This made me cry.

I don’t really even know why, but it did.

It was sent to me without attribution.

My bumper-sticker mind says 2:

No one does evil in thier own eyes.

George Carlin is dead?

It’s so strange. When I first learned that George Carlin had died, I actually said “No!” out loud.

Which makes no sense. I knew this was coming, anyone who saw the man lately knew. He was old, he was not in the best health, and he’d already done a heart attack. Besides; death is inevitable anyway. It wasn’t if he was going to die, just when.

Of course, my exclamation of denial wasn’t about the man. I never met the fellow, we had no relationship and no emotional investment of any sort. I am only going to miss his work.

But what a work it is. I don’t think there was a single thing that fellow didn’t get us laughing at. He hit every subject you can imagine from the exceptional to the banal.

Even when his jokes weren’t hitting a high-water mark, he was at least making one have a look at something you’d likely not examined critically. You couldn’t fault him for failing to start up a thought or two.

Because of that, I’ve got to say again: My blurting out a “No!” doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Though he’ll no longer be around to make fun of current events, there’s probably something in the vast archives of his work that will do the job just fine.

My bumper-sticker mind says 1:

Order doesn’t come from design or from chance, it comes from our perception of a situation as “being ordered”.

Theists have changed my mind.

I started this blog thing in part with the intent of understanding the theist point of view. Though I’ve not used the blog nearly as much as I’d hoped, reading the news has been a big help in getting that understanding. Doubly so reading regular reader comments on news stories.

And theists, American Christians in particular, have managed to change my mind.

At the start I was sure that people were people. Ideas were ideas. I could understand people and ideas and enrich my life and hope that in some way enrich other’s lives too.

But some of the sheer hate and bigotry I’ve seen reguarding California’s recent Supreme Court decision just floored me. And the comments that made me most aghast came from folks professing to be Christians, including ministers!

If faith in a loving god does this, then I’ll have none of it. None at all.

Yay California!

The Supreme Court of California has gone and done a good thing.

This ruling, besides being a proper and reasonable interpretation of California law, illuminates that homosexuality is a matter of love as well as sex. It also removes an inappropriate difference in the treatment of a segment of the citizens over another - something you would think that humans would by now understand is something we can not allow our ruling body to do. Ever.

Good on the Governator of California for vowing to fight a constitutional change to overturn this ruling. Constitutions are supposed to be the backbone of law, the law being something to protect those it governs. Constitutions are not a means by which a majority may punish a minority for being different.

Boo and hiss to anyone who still thinks that allowing a same-sex couple to wed in any way what-so-ever affects anyone else. Impinges the sanctity of marriage? Oh please. Paves the way for marrying animals? Double oh please.

I hope we get to see a deluge of photos of happy new wedded couples. We sure could use some happy images in the news, don’t you agree?

Expelled? Excreted, maybe.

Expelled

People need to understand that Expelled is a ludicrous propaganda film. Disagree with the findings of evolutionary science if you will, but let’s not get to lying about the results, OK?

On smarts, stupidity and thier total failure to corrolate to religiosity.

I’m getting a bit tired of hearing folks try to claim that all religious people are stupid, or that all non-religious folks are stupid. Or their corollaries.

Intelligence has nothing whatever to do with any tendency to either faith or reason.

Reason is often simply a matter of training, and can be imbued in anyone. Even those with low intelligence can manage reason. Intelligence is the measure of how quickly an individual can come to a proper conclusion given the facts available, so a low-intelligence individual who is being reasonable will still come to reasonable conclusions given time.

Faith is an emotional response. It’s belief despite lack of evidence or contrary evidence, and one comes to such conclusions based on how they make a person feel.

You will note the two are not in any way mutually exclusive.

So what about those gender differences?

In her recent post “Women, Science, Skepticism and the Paranormal“, the Skepbitch notes that while woo seems to infect women and men roughly equally, there is a bit of a dearth of women skeptics.

She is careful to point out this is an observation related primarily to the conferences and meetings she attends, and her observation matches my own in that regard. Fortunately there are plenty of women skeptics out there such as Ellen Johnson, Margaret Downey, Kelly O’Connor, and a whole gang of smart and witty Skepchicks.

So, there are a couple of questions that leaves for me. Why are they not at the confrerences? Why are the “four horesmen” … men?

At present I can’t do more than speculate.

I am not sad.

I was told yesterday that I was pitied.

This was hardly the first time someone’s said that to me or another atheist. The people who say it have been lied to, or are making an assumption based on the false dichotomy that suggests believing in god makes one happy so not believing must make one sad.

We’ve also been called “gruff”, “angry”, “strident”, and “hateful” quite without grounds for it.