1. Religious scholars mull Flying Spaghetti Monster

Comment #88398 by Blake Stacey on November 16, 2007 at 1:12 pm

Others have already made the point about the inane "militant atheist" canard, and I second JFHalsey's note about the theology student's seeming inability to get a joke. For complaints drawn out at length, see http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=393 .

2. Answers To the Atheists

Comment #30527 by Blake Stacey on April 8, 2007 at 11:49 am

Dirtpiggy (#54) said,

Sorry if it seemed like I plagiarized your post, I honestly only read it now! Great post. :)

Thanks! After reading the other comments here, I think I'll need to add something about "the New Atheism" or the "neo-atheist movement" to it. (It's just downright stupid to stick those labels on people who are saying things Epicurus said twenty-three hundred years ago! Just because three or four books saying roughly similar things all came out in the same year doesn't mean we've got a movement on our hands. The habits and coincidences of the publishing industry do not equate to profound philosophy.)

Over on my blag (http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=18#comment-16) a bloke named Joshua suggested,

In fact, maybe you could come up with seven numbered corollaries, and we could refer to specific ones by citing "Blake's X".

I like that idea. . . (-:

3. Answers To the Atheists

Comment #30330 by Blake Stacey on April 7, 2007 at 4:21 pm

I recently wrote an Epistle to the Pharyngulans (http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=18) proposing a new version of Godwin's Law, designed to handle the "fundamentalist atheist" canard.

First, it is an empirical statement:

1. In any discussion of atheism (skepticism, etc.), the probability that someone will compare a vocal atheist to religious fundamentalists increases to one.

Following this statement comes the second half, which is a judgment:

2. The person who makes this comparison will be considered to have lost the argument.

I'm not trying to make "fundamentalist" a taboo word. The point is that it's not logical to stick that word upon somebody when "strident", "vocal" or "inflexible" are actually the qualities for which you think they need criticism.

I tried to provide a memetic justification for this in my original comment.

4. Is this another Sokal Hoax?

Comment #30317 by Blake Stacey on April 7, 2007 at 2:22 pm

I am reminded of a couple bits of free-floating wisdom from the memetic sea. First is the old adage, "They laughed at Einstein, they laughed at the Wright Brothers — but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Second is a line from Kurt Vonnegut, or Kilgore Trout to be more precise. My copy of Breakfast of Champions is on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon to be any use right now, but the passage goes roughly like this:

Having been asked to be guest of honor at the Midland City Arts Festival, prolific yet morose writer Kilgore Trout finds himself rather at a loss. Worse yet, he's expected to speak at a panel which is purported to investigate the "role of the novel in the age of McLuhan", or some such. Now, almost everything Trout has ever written has been published in pornographic magazines, stuck there by the publishers to provide a little filler between the lurid, formulaic photographs.

So, Trout finds himself wondering what he can possibly say to the people attending the Arts Festival. He decides to explain what it's like to spend the night in a movie theater, after which he will ask, "I don't know who this McLuhan person is, but what does he have to say about the relationship between wide-open beavers and the sales of books?"