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The Bite of the Camel

Daniel Fincke of Camels With Hammers sent me an email asking me if he could quote and critique a comment I left on his site (“The Moral Argument for Free Will“) a few days ago.

I thought your second comment on my free will post yesterday raised a lot of important points for clarification and I think I want to base a post around replying to it. I often do this with my commenters’ remarks. In this case, though, since you’re one of my peers here at FTB, I’m cautious because I want to make sure you’re comfortable with remarks you make in the comments section (which sometimes aren’t as considered as an actual blog post) being put up prominently in the body of a new post and scrutinized and countered in detail. I don’t want to come off as picking on you. I am just excited because you are a gifted writer who can eloquently put the “blue collar redneck” case against “too much philosophical analyzing” and I like the idea of putting that case up and showing my philosopher’s reply to that.  But I worry about it coming off as patronizing or something.

Scrutinized and COUNTERED?? Dan, you madman, you think you can COUNTER my simple homespun redneck wisdom?

Do your worst, sir! Go ahead and be a phil-ossi-fer if you like!

Expect a visit from a couple of friends of mine, though. You’ll recognize them by the overalls and gappy teeth.

And banjos.

Dee-dee ding-ding-ding-ding-ding ding-dang.

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Taxing Churches

 

Written by a former minister, and worth a read:

In nearly every city in America, there are giant churches sitting on prime real-estate or agricultural land and they pay absolutely nothing in property tax even though they benefit from taxpayer-funded services like roads, law enforcement, schools, and fire protection. In most cities, when churches sponsor evangelical activities, they demand and receive police officer-assisted traffic control and often block off public streets for their events. Who pays for the police officer’s overtime pay for such events? Taxpayers foot the bill with property and sales tax dollars that they are not exempt from paying because they are not special and are not doing god’s work.

 

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Earthman’s Journey – Part 7 (of 8)

[ Part 1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5 — 6 – 7 — 8 ]

The Houses of Man (cont.)

As you’ve probably already figured out, there are other steps in this bigger-house progression. At some point we discover the door to yet another Outside, and find that our original family home is only a small part of a bigger place – our neighborhood or culture. For want of a better name, call this dwelling place the House of the Tribe.

Again, there’s an uncomfortable period of adaptation in settling-in to this larger space. To become a full member of our tribe, we have to learn to say the right things at the right times, to sing the right songs and make the right pledges. We have to wear the right clothes – the right boots, pants, shirts, hats and belt buckles. We have to learn the right secret handshake – and so many more things. We may even have to have the right parts of our bodies ritually scarred, or tattooed, or cut off. Continue reading “Earthman’s Journey – Part 7 (of 8)”

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Hear, Hear, Well Spoken Bruce!

Fellow FTB blogger Jason Thibeault, the Lousy Canuck, just gave me an “I couldn’t have said it better myself” moment with his repost of “Why don’t atheists just shut up and stay home?”

Well worth a read:

We atheists have been silent for a very long time; our voices are understandably rusty. For every encroachment into our personal space — for every incentive that discriminates against faithless — for every demand that people be allowed to share their love of God with others — we are being told to shut up, to stay silent, to dare not demand the same right to share our love of reason, our love of logic and our love of science. We do not speak up to evangelize atheism, for that is antithetical to our position, and we have bigger issues presently — buffering an outright attack on us by the religious.

Your right to swing your fist ends at the point of my nose, yet when your fists connect with the noses of atheists we are told to accept it and dare not swing back. I am tired of being a punching bag. I am tired of being told that I am immoral, that I am evil, that I am an abomination against society.

That is why I do not merely allow people to preach their faith on my doorstep without an answer. And that is why, when I AM at home, I reserve the right to occasionally shut the door on their faces. And that is why when I am NOT at home, I reserve the right to counter people’s vociferous shouting or unfair double standards or ridiculous pandering or antiscientific nonsense with my voice — rusty though it may be. I reserve the right to scream out, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!”

My voice is the only weapon I have against this encroachment and viral spread of religion and antiscientific thinking. And short of death, my voice will not be silenced.

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Earthman’s Journey – Part 6 (of 8)

[ Part 1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5 — 6 – 7 — 8 ]

The Houses of Man

Picture a house. Not a real house, but a kind of metaphor-house, the place where your inner life takes place. The rooms inside are furnished with your everyday thoughts, feelings and understandings.

In this particular house, there are secret doors. People can tell you that they’re there, but you never believe them, because you can’t see the doors, or any hint of them. Picture every little boy who has stoutly declared that he would never, ever want to eww, yuck, kiss a little girl. But then one day, maybe you step on certain metaphorical boards in just the right combination, or you lean against a place you never leaned against before — or maybe you just get old enough to finally see it — and a door pops open in a wall that you darned well never suspected of having a door. Continue reading “Earthman’s Journey – Part 6 (of 8)”

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Should We Ban All Religion?

A couple of Australian ad pitchmen created sample ads advocating the banning of all religion.

A television program on Australia’s ABC1 network, called The Gruen Transfer, discusses the methods, science and psychology behind advertising. Their website has a FAQ pagewhich gives the following definition: “Named for Victor Gruen, who designed the very first shopping mall. The term describes that split second when the mall’s intentionally confusing layout makes our eyes glaze and our jaws slacken… the moment when we forget what we came for and become impulse buyers.”

In four seasons of Gruen, they’ve suggested bringing back child labour, invading new Zealand, euthanasing everyone over 80 and many more ridiculous ideas. This week, they finally found a subject so untouchable that they had agencies actually decline to take part. Adelaide’s Jim Stapleton came up with the controversial Pitch suggestion: a campaign to ban religion.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhAKzYr4-wg&w=450&h=283]

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Invasion of the Buddy Snatchers

There’s a parasite that eats crabs from the inside. (I read about it in Carl Zimmer’s excellent Parasite Rex, reissued this year in a 10-year anniversary edition.)

It enters the crab by penetrating a weak spot, then spreads long rootlike tendrils through the crab’s interior. The crab’s immune system fails completely to recognize it, and it soon takes over the hapless crustacean, body and brain. The crab continues to eat, to feed the thing, but it can no longer molt and grow, regrow severed claws, or mate and produce offspring. In time, the parasite produces eggs, and the crab nurtures and spreads them as if they were its own.

It looks like a crab. It moves like a crab. For all I know, it tastes like a crab. But it isn’t a crab. Continue reading “Invasion of the Buddy Snatchers”

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Earthman’s Journey – Part 5 (of 8)

[ Part 1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5 — 6 – 7 — 8 ]

Molly (cont.)

This kind of thought wasn’t completely new for me – I confess I’d dwelt many times on the fortunes of other men, wistful and envious of the assets they enjoyed.

“What would it be like to be him?” I had asked myself, him way up there with all that money, with a daddy who provides private airplanes and the family’s own airport, with new trucks and horses and jet skis and scuba diving lessons there for the asking.

“What would it be like to be him?” … riding high, the life of the party, the totally unselfconscious, self-assured fellow who plays pool like a master, drives cars like a professional racer, rides horses and ropes calves like a rodeo champion. Continue reading “Earthman’s Journey – Part 5 (of 8)”

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Earthman’s Journey – Part 4 (of 8)

[ Part 1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5 — 6 – 7 — 8 ]

Molly

For eight years in my 20s and 30s, I was a draft horse teamster at a resort-town ranch, driving a two-up hitch of massive blond Belgians or coal-black Percherons, on a huge hay wagon for mid-summer meadow rides, or on big sleighs that would glide over the high-mountain snow on moonlit winter nights.

Molly was one of the ranch dogs. She was no particular color – a little black, a little brown, a little gray, all mixed up in a dark grizzle. Like most cowdog breeds, she was a sturdy little thing, weighing forty pounds at most and standing about 18 inches high.

She was no great spark in the personality field. Poor Molly was a bit of a slinker – one of those quiet, careful dogs who skirts around the edges of action, waiting to see if it’s safe to be noticed. Continue reading “Earthman’s Journey – Part 4 (of 8)”