It Overtakes Me/The Stars Are So Big, I Am So Small…
January 15th, 2007 by 
drunkentune
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January 15th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
AWESOME!
January 15th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Just little break from the pedantic dyslogy. (Ooh! Big words! … but not as big as W Cephei!)
January 15th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Interesting…
I think this attitude is somewhat strange, as if size is the determining factor in importance. I come across this “humanity is just insignificant specks” mentality a lot when dealing with atheists. Is that just my experience, or would you(dt) say that is a more or less common idea among atheists?
January 15th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
I think reflections of awe based on mankind’s smallness are human. David hit this same cord when he said:
January 15th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Ben–
“humanity is just insignificant specksâ€
Well, if someone on Mars was viewing Earth with a super high powered telescope that’s the way they would see us. Heck, the politicians in Washington see all of us dumb voters as such unless it’s an election year.
Do you think God populated any other planets or galaxies or universes with creatures similar to Earth’s?
January 15th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
RE infidel:
God was too busy having a hissy fit over lefthanded people who ate shellfish, and homosexuals who wore mixed fibres to populate the rest of the galaxy.
So he created the rest of the universe with only right handed androids who reproduce asexually.
January 15th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
In the Northern Hemisphere,the early thinkers and teachers noted that their own shadows moved from left to right, as does the shadow of a stick or a sundial move from left to right during the course of the sun across the heavens.
In that same northern hemisphere, however, if you want to check the path of the sun across the heavens, you have to face south, and the sun moves from your left to your right.
Therefore, our preference for the right over the left may be based in ancient mythology, ancient astrology, ancient sun worship, where the sun was moving AWAY from the left towards the right.
Ancient sun worshippers in the northern hemisphere, (modern religions were probably influenced by these thoughts too), would have seen their god, the sun, moving steadily away from the left and towards the right.
The same pattern can be seen when travelling southwards from the northern hemisphere in a ship.
When the ship is travelling from the northern hemisphere southwards towards the equator, the sun appears to rise to the left (east), reaches its highest point almost straight overhead, and sets to the right (west). When the ship is far to the south of the equator, then the sun continues to appear to rise to the left (east), reaches its highest point due behind (north), and sets to the right (west).
That this was the path that the ancients believed their god took, as it moved across the sky, was probably enough reason for them to be suspicious of the left. Don’t ya love superstition?
January 15th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
“Well, if someone on Mars was viewing Earth with a super high powered telescope that’s the way they would see us. ”
Yes, and then the Martian would be extremely excited about the discovery, much more excited than upon seeing a really large star.
“Do you think God populated any other planets or galaxies or universes with creatures similar to Earth’s?”
I don’t know. I don’t see why not. Though, if there is any intelligent life out there, I don’t think we will ever make contact with them, due to the rarity of planets appropriate for the development of life.
January 15th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
“the Martian would be extremely excited about the discovery”
Especially if his high tech telescope was powerful enough to be able to see inside Area 51 and he recognized the space alien the government has kept hidden in that building since the 1940’s as his long lost father!
January 15th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown, and things seem hard
or tough.
and people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
and you feel that you’ve had quite enouuuuuuuuugh…
Just
re-
member that your standing on a planet that’s evolving,
and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour…
That’s orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
the sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
are moving at a million miles a day.
in an outer spiral-arm at forty thousand miles an hour
of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars,
it’s a hundred thousand lightyears side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand lightyears thick,
but out by us it’s just three thousand lightyears wide.
We’re thirty thousand lightyears from galactic central point,
we go ’round every two hundred million years.
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions,
in this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
in all of the directions it can whiz.
As fast as it can go, that’s the speed of light you know;
twelve million miles a minute, that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember when your feeling very small and insecure,
how amazingly unlikely is your birth,
and pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
’cause there’s bugger-all down here on earth!(Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life) (.mp3)
Living in a backwater part of the universe on a little blue planet doesn’t make me feel either significant or insignificant. It’s more or less true, so you can make the value judgement.
If the Earth blew up tomorrow, the universe wouldn’t be much different than it is now. I’d care, as would you, and most everybody else.
January 15th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
“Living in a backwater part of the universe ”
What makes it backwatery?
“If the Earth blew up tomorrow, the universe wouldn’t be much different than it is now.”
Well, it would be significantly different. The difference between a living body and a dead one.
January 15th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
ben,
It ain’t in the center; it’s in the boondocks.
Do you care about the ant when you step on him? Do you care about the wars between ant colonies? The ants care; I don’t.
The universe will keep on moving, just as we do. We don’t wax sadness at the death of ants; why should the universe?
January 16th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Internet Infidel:
That’s an interesting question. Growing up, Christians would tell me there could not be life on other planets because the Bible would tell us so if there was. I’m not so sure about that kind of use of the Bible — is if it contained all significant historical and scientific knowledge for all time.
If there is life on other planets, I’ve thought perhaps they would not make themselves known to us. An alien civilization with such advanced technology as to be aware of us before we were aware of them would hopefully evolve culturally to understand the impact of such contact. When I think about the impact of European contact with other areas during the age of colonization, I dread to think what alien contact would mean if they were not culturally advanced.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs is a fascinating movie because it explores the juncture between faith and alien contact. Most people don’t like it because they want a thriller or an alien movie, but M. Night is talking about something totally different: how people have faith. Even without the aliens, it is interesting. Night’s proposal — using a priest who lost faith and found it by seeing ’signs’, his brother who wants it for a security blanket, and his children who more or less have it for an unexplained reason — is a great exploration of the idea of faith. Especially in Graham’s (Mel Gibson) case, faith is picking out a pattern of events, coming to a conclusion that there are no coincidences and someone is in control of all events, and forming trust in God because of the pattern witnessed.
January 16th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
“It ain’t in the center; it’s in the boondocks.”
Not being in the center makes something boondocky? So… New York is boondocks? And Montana isn’t?
I wonder where this meme that the Earth is a backwater got started, because I hear it all the time, “galactic backwater.” From whose perspective? So weird.
“Do you care about the ant when you step on him?”
A little bit, yes. I can, or I can not, but no so with the universe.
“The universe will keep on moving, just as we do.”
Well, not at all like we do, because the universe doesn’t think. You’re anthopomorphizing the universe.
“We don’t wax sadness at the death of ants; why should the universe?”
You sound like a pantheist. The universe can’t care about what we do, any more than a rock can.
January 16th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
ben,
You just answered your own point. The universe cannot care what happens to us. If the Earth were to explode, no one would care, because no one would be around the care. Your distinction between life and death on a cosmic scale is arbitrary: it’s unimportant to the universe at large. It sure matters to me, though!
The historical belief in a geocentric universe was in part because it made us feel important: ‘The universe was created just for us. We are not a cosmic afterthought. We are special and unique.’
Knowing that we are not in the center of the universe (relatively living in obscurity to the center, several hundred-thousand lightyears away) surrounded by billions of other stars neither makes me feel significant or insignificant. It just is.
January 16th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
“You just answered your own point.”
Yep. We living things of the Earth the only ones, so far as we know, that can care about anything.
I think what I am ultimately trying to point out here is the really strange anti-human attitute that says that because we are relatively small, we don’t matter. Whether or not you believe in God, you have to admit that we are special and unique, at least so far as we can determine, and if not perfectly unique, at least extremely rare.
January 16th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
ben,
I agree: we’re very rare; but perhaps my baggage-laden terms (’boondocks’, ‘backwater’) I’ve used are a mistake. Are we ’special’? We know we’re rare, but I don’t see the leap to the implied underpinnings of ’special’ on a cosmic level. I’m not so sure we are even on a genetic level. We’re not so much individual snowflakes in biology. On a personal, humanistic level? Of course I think we’re special and unique - but also worth a good deal.
But I don’t see how we are special (in the implied sense of value or worth of human life) on a grander scale than on a human level.
January 16th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
There it is again!
“But I don’t see how we are special (in the implied sense of value or worth of human life) on a grander scale than on a human level.”
I hope I’m not belaboring the point, but here again I see reflected in your statement the idea that somehow there is a grander scale than the human scale, at least naturalistically speaking.
In what way, other than size, is anything grander than intelligent life?
I am trying to think of some sort of hierarchy of complexity, perhaps you can help me fill in the details: at the lowest level we would find relatively static matter (maybe like an inert rock?), up to dynamic matter undergoing some process (convection or something), then up to something like a planet with multiple processes, then to life, with multiple directed processes, on upwards to intelligent life with multiple directed processes and the ability to manipulate information.
January 16th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
ben,
I like your ideas. I’ve been thinking them over, and I’ll try to respond as best I can. Mostly I’m just thinking out loud.
Two points:
1. Why must intelligent life be above other forms of life in a hierarchal scale? It seems arbitrary to me. My dog has a far more complex sense of smell than any human, cockroaches can use each brain cell far more flexibly than a human (even their neurons are packed into their brains ten times more densely than the human brain), bonobos, unlike their cousin homo sapiens, have 24 chromosomes, and not 23. Some insects have far more chromosomes than we have, and even have more genetic information. Intelligence and memory are just adaptive traits, just like a sense of smell.
Why is the ability of an organism to handle and store information somehow superior to super-ants that can bite the ground so hard they can shoot themselves into the air? Their bite is the fastest self-propelled strike in the animal kingdom.
I guess what I’m saying is, a can be more complex than b, but that does not necessarily make a grander (or better, or superior) than b. All it says is that it’s more complex. (Your hierarchy of complexity still says nothing on how a human is better than a rock. I still think humans are better than rocks, though, so don’t you forget it!)
We could have a supercomputer that can process and manipulate more information than the entire human species. That says nothing about it’s grandness.
Or, expressed with your statement ‘other than size, is anything grander than intelligent life?’, but flipped: how is life, other than our personal opinion, grander (or better, or greater) than non-life?
You could get around this, I suppose, by arguing that intelligence and memory are somehow special, or, that things that are more complex are innately grand.
2. If we set up a hierarchy, we could put biological systems at the top (and the ability to handle numerous processes still higher up), but couldn’t we also put matter on the subatomic level as the most complex, compared to matter as we see it? A static rock and the human brain are fundamentally of the same material: just because it is expressed in one form as a rock and another as a brain does not make the brain any better (other than we all make the value judgment that it is).
Perhaps dark matter, still the least understood force in the universe to date, is more complex than matter, atoms, or any biological organism?
Maybe light itself - both a particle and a wave, something no other thing in this universe exhibits, which can, according to physicists at the University of Rochester, travel backwards, slow to a crawl, or even arrive at it’s destination before it left - is more complex than dark matter.
January 16th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Maybe what we need to do is think about the idea of complexity in general, because many of the things you listed as being “complex” don’t really strike me as such. I mean, when you say “My dog has a far more complex sense of smell than any human” what you mean to say is that your dog’s sense of smell is far more accurate. BUT, when you say that a cockroach can use its braincells more flexibly than humans, THAT might be an indication of some level of complexity that we might not posess, because, if I understand you correctly, the cockroach has some sort of uber-function to its braincells that it can rearrange and reconfigure them.
What is complex? What is merely compound? What is simple? How does “directedness” play into this? (By directedness I mean systems that have a purpose within their context: animals have a purpose to make more animals, but a rock doesn’t have any purpose to its rockiness. That’s a bad definition, I know, but I’ve only just started thinking about this.)
January 16th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Ben–
“In what way, other than size, is anything grander than intelligent life?”
I may be confused but I thought you were a believer so I’m going to take a stab at this. If you believe in an eternal AFTERlife isn’t that supposed to be far grander than anything here on earth? “Well I don’t know, but I’ve been told, the streets of Heaven are lined with gold…Whoooeee! Pretty scary!”
-Bob Dylan
January 16th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Soulster–
“If there is life on other planets, I’ve thought perhaps they would not make themselves known to us.”
I have always wondered how we could be the only creatures in this vast universe, and from all the sci-fi movies about space aliens I’m evidently not alone (not that I fancy the notion of little green men with three eyes). I feel we’ve established that most all of us believe in some sort of evolution so it could be quite possible that there has been life on other planets that is now extinct (space photos seem to show the evidence of water on Mars), or life is just now forming on some faraway planet not in our galaxy. If we have evolved to adapt to the conditions of Earth then it would be possible for some other life form to have done the same on a planet where we could not survive in our present evolved form. I don’t expect other life forms to look like us either. These questions won’t be answered in my lifetime, or maybe never.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I’ve always thought it would be interesting if alien lifeforms were formed from silicon, and not carbon. An electical storm could provide energy to a conductive group of cells, much as photosythesis does with plant cells - or could just wipe them out with a power surge. The idea of a lifeform resting dormant for years until a strike of lightning or friction from an amber-like substance - perhaps living in sea brine (or something else conductive) - spurs cellular growth.
It’s fun to dream.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
InternetInfidel– Yes, I am a believer, and that’s why I wrote “at least naturalistically speaking.”
January 17th, 2007 at 12:19 am
ben:
I wonder if part of the problem you’re talking about has to do with teleology [wiki]. Modernism has enforced a spartan, Newtonian cause-and-effect understanding of reality that is devoid of any conversations of purpose. According to the current philosophy, purpose has to do with value, so it is excluded from the world of facts and anything that has to do with them. According to materialism, there is no purpose to a man or an animal or a rock, other than a subjective one defined by a human opinion, which has nothing to do with science, or so the arguement goes. They simply are. He can speak of facts of how they tick, what they are made of, etc., but we are moving outside of fact and science to talk about any purpose. Anything that borders on teleology is excluded from the conversation. So life is divided into fact and value, public and private, objective and subjective. Now I’m not a fan of this dichotomy, but it could be that where the difference lies between you and drunkentune is that you allow teleology or think it a productive line of thought (and I’d be with you there).
January 17th, 2007 at 12:46 am
soulster,
I think you’ve made an excellent point. I honestly wasn’t thinking of naturalism or teleology at all until you pointed it out. How would you go about using a teleological argument to advance ben’s argument?
I’m not sure it’s modernism you’re thinking of; cause-and-effect is one of the foundations of science. Modernism, as I see it, adopted an empirical way to explain the universe around us. I’m a big fan of Stravinsky and Joyce (along with 90’s noise-rock and Frank Zappa), and I suppose I do tentatively follow modernist thinking (rational thought and objective reason) without purposefully attempting to in most of my daily life.
Yet, I’m a pessimist when it comes to humanity’s future and tugged towards postmodernism’s political arguments. I’m not a conservative; I’m not a liberal. I’m not a socialist; I’m not a libertarian. With politics (a big part of modernism and postmodernism), I’m a little all over the place. Mostly I just read.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:14 am
Good call, soulster. I don’t think that an atheistic view would exclude a contextual teleological description of a phenomena, just an overall teleological description for the universe as a whole. Though, I agree that perhaps the atheist view might predispose one to forget or ignore ‘purpose.’
InternetInfidel–Depending on the much debated coefficients of the Drake equation, intelligent life in the universe is either “rare” or “crazy rare.” We will almost certainly never make two-way contact with aliens, even if we were ever to pick up their signals.
dt–There is quite a bit of debate as to whether silicon life is even possible, given the paucity of possible silicon molecules, as compared to carbon. But when you’re dealing with a borderline pseudo-science like astrobiology, why the heck not have silicon life.
I recently read that chlorophyll is probably the only molecule that can efficiently change light energy to chemical energy. In other words, no matter where you go in the universe, plant-like life will mostly be green. I was disappointed.
January 17th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Well, in the second part of Comment 20, Ben talks about animals having a purpose over rocks. If such a purpose exists, that would make life more important than non-life, and the most purposeful life (us) the most important of all, as far as we know. Currently science talks about form and function as an ‘is’ (function follows form). Metabolism is providing energy for life. (And that’s all.) But teleology would apply a ’should’ (form follows function). Since the mechanism of matabolism provides energy, it should do so. That is it’s purpose. Or, it should do so for a particular secondary purpose. Along this line, things that can do more should do more, especially something like us, who have a great range of freedom to do shoulds. Thus we are special.
Or you might look at it this way. The universe is going from simple to complex. That journey could be called its purpose — to be come ever more complex. (Rather than just, ‘it is increaing in complexity’, ‘it should increase in complexity’.) If such is the case, what is more complex is of a higher order of purpose, thus the most complex life (us) has greater purpose and importance. Ben might jump in here and explain how teleology would work with his example better than I.
I would point out that science is getting fairly good at finding the “was” and “is” of things, but it still can’t tell us much of the ‘ought’. But we are entities focused extensively on the ‘ought’. Why not look at the ‘was’ and ‘is’ and try to figure out where it is all going so we may know our part in the ‘ought’?
Well, it’s both. Science, as we know it, has been born from the cultural soup of Europe’s ‘Enlightenment’ as a great world of knowledge and exploration was opened up by the translation of texts (mostly Greek) and the development of technology (like the telescope and microscope). The worldview created in the mix was modernism and we can largely divide the world into the modern and premodern based on the role of empirical science in the culture and it’s derivatives: division and mechanization of labor (industrialization), democracy and bureaucracy, urbanization, etc. Postmodernism is comparitively new and still holds much of the worldview of modernism, especially concerning science — a fact that has led many French philosophers to discredit the idea and say postmodernism is simply a modification of modernism. (On the other hand, some would say that the most postmodern people are reopening their worldview even to things like teleology.) Anyway, I think you’ve presented yourself as part of the modern world (and modernism) in regards to science, so being postmodern culturally and politically wouldn’t perhaps effect your views on teleology.
January 17th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Drunkentune - loved the video!
In regards to Earth being the ‘galactic backwater’… that’s not such a foreign idea in Judeo-Christian thought. (I really wonder if Christians would have made such a big deal out of being the center of the universe before the reign of Constantine.) Actually, human insignificance (and the insiginificance of the earth!) is crucial to the point of the Judeo-Christian story.
In the Torah, God chooses Israel because, inexplicably, God loves Israel, not because they’re the greatest nation. They’re slaves to another state - talk about insignificant! During the 1st century CE, Judea was an insignificant, backwater province in the Roman Empire, yet that is precisely the place Jesus lived and died. Furthermore, Jesus did not seek out the popular, powerful or wealthy; he focused his life’s work on the poor, sick and disenfranchised - the marginalized, ‘insignificant’ masses. This, too, is the calling of those who would follow Christ: seek the marginalized, sick, hungry, poor. Learn a different way of assigning ’significance.’
I know that this comment is perhaps a bit out of sync with the scientific/philosophical conversation that usually happens on this website. But my personal reasons for remaining a follower of Jesus Christ have little to do with apologetic or scientific arguments. (Not that they’re irrelevant, of course - I keep coming back here because the conversation is challenging and helpful!) Anyway, this ethic, this way of ordering the world by the teachings and passion of Jesus - loving those who would otherwise be deemed unimportant or even unlovable - that’s one of the most appealing things about the Christian faith for me.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Excellent point Kelli. As in David’s quote that I left above (from Psalm 8 ), there is something central the narrative of the Gospel about our smallness. There is a reversal of sorts going on where something as unimportant as humans, in terms of the matter of the universe, enjoys interaction and participation in that which is absolutely universal — namely God. This plays out in our incarnational and missional paths, as you point out, as we practice the reversal of the unimportant among us. This is also something increasingly central to my faith.
However, I would ask you to consider that our philospohical and scientific conversation here is important to this. As I write above, there is a absence of teleology — or the idea of purpose — in the public arena. Faith is seen as something private since it practices teleology as a form of valuation. If this reversal we speak of is going to happen in a significant way, our shared narrative tells us, it must be something ‘real’ and ‘public’ at least in those places in society we seek to affect. In my mind, my work on this blog is to, over time, see how the Gospel, embodied in who I am, interfaces with the public world of facts and disintergrates the barrier between that world and the private world of values. Facts are fine, but it is values that lead to wars, oppression, and much else that is evil. For the good of humanity, we must open up the private world of values, not to irradicate it, but to shed light upon it, and prove the role of private influences on facts in the public world — or values posing as facts.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Hey Kelli and soulster–just a point: In speaking of the smallness of humans in Jewish/Christian thought, one thing to keep in mind is that this smallness is smallness in comparison to God. The atheist conception of our smallness is smallness in comparison to big things. Same emotion (wonder and awe) but different philosophical outcomes:
1. “Our God, the one who made allll this, also made little us, and yet loves the lowest of us infinitely more than even the largest of stars.”
versus
2. “Look at allll this, now look how small we are. We are truly unimportant.”
And dt, I read up about the cockroach brain thing, awesome. And check this out: http://astrobio.net/
Fun stuff. Check out their “Great Debates” sections, illuminating.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
ben,
I dissagree. The philosophical outcome for atheism can be expressed as so:
‘Look at allll this, now look how small we are. It overtakes me.’
or
‘Look at allll this, now look at us. We’re a very rare occurance in this universe of ours.’
or
‘Look at allll this, now look at how important we think we are.’
January 17th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I realize that many philosophies are possible under the general category of “atheism”, but why then is the “we’re not important” response seemingly the most typical? Why is there a common atheist desire, so it would seem, to knock humanity off it’s supposed high-horse? Have you not noticed this tendency?
January 17th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Well, what puts us on the high-horse in the first place? Maybe a little humble pie would do us some good.
January 17th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Humility to whom?
I really would like your insight as to a possible reason for the commonality of this attitude among atheists.
January 17th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
ben,
The “high horse” attitude seems to be prevalent among many Christians. Understandably so, if humans are foremost among God’s creations. My guess, then, is that many atheists take the opposite attitude in direct reaction to what they see as unwarranted-ly high regard for humanity. Humanity IS special, but thinking we are more special than we are doesn’t get us anywhere. It could even get in the way of understanding things around us.
One prime example of this is how much trouble the Church had with the helio-centric model of the solar system. It turns out, of course, that the Earth is not the center of the solar system. But if you believe that man is first among God’s creations, then it’s not hard to see why you might have trouble accepting that Earth is not at the center of all things.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Benny,
You beat me to it - and expressed it better than I could.
January 18th, 2007 at 12:28 am
ben,
I think I’m important, but as I like to say, no matter your greatest accomplishments or harshest defeats, at least a billion Chinese could care less. If the universe isn’t even apathetic to humanity’s plight, I don’t see how we are important. To be humble, at least as I understand it, we can recognize that we are not the culmination of the universe’s direction, but are one result of the universe; that is, while at the same time retaining the human impulse to prevent pain and misery.
Really, I see three main choices atheists take: (1) cynicism, (2) existentialism, (3) humanism. I’m an odd duck, since I pull a bit from all three, depending on the context.
Cynicism:
Existentialism:
Humanism:
January 18th, 2007 at 4:15 am
This quote is posted for no other reason that other people have posted quotes. Their’s are probably relevant to the discussion, This might not be.
“Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer obey their parents. . . . The end of the world is evidently approaching.”
Sound familiar? It is, in fact, the lament of a scribe in one of the earliest inscriptions to be unearthed in Mesopotamia, where Western civilization was born.
January 18th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
“ If the universe isn’t even apathetic to humanity’s plight, I don’t see how we are important.”
Mostly because we’re the only ones who think about concepts like “important.”
January 21st, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Hey drunken and soulster - start a new thread.
January 21st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Will do. I’ve been sick lately, but I’ve got one coming up in a bit. Not much to do with religion, but it should spark some political and social discussion.
January 21st, 2007 at 10:36 pm
RE drunken
Sorry to hear you have been sick. Hope you are feeling better soon.
April 14th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
ben,
your logic (or rather, lack of) astounds me.
drunkentune,
you forgot about the fourth and most influential sept of atheism - those who believe that jesus takes it up the ass.