Blog Comments

That was far, far worse than I anticipated upon reading your opening paragraph. I don't think I've ever been rendered quite this speechless.

smurf the mom, clearly the answer to all life's questions.

"smurf the mom" is the best random answer to anything ever.

smurf the mom! Oh! It's all so clear now.

My brain is crying.

I'm going to read the decision myself sometime over the weekend. For now, here's a more detailed analysis from SCOTUSblog. Apparently there are other challenges pending before the Michigan judge; this was just his decision on the Commerce Clause issue. Religious freedom and due process are probably the only ones with a chance, unless the law forces states to be agents supporting the law's measures, in which case the Tenth Amendment argument becomes the best one.

Apatheists are mildly annoying. Obviously whether a non-personal god exists or not (really the only type that could exist) does not have any real impact on our lives, but that misses the point entirely. It's not the question of such a god that really matters at all, but the question of religion and how it is promoted by believers in such a detrimental way. It is organized religion and believers which require religion to be attacked, not my lack of belief in a deistic god.

I think it's because most agnostics fall for the misnomer that atheism means strong atheism all of the time. They are unaware that, in fact, their stance is truly atheism. I would agree that agnostics do a lot of collateral damage in their urge to be egalitarian. They spend too much time trying to court the religious and being that the religious are the more prominent, this is the ground to whom they give more ground.

For the same reason they fear using the title of atheism (social backlash) they actually end up attacking atheists because, to the least rational people (read: theists), this gives them more credit as being convivial.


Slightly off topic (please don't ban me), but what about the effect of apathetic atheists (I've heard them called apatheists)? I think this type of person is quite common, especially in the sciences at large. It's not that they don't want to get their feet wet, but rather that the issue of god doesn't regularly cross their mind. I find it hard to understand how they cannot feel assaulted (especially in the southern US) constantly by religious anti-science claims, but I guess some locked it the ivory towers of academia don't really have to face it.

There are times I wish these people would realize that their inability to speak up further marginalizes atheists, but at the same time, I'm not willing to martyr myself at my job over my lack of belief. Perhaps their are less apathetic than they let on and being self-preservatory. Though I suspect some are literally completely oblivious to the war going on outside their minds. How I envy them.

Given it's my Yacht, I imagine I'd be smart enough to go to international waters, where I would film it to watch over and over again.

Then, before I die, post the video on Youtube with as many different accounts as possible, and send it to as many you-tubers as possible.

Yes, "strong atheists" are being irrational. I find "weak agnostics" (the "I don't know, atheism is equally faith-based" nonsense) to be even more annoying because there's far more of them then strong atheists, and they're doing more damage by furthering the "atheism = extreme/faith-based/etc." propaganda of theists. I've never personally talked to a strong atheist (though have heard of a couple anecdotally).

I think it's largely a semantics argument and though most self-described agnostics are technically atheists (they accept believe in a god), they most likely don't like to use the bile-encrusted word atheists because atheist = evil, immoral, hateful, godless heathen.

While I find the agnostic view point from the safe side of semantics bothersome, I don't find it nearly so bothersome as the intellectually bankrupt notion of strong atheism that seems to think they can literally prove there to be no god.

A life preserver is not protection from sharks, but it can help remove you from the water before sharks notice you.

I wasn't aware life preservers protected you from sharks anyway; unless I'm confused as to what a life preserver actually is.

That might make you a hero for those two blowhards, but not a hero for the rest of the country.

The truly heroic thing to do would be to drink the bottle of wine as fast as you could then cork it back up and use that as an extra life preserver!

Ugh, you should indulge in earlier Hugh Laurie material, perhaps A Bit of Fry and Laurie? Blackadder II? Jeeves and Wooster? Good stuff, all of it.

The link, sir: A Graphic Guide to Facebook Portraits | Fast Company

Because I closed the window after you left as I was watching the new House episode, and then I was too lazy and tired to find the link again!

Weasley, why is this your blog entry and not the article I shared with you? You do know you cause me to ask two consecutive questions when you do things like this, yes?

Is the wine the life preserver? Because if I drink it, I would not trust myself with swimming in shark-infested waters and thus preserve my life. The justification sounds bad at first, but that is because you have not had a bottle of wine as well.

Clo: yeah, some of the highest-rated comments in the original article involve throwing the rest of the media elite overboard.

Shlup: sure, just buy a yacht!

Can't I do both? I wanna do both right now, actually.