give the citation the neglectful fraud 'forgot' to make. The quote comes from Patrick of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Congratulations, Patrick! You know you're doing good when the creationists start using your words in their fundraising!

Everyone should read the rest of his article on the Creation "Museum", too — it's the criticism Ken Ham doesn't want anyone to see, after all.

Now I have to go throw this ugly mag away, and hope my symptoms disappear.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/JjlFSn4r15I/evolution_in_two_minutes.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/evolution_in_two_minutes.php

Discover Magazine announced a contest to create a two-minute video explanation of evolution many months ago, and we finally have a winner. All five of the entries are good, so go to the link and watch them all!

warren_ellis

1. Entrance to the Hotel Rivington, 2. prejuice, 3. New Hair, 4. New print: Honeydrip, 5. FA choker, 6. On final approach

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/G0GoABS_mFg/the_cameraman_speaks.php

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/the_cameraman_speaks.php

We're learning a bit more about the fellow who was maced and arrested in Chicago, thanks to the efforts of the Chicago Ethical Humanist Society; members of that group are busily writing to me to let me know the Whole Truth of the incident, and why they were justified in siccing the police on Sunsara Taylor's cameraman. It's weird, though: they keep telling me how bad and awful and wicked this fellow is — his name is Gregory Koger, by the way — but they won't say what he did that justified the police assault on him. And that is dismaying. The ethical society doesn't seem to care much about ethics and logic and justice.

So I got this email:

PZ, this is the man - in his own words - whom Taylor recruited to be her cameraman.

What do you think she thought his reaction would be when told by the police to stop/leave?! She knew he would snap, fight, and would get pulverized in the process.

Are you still full of admiration for her?

I followed the link, and the answer to the question is more complicated than a yes or no.

Koger is an admitted jailbird. He committed some very serious crimes and served some very serious jail time. He probably is a little bit scary; maybe a bit frustrated, and definitely angry with the system.

Yet when you go to that link, what you also discover is that he's ambitious and is trying to improve himself through education. He thinks, he writes, he studies. He's active in the Communist Party, which, while I don't care much for the revolutionary agenda, is definitely motivated by a strong sense of social justice, and I can understand why someone who is being judged by the comfortable bourgeoisie as a thug who deserves to be beat up by the police would find it appealing.

What I can't understand is how someone who identifies themselves as an ethical humanist would decide this fellow human being was nothing but a mad dog brought to the event to provoke a violent incident. What they don't understand is that I'm not speaking out because I idolize Bob Avakian (I don't) or think Maoism is the answer (I don't) or that I think Sunsara Taylor should not be criticized (not at all) — it's because the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago is betraying what ought to be the basic principles of such a society: tolerance, engagement, argument, discussion.

One of the things I do admire about the Communists is that they do reach out to the poor, the oppressed, the imprisoned, and they try to address the injustices our society commits. It's a shame that ethical humanists can't do the same, but instead treat a former criminal as a pariah who has to be put down.

The members of the EHSC should really stop writing me. Every time they do, I'm a little more appalled at their attitude.

warren_ellis

THE SPOILS by Zola Jesus is one of my favourite albums of this year.  But it’s kind of hard to find on CD.  (The mp3 download is easy to find, I’ve even seen it on Amazon, and got mine at eMusic.)  But now there’s a store open at zolajesus.com, where you can buy it, her other records, and a t-shirt that I’m going to pick up for Lili.

warren_ellis

Nick Barrucci from Dynamite Comics asked me to do him the favour of posting this. This seems like an entirely worthy charity, well deserving of your investigation:

Saved Whiskers Rescue Organization, Inc. announced today that world renowned painter Alex Ross has donated an original piece of classic Catwoman art to Saved Whiskers Rescue Organization, Inc. (S.W.R.O.). The piece was created exclusively for Saved Whiskers Rescue Organization to raise money to help rescue animals. The piece will be auctioned through Ebay at the following URL: eBayISAPI.dll-ViewItem&item=250524615645 . The piece is signed by Alex Ross and measures 10.75 inches wide by 23 inches tall and has never been seen anywhere…

Full press release at the link.

nineloc

Originally published at Left Of Center. Please leave any comments there.

Aerosmith Says Steven Tyler Has Quit – ArtsBeat Blog – NYTimes.com.

Now, fellow Americans, we can get on with the business of healing.

I’d say move along, nothing to see here, but it’s been apparent to me that there has been nothing to see in Aerosmith for…hell.  I gotta go back to Permanent Vacation for that.

Oh, that was their comeback?

Right.

warren_ellis

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week in our joint guise as the International Electrophonic Unit. Basically, we take some of the stupider things I’ve said on Twitter and elsewhere, often in a state of extreme alcoholic refreshment or severe sleep deprivation, and put them on a t-shirt. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

So, every Monday, I’ll post the new shirt here, and you can peer at it more at http://www.cafepress.com/electrophonic.

Anyway. I present to you T-Shirt Of The Week #003: FUCKABLE ZOMBIE:

We also offer a couple of perennial items. Mostly because I wanted one of these for myself:

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.