On the way out? You should be so lucky, Bibleboy…

Shorter Joey Nelson, Spiritual Questions
Is Evolution On Its Way Out?
My strawmen, let me show you them.

I’m somewhat in awe of Joey Nelson’s post – I’ve never seen so many misconceptions, ignorance and plain old FAIL about evolution gathered together in one place before. Even AiG can’t do it as well as Joey has here.

Joey has taken internet discourse to a whole new level – by writing a post which actually fisks itself.

That is teh awesum.

Hitchens curbstomps Friel

I’m not a huge fan of Christopher Hitchens, generally; he’s arrogant, boorish and often far too pleased with himself. I get enough of that looking in the mirror to want to spend my free time on someone else doing it. There’s also his lurch to the political right in recent years; he’s probably centre-right more than right, to be honest, but he’s still to the right of me, which makes his politics occasionally distasteful. Something I saw this morning, though, has utterly redeemed him in my eyes, at least for now. This comes courtesy of the righteous PZ; cheers, Professor!

Oh, my sides!

My aching sides… If I laughed any harder, I’d give myself some kind of hernia and internal bleeding.

I was going to write a detailed critique of the ridiculousness of Joey Nelson’s post here, but I think it speaks for itself.

Next up, definitive proof that Harry Potter really, really can do magic!

-1 means he’s 11…

So this guy Twelve shows up here. I made a couple of comments on a post of his a while back, the comments of which turned into a Thread That Would Not Die! Presumably, he’s been led here by a referrer or by clicking on my name or something; that’s not really important. He then made a looooooooooooong comment on a post I wrote some time ago called Fools, Damned Fools And Christians.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t remember a damn thing about the post in question until I looked at it, and found that it was dedicated to making fun of some Christian who posted a bunch of stupid stuff. How unusual.

Anyway, this looooooooooooong comment of his was dedicated to criticising my post. That’s fine; I welcome controversy, and I’m always happy to be criticised, if only because it often helps sharpen one’s writing abilities.

In this case, however, it seems that I won’t need to strain myself too much.

Hehehe…

Hehehehe…

How true is this cartoon? A darkness supposedly filled with dragons which turn out never to have been there in the first place… A perfect metaphor.

Tagged by Gary

Gary tagged me with the sets of questions which John at Homo economicus’s weblog tagged him with, which he was tagged with by Splendid Elles… And that’s when I decided that following the chain back to its beginning might well drive me bugshit insane, and started writing the answers.

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?
I don’t think I ever officially did; I don’t think there was ever that kind of marker or milestone. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been an Atheist.

I suppose that one particular incident could be seen as relevant or similar; I remember being told off by a teacher at the age of seven or so for blasphemy. Aside from that, though, I’ve never had any kind of official coming out or anything. It’s always been something that I’ve been open and clear about with people, if it happens to come up.

I was forced into going to church services and so on by school and family, but I always refused to participate, which landed me in trouble a few times.

Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?
Technically, I suppose, in the sense of not being able to fully rule out any deity that might possibly ever exist at all anywhere, I might be classified as agnostic… But I honestly don’t have much truck with that kind of thing. Every god which has been put in front of me for consideration has been incoherent or impossible or illogical; given that none of them made any sense or were in any way believable, I don’t see much of an issue with being skeptical about them from the get-go. I tend to find myself drawing from all varieties of Atheism: I would call myself a weak Atheist, because I simply don’t believe in gods, full stop; but I also have legitimately ruled out various specific gods, so in that sense, I’m a strong Atheist; and finally, I think that given the incoherency and lack of meaning within the question, I would also consider myself a theological noncognitivist.

How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?Never have, to my knowledge.

Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?This doesn’t really apply to me, given that I never believed in the first place.

Here is a good one: Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?While being atheist technically doesn’t rule out a belief in ghosts, it’s always struck me as rather silly. If you can’t show any reason to believe in a soul in the first place, what would be the reason to believe in ghosts?

Do you want to be wrong?No. I’m happy enough as I am, and I don’t think that I or the world in general would be a better or happier place, were the existence of gods to be proven. I think they make fantastic story and novel fodder, but otherwise…

Hotbuttons

There are some topics on the internet which arouse a lot of ferocious argument. They tend to be pretty obvious – people’s hot buttons are pretty consistent in most cases, whether on the net or off.

The subject of politics figures pretty highly, of course, as does religion, in all its aspects. As an example, the consistently-busiest tag categories on WordPress seem to be on politics, religion, atheism and similar.

Fools, damned fools and Christians

My wife is trying to kill me. She must be, because she keeps telling me to look at stuff which is so profoundly stupid that it makes my brain crinkle and go phutphut.

Like just the other day, when she was comment surfing and ended up at a blog called What I Really Think, which spectacularly fails to live up to the verb in its name, although the URL seems entirely appropriate. I swear, I keep expecting to look at the screen and see that it’s written in crayon.

Funnies, though – the writer doesn’t seem to realise that she has a pride flag in her header.

The Anti-Carnival!

Well, thanks for waiting. The Anti-Carnival of Douchebags and Arseholes, alternatively known as the dancing festival of wankbags, is finally here. You were all waiting, right?

Anyway, it’s divided into the two categories, with linkage and short explanations for why said person is being put there. After the fold is NSFW, unless you live in an exceptionally weird office.

Aaarrr, Jim Lad, and other pirate noises

Over the weekend, I developed some pain in my lower back. I was rather mystified, as I hadn’t done anything to injure it that I knew of, and it seemed to go away on Monday.

Tuesday saw it come back and be quite painful, and yesterday I was off work all day. It wasn’t a constant pain, but it would twinge and be excruciating, and it seemed to have extended into my right hip, as well. I managed to get up and get dressed, but I couldn’t make it even to the end of the street before it got too bad for me to handle, and so I spent the day at home, saying “Ow…” every so often and feeling self-pitying.

Luckily as it happens, on Tuesday I’d made an appointment with the doctor for today, and I managed to hobble up there this morning to see him.

Apparently the problem is in the Sacroiliac joint, and it is called Sacroiliac joint dysfunction. Basically, it’s a problem of movement where the spine joins the pelvis; it’s very common, usually remedies itself through movement and often comes from simply sleeping in a funny position.

There’s not much to be done about it in the short term except to swallow painkillers and attempt to maintain a normal range of movement. If it remains a persistent problem, I can visit a chiropractor (I would only ever visit a McTimoney’s practitioner, of which there is a school locally). For now, I just have to wait and hope it’ll work itself out.

He also gave me a huge prescription for cocodamol; while I can usually buy it over the counter, it’s also relatively expensive to do so. This way, I get my 200(!) pills for just the cost of a prescription charge, which is cool.

So, nothing to worry too hard about. On the negative side, I did forget to ask about getting a refill on my sleeping pills, even though I don’t use them that often. Oh, well. I can manage without. I have a few left.

* * *

In other news, today is the last day for you to nominate douchebags and arseholes for the anti-carnival; I have a large number, which I will be whittling down to a small core of evil shitheadery for Friday.

Please feel free to nominate anyone who’s annoyed you lately.

* * *

On the opposite end of the spectrum, here are your weekly recommendations in honour of Thor.
Cosmodaddy has an interesting and well thought-out piece on his blog at the moment regarding the intersection of various conflicting rights and freedoms under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation Regulations) Regulations 2007. Well worth a read.

Despite being a massive jerk most of the time, Robert over at Expat Yank has a legitimate criticism piece up about the rise of sensationalist public service messages by the UK government.

The ever-clever Greg Laden has a guest blogger doing a statistical experiment about the levels of science present in science blogs.

Lottie has A Question of Ethics, in which she discusses the ethics of blogging about personal issues and problems in a truthful manner while using a pseudonym.

Gary talks about Hollywood woo and stupidity, illustrating exactly why Sharon Stone’s opinion on anything besides acting should not be taken seriously.

Helen at Bird of Paradox wrote a little while ago about gender neutral pronouns and the attempt to bring in artificial GNPs.

That’s all for now, folks.

Edit: Ampersand has a good post about the minimum wage over at Alas, A Blog, relating to Krueger and Card’s well-known studies. Definitely worth reading.