Caturday felids: writers and their cats

June 23, 2012 • 5:06 am

OMG, there’s a treasure trove of photos of writers (or other literary figures) and their cats at the “Writers and Kitties: Archive” tumblr site. Two of my favorite subjects!

I’ll post ten pictures here, but you’ll find elebenty gazillion others at the site.  The first person to guess all ten writers gets my warm congratulations and a notice on this post.  If you know your onions, you’ll be able to get at least eight of the ten. (UPDATE: that didn’t take long: reader “bonetired” guessed all ten in comment #2. But try to guess for yourself.)

I posted this one a while back:

A photobomb kitteh:

BONUSES:  You should be able to get the next two easily.  The first author once said, in a moment of depression, “The only thing that reconciles me to life now is my kitty.”

A famous cat-loving atheist; here are two things he wrote about felids:

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

By what right has the dog come to be regarded as a “noble” animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward–you will never get her full confidence again.

And to make it a baker’s dozen, here’s a photo reader “Miss May” sent me from Facebook. There’s no writer here, but it’s amusing:

The Bible is boring and insipid

June 22, 2012 • 10:24 am

Yes, I have moved beyond Sophisticated Theology™ to the horses’s mouth: the King James Bible (and believe me, it’s embarrassing to sit on a plane and be observed reading the thing).  I’ve read sections of it over the years, but am now required (by myself) to start at the beginning and plow right though.  I wonder how many visitors here have actually read the damn thing.  And although I dislike it, I feel that in some way I’ll benefit from it, for I’ll get to see how contrived, how man-made, and how truly stifling the book is to the human spirit.  And I hope I’ll better understand the delusions that afflict my countrymen.

The book is not pleasant—at least 150 pages in.  And when I think that I have 950 pages to go, my heart sinks to my metatarsals.

I know that Richard Dawkins and others tout the Bible’s beautiful poetry, and indeed, there is some, but I wonder how much of that poetry was in the original, and how much was value added by King James’s group of translators.  Now I’ve read only 150 pages (to Numbers 23) but there is precious little poetry in there. In fact, almost none.  If you regard the Bible as a book of fiction, one to be treasured for its beauty, you’d put it down before you ever got through Genesis.  No, if one must read the Bible, read it not for the beauty of its prose but as a work of fiction that has deeply influenced our culture: as a way of understanding our enemies.  If someone found this book in a used bookstore and it hadn’t become the basis of a religion, they would not prize it as a wonderful story. I’d love to see it reviewed purely as a work of fiction, without any religious connotations.

Here is my take so far:

  • The early part of the Bible is unbearably tedious.  Besides the long lists of genealogies, heads of clans, and so forth, there are excruciatingly painful descriptions of how God wants the ark of the tabernacle to be built.  Stuff like this, for example (from Exodus 26):

1 Moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them.

2 The length of one curtain shall be eight and twenty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and every one of the curtains shall have one measure.

3 The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another; and other five curtains shall be coupled one to another.

4 And thou shalt make loops of blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the selvedge in the coupling; and likewise shalt thou make in the uttermost edge of another curtain, in the coupling of the second.

5 Fifty loops shalt thou make in the one curtain, and fifty loops shalt thou make in the edge of the curtain that is in the coupling of the second; that the loops may take hold one of another.

6 And thou shalt make fifty taches of gold, and couple the curtains together with the taches: and it shall be one tabernacle.

7 And thou shalt make curtains of goats’ hair to be a covering upon the tabernacle: eleven curtains shalt thou make.

8 The length of one curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and the eleven curtains shall be all of one measure.

9 And thou shalt couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and shalt double the sixth curtain in the forefront of the tabernacle.

10 And thou shalt make fifty loops on the edge of the one curtain that is outmost in the coupling, and fifty loops in the edge of the curtain which coupleth the second.

11 And thou shalt make fifty taches of brass, and put the taches into the loops, and couple the tent together, that it may be one.

12 And the remnant that remaineth of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remaineth, shall hang over the backside of the tabernacle.

13 And a cubit on the one side, and a cubit on the other side of that which remaineth in the length of the curtains of the tent, it shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle on this side and on that side, to cover it.

14 And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams’ skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers’ skins.

15 And thou shalt make boards for the tabernacle of shittim wood standing up.

16 Ten cubits shall be the length of a board, and a cubit and a half shall be the breadth of one board.

17 Two tenons shall there be in one board, set in order one against another: thus shalt thou make for all the boards of the tabernacle.

18 And thou shalt make the boards for the tabernacle, twenty boards on the south side southward.

And that’s just a sample.  This anal description of how God wants his words encased goes on for pages!  Equally tedious are the many parts where God orders sacrifices to himself, and gives minute instructions about how the various parts of an ox should be disposed of: the head, the fat, the dung, and so on.  It’s not good literature—not at all.

Plus there’s stuff like this (from Numbers, Chapter 13)

1And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel: of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a ruler among them.

3And Moses by the commandment of the LORD sent them from the wilderness of Paran: all those men were heads of the children of Israel.

4And these were their names: of the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur.

5Of the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori.

6Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh.

7Of the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph.

8Of the tribe of Ephraim, Oshea the son of Nun.

9Of the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu.

10Of the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi.

11Of the tribe of Joseph, namely, of the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi the son of Susi.

12Of the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli.

13Of the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael.

14Of the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi.

15Of the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi.

16 These are the names of the men which Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Oshea the son of Nun Jehoshua.

Yawn.

  • God is a horrible megalomaniac.  I don’t get this at all. He’s GOD, for crying out loud: omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good.  Why the hell does he need people to praise him all the time, and why does he kill those who fail to do so? If he’s perfect, he wouldn’t need that kind of constant reinforcement.  For example, some of the Israelis, wandering in the desert, are getting sick of eating manna all the time, and kvetch about not having meat.  So what does God do? He makes it rain quails—thousands of luscious birds falling from the sky.  And then, when the people bite into those toothsome birds, God smites them with the plague for their lust, killing many of them.  What? They deserve to die because they want some real food? (Numbers 11:31-33).

As well all know, God is a horrible taskmaster, and mandates death for anyone who works on the Sabbath.  This is what happens to some poor schlemiel who wanted wood on Saturday (Numbers, Chapter 15):

32And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.

33And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.

34And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.

35And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.

36 And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses.

What kind of God is that?  How can anyone derive morality from such a thing?

The most incongruous passage is this (Numbers 14:18):

The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Yeah, really great mercy. . .

  • A lot of it makes no sense.  I was amused at Moses’s repeated attempts to get Pharaoh to let the Jews leave Egypt.  He repeatedly asks for the exit visa, Pharaoh repeatedly refuses, and so God sends frogs, or boils, or locusts, to afflict the Egyptians.  Each time Pharaoh says, “Okay, I give in—you can leave.” But then God hardens Pharaoh’s heart and makes him renege on his promise.  The plagues go on, a new and horrible one each time, and each time Pharaoh reneges on his pledge because God has “hardened his heart”.  Eventually, after all the Egyptian firstborn are killed in The Great Passover, he gives in for good, but tons of damage has already been done to the Egyptian people and their land.  My question is this:  why didn’t God soften Pharaoh’s heart so that he’d let the Jews leave? That would have avoided a lot of trouble.  This is not a believable plot.
  • It’s plainly man-made.  For one to take the words literally is unbelievably moronic.  Besides the numerous miracles, the story of Noah’s Ark, which makes no sense, there’s the fact that people live to really old ages then. Moses made it to 120, Noah lived to the ripe old age of 950.  Do Christians really buy that? Remember that the average life span at the time was certainly less than 40 years.

I know I’m in for some punishment (perhaps by readers as well!), but I’m determined to finish. Perhaps things will get better at Psalms and Proverbs. I’ve already read the four Gospels, so I know what’s to come there (spoiler: Jesus dies), but I’m told that Revelation is insane.

No, you shouldn’t read the Bible because of its poetry. The good bits, I predict, will be far outweighed by the stupid and boring bits. If you want pure good, read Dubliners or Crime and Punishment. You should read the Bible just so you can wonder what all the fuss was about.

Those of you who have read this tome: weigh in with the parts you like or dislike, or your experiences in reading it.

Henri returns

June 22, 2012 • 7:22 am

Henri, the insouciant and existentialist cat, is back with a new video: “Le Vet”:

Le chat. C’est absurde.

Because it’s the Friday of a rough week, there will be a double dose of cats today.

h/t: Chris

Guest post: Another accommodationist refuses to blame religion for creationism

June 22, 2012 • 4:16 am

Reader Sigmund scours the news like a bloodhound, looking for the foibles of accommodationists.  He’s exposed many of the inanities of BioLogos, and here turns his sights on the Clergy Letter Project, in which various churches write letters testifying to their acceptance of evolution.  Note that in his discussion of Catholicism below, Martin didn’t mention that besides accepting Adam and Eve, the official Catholic position on evolution is that, unlike other animals, the appearance of humans involved God’s insertion of a soul somewhere into our being.

I couldn’t resist interpolating a few notes into Sigmund’s piece (they’re in brackets and labelled “JAC”).

___________________

Director of the Clergy Letter Project says Christians aren’t to blame for opposition to evolution

by Sigmund

In contrast to many issues in science, the level of acceptance of the theory of evolution varies widely between the developed nations. The reason for the variation is a matter of some debate but, for accommodationists at least, the answer cannot be religion.

We heard reently  that South Korea is experiencing a creationist-led attempt to purge evolution from its school biology textbooks (this was highlighted by Nature and previously featured on WEIT). Those reports included a quote from Joonghwan Jeon, an evolutionary psychologist at Kyung Hee University.  Jeon suggested that the current opposition to evolution is “due to strong Christianity in the country”, referring to moves by evangelical Christian groups within Korea (apparently, they haven’t received the non-aggression pact memo from Robert Wright) to hinder the teaching of evolution in that nation.

Unfortunately, Jeon’s words have fallen foul of Michael Zimmerman, the director of the accommodationist Clergy Letter Project. Writing in a piece in the Huffington Post entitled ‘Creationism expansion will level the playing field’, Zimmerman asserts:

“Christianity is not the problem either in South Korea or in the United States. Most Christian denominations, in fact, have doctrinal statements that are fully supportive of evolution. As biologist Joel Martin shows in the first chapter of his wonderful book “The Prism and the Rainbow: A Christian Explains Why Evolution Is Not a Threat,” “acceptance of evolution is a majority, and not a minority, view among Christians.”

It’s difficult, however, to find evidence supporting these two claims from Zimmerman. Christianity consists of many factions, with some estimates suggesting over 30,000 separate denominations.  Are we really to believe that the majority of these, many of which are evangelical or fundamentalist churches, have “doctrinal statements that are fully supportive of evolution”? [JAC: But who, then, is to blame for the anti-evolution “problem” in Korea? And do note that the Clergy Letter Project is not a collection of official statements of denominations, but a letter stating the views of individual  various pastors, preachers, rabbis, and so on.]

But let’s put the term “most Christian denominations” down as mere hyperbole and examine the rest of the first claim.  Again we find a major flaw in Zimmerman’s argument.

The term “fully” implies a level of acceptance of evolution that is comparable to the acceptance of other major scientific theories, e.g., gravity or the “germ theory” of disease.

Remove the word “fully” and Zimmerman has a partial, if somewhat empty point – for instance many creationists are supportive of elements of evolutionary theory, such as the microevolution of antibiotic resistance, while discounting the rest.

Zimmerman’s accommodationist apologetics may, however, provide an unintended but useful test for religious acceptance of evolution. Perhaps the term “fully” is a necessary caveat when describing a denomination’s approach to evolution. To be fully accepting of a theory should not simply mean a religion states that they accept the theory. It also means that they do not teach as fact doctrines that are contradictory to the same theory.

Even denominations that take a non-literalist view of scripture and have an official line not directly opposed to evolution – like the Roman Catholic Church – cannot be said to be fully supportive of the theory when they assert as fact elements of the bible that contradict the physical evidence that supports evolution. Claiming that you support evolutionary theory while simultaneously insisting that Adam and Eve must have been a real couple who were ancestors to everyone on Earth is like accepting that the Sun is the centre of the solar system while still maintaining that everything in the universe revolves around the Earth!  The official position of the Catholic Church on the question of human evolution, as detailed in the papal encyclical Humani Generis, explicitly rejects the idea of polygenism – the descent of the human race from a pool of ancestors:

“it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.”

Whether the Catholic Church will eventually come around to accepting the crushing evidence of modern genomics regarding polygenism is an open question (did Jesus die for a metaphor?), but at present they do not.  For now, at least, the largest Christian denomination is not “fully accepting of evolution”.  [JAC: note that accepting “God-guided evolution” as many Catholics or other religious people do, is not “fully” accepting of modern evolutionary theory]

As for the claim that “full” acceptance of evolution is a majority and not a minority view among Christians, we can only point to opinion polls that show Zimmerman is simply wrong.  A Pew Foundation poll from 2006 showed only 25% of US Catholics believed that humans have evolved over time through natural selection. This compares to 31% of mainline Protestants, and, horrifyingly, just 6% and 8% of white and black Evangelicals respectively. And it gets worse. The 2011 Pew Forum poll of Evangelical leaders, those who might be expected to have a more accurate understanding of their own churches’ doctrines on this issue, shows a figure of just 3% who accept natural evolution.

Zimmerman may be correct that the anti-evolution movement in South Korea derives mainly from fundamentalist denominations of Christianity rather than mainstream groups like Catholicism. The failure of such mainstream groups to fully accept evolution, however, renders them weak as defenders of the teaching of evolution, particularly in the presence of a determined religious assault.

If Zimmerman is really serious about strengthening the teaching of evolution from religious attack, it would make more sense for him to rewrite the dreadful Clergy Letter such that it states something concrete in support of evolution – for example:  “Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to natural processes such as natural selection”, rather than the dreadful mishmash of deepities and theology that marks the current version.  As someone familiar to him once said, “When we permit theology to define our science, we end up with gibberish, but not even consistent gibberish”.

Rare cloud in Japan

June 22, 2012 • 4:07 am

This video appeared in several news outlets this week, and I wanted to post it because I think that beautiful clouds are underappreciated.  This one is being touted everywhere as an “anvil” or “hat-shaped” cloud, but it looks to me like a lenticular cloud, my favorite type.

The YouTube description says:

A rare anvil or hat-shaped cloud appeared near Mount Fuji after a strong typhoon swept through Japan.  The cloud, called “tsurushi-gumo”, or hanging cloud, was seen on Wednesday morning.  The phenomenon occurs when winds around Mount Fuji become strong, or after tropical storms. But experts say such clouds rarely appear at this time of the year.  The cloud disappeared after about 30 minutes when the sky became overcast.

Higgs Boson found?

June 21, 2012 • 11:22 am

This is apparently a rumor, but one probably leaked by physicists involved in the project.  As Wired Science reports, there are tantalizing hints that the elusive Higgs Boson has finally been found via the Large Hadron Collider at the Franco-Swiss border:

Ever since tantalizing hints of the Higgs turned up in December at the Large Hadron Collider, scientists there have been busily analyzing the results of their energetic particle collisions to further refine their search.

“The bottom line though is now clear: There’s something there which looks like a Higgs is supposed to look,” wrote mathematician Peter Woit on his blog, Not Even Wrong. According to Woit, there are rumors of new data that would be the most compelling evidence yet for the long-sought Higgs.

The possible news has a number of physics bloggers speculating that LHC scientists will announce the discovery of the Higgs during the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which takes place in Melbourne, Australia, July 4 to 11.

The new buzz is just the latest in the Higgs search drama. In December, rumors circulated regarding hints of the Higgs around 125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), roughly 125 times the mass of a proton. While those rumors eventually turned out to be true, the hard data only amounted to what scientists call a 3-sigma signal, meaning that there is a 0.13 percent probability that the events happened by chance. This is the level at which particle physicists will only say they have “evidence” for a particle.

In the rigorous world of high-energy physics, researchers wait to see a 5-sigma signal, which has only a 0.000028 percent probability of happening by chance, before claiming a “discovery.”

The latest Higgs rumors suggest nearly-there 4-sigma signals are turning up at both of the two separate LHC experiments that are hunting for the particle. As physicist Philip Gibbs points out on his blog, Vixra log, if each experiment is seeing a 4-sigma signal, then this is almost definitely the long-sought particle. Combining the two 4-sigma results should be enough to clear that 5-sigma hurdle.

You might know that the Higgs boson is the final remaining particle predicted by the famous “standard model” of particle physics.  It was predicted by six physicists, and the paper announcing its discovery (if it turns out to be real) will undoubtedly have elebenty gazillion authors.  So who gets the Nobel Prize, which is limited to three people in any given year?

Regardless, if this turns out to be real it’s one of the greatest triumphs of that mass of gray jelly we call our mind. Out of the bowels of the earth and the vapors of the sky, we wrested materials to build a big honking machine so that we could find one of the smallest bits of matter (granted, it’s bigger than a proton).  It cost over 4 billion dollars, but I think it’s well worth it.

If this turns out to be real, you read it here first. If not, excuse me. *Rushes to ask Sean Carroll*

UPDATE: Sean responded promptly to my query about whether he thought this was real. His response, quoted with permission, was noncommittal.

I think they might have, or maybe not, but in any event we should findout quite soon. Several thousand people have been busting their butts to make this happen for years now, and honestly I’d rather let them announce it in their own way rather than pass rumors around.  But I certainly understand why people are excited — if they do have it, it’s big news.

But he did add that he is writing a book on the whole matter, The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World which will be out next January. He’ll have to do some rewriting, I suspect.

I doubt that it looks like this

The Aussies go godless

June 21, 2012 • 9:03 am

From The Age in Oz, courtesy of alert reader Marella, we find that the godless are now the second most numerous category of “belief” among Australians.  These data come from the 2011 census, showing that no-beliefers have passed Anglicans in numbers (Eric MacDonald will be pleased to hear that):

  • Catholics  5,439,268
  • No religion 4,796,787
  • Anglican 3,679,907
  • Uniting Church  1,065,795
  • Presbyterian and Reformed  599,515
  • Hindu  275,535

Almost 4.8 million people said they had no religion, up 29 per cent from 2006, but the number of people not answering the question dropped by 2 per cent. This suggested that more people were claiming a religious identity (including no religion), said Monash University sociology professor Gary Bouma.

The total Christian population is 13.2 million, or 61 per cent, down three percentage points. Catholics have dropped half a percentage point to 25.3 or 5.4 million, Anglicans are down 1.6 percentage points to 3.7 million, while the Uniting Church is down to 5 per cent, or 1.1 million people.

. . . ‘‘The rise in ‘no religion’ continues its historic trend, even in the face of an apparent small rise in claiming a religious identity. So polarisation is increasing,’’ Professor Bouma said.

In five of eight states and territories, no religion provides the largest group.  In Victoria and Queensland it is second, behind Catholics, and in NSW it is third, also behind Anglicans.

Good on ya, mates! But I’m still surprised at the hegemony of Catholicism in Australia. Never having been there (to my great regret), I didn’t know the Vatican held such sway.  For the next census, I hope to see the godless top the Catholics. It would take a switch of only 400,000 people.