Pharyngula

Posted by: Rieux | July 11, 2009 3:18 PM

if we rewound the tape of life and ran it forward again, and evolution led to intelligent cephalopods, an anthropocentric bigot like Klinghoffer might well regard them as "grotesque, obnoxious, loathsome, abhorrent, ghastly", but I'd think them pretty cool…and most importantly, these beings would consider their own forms beautiful, and us strangely twisted chordates as hideous.

Well, the cephalopod PZ Myers wouldn't, presumably. He'd have periodic chordate art (chordate hats, chordate porn, etc.) on his blog. He'd also mock the Old Ones and write imperceptibly tongue-in-cheek paeans to Yah-Weh, the chordate god.

If there's ever some kind of "Mirror, Mirror"-style exchange between that universe and this one, this blog could get extra-interesting.

Posted by: Caine | July 11, 2009 3:23 PM

So now I have to add 'tied up in tentacle worship, Cthulhu style' to my 'evilutionist, scientism satanist, Darwinist, baby eatin', kitten stomping' EAC credentials? Well, I'm not anti-tentacle, so okay.

Posted by: Gorogh | July 11, 2009 3:25 PM

Arrgh. As if "repulsive" had any meaning in biology. Our biology teacherm a passionate entomologist, would regularly send students out of class if they - verbally or otherwise - expressed any disgust towards the subject.

Ia! Ia!

Posted by: Desert Son | July 11, 2009 3:26 PM

Apparently, we aren't just unbelievers, or even merely Satan-worshippers anymore — we've moved on to worshipping inimical alien beings beyond space and time that intend to remorselessly destroy us.

"Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce!"

As for the rest of us, and me personally, H.P. Lovecraft's stories are clearly fiction: we don't see them as a portrayal of our universe at all.

Only thing I can surmise is that, for True Believers(tm) (especially True Believers(tm) who are terrified of the possibility of lack of belief), it's gotta be hard to recognize fiction as, well, fiction, when so much time is spent immersed in a fictional tradition that continues to insist that it's something other than fiction.

Ah, well, gotta go feed the shoggoth.

IYKWIMAITYD

No kings,

Robert

Posted by: bobxxxx | July 11, 2009 3:29 PM

David Klinghoffer works for the Discovery Institute, a Christian creationist organization that employs only morons who love censorship.

Posted by: Louis | July 11, 2009 3:36 PM

Well I for one welcome our....

Oh what's the use. The joke is lost on Klinghoffer.

Instead, in the manner of Dan Savage, can we coin a new term for an existing thing? I propose a Klinghoffer is a curled up ball of anal hair, toilet paper and poo that has progressed beyond mere existence and is now actually causing pain. I realise that there are existing (even similar) terms for this, but that only heightens the appropriateness. Add to that the aspects of causing pain, containing poo, and generally being something that one has to pluck out of one's arse to deal with, and I think we're onto a winner.

Louis

Posted by: Desert Son | July 11, 2009 3:48 PM

Lovecraft was writing right at the time when quantum mechanics was being developed (and, yes, he was following these developments)

It's worthy of note that Lovecraft was generally regarded as a skeptic. Certainly the philosophy underlying his writings is one that suggests that humans are not special in the universe, not beloved of some benevolent force. The whole idea of the Old Ones and Elder Gods and other horrors was that the vast expanse of the universe, while fascinating, isn't some special creation specifically crafted with humanity in mind.

All of which makes Klinghofer's suggestion of Cthulhu worship among atheists even more funny.

No kings,

Robert

Posted by: Foggg | July 11, 2009 3:51 PM

The Call of Cthulhu begins:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the
inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

Insert appropriate contents-of-Klinghoffer's-mind joke here.

Posted by: Mike Wagner | July 11, 2009 3:56 PM

"inimical alien beings beyond space and time that intend to remorselessly destroy us."

I fail to see the difference between Cthulhu and Yahweh in this regard.

Posted by: Slaan | July 11, 2009 4:01 PM

Why does he think that the cephalod people are the bad guys? Everyone knows that to be evil, you need to have a goatee and a 'stache. Which human PZ already has! And since cephalod PZ wouldn't have hair... Cephalod PZ is the good guy.

Posted by: Jack | July 11, 2009 4:04 PM

I would just like to say that Clark Ashton Smith did what Lovecraft did approximately five times better, and I will FIGHT anyone who disagrees.

I'm sorry, I have been partaking of cheap red wine.

Posted by: Sclerophanax | July 11, 2009 4:15 PM

I'm suddenly reminded of the species VUX from the Star Control universe. They were cyclopean cephalopoids with papulous green skin that were so repulsed by humans that they decided to go to war with us for not being able to bear looking at our loathsome visages.

And of course there was Admiral ZEX, the closest VUX equivalent of PZ... (although even he was eventually revealed to find humans vicious and deformed, he just liked things that way.)

Posted by: Free Lunch | July 11, 2009 4:16 PM

Klinghoffer would turn anything into a chance to bash evolution and theistic evolution despite the claim of his blog at Beliefnet that it's about the Hebrew Bible.

Of course, someone who claims to be an Orthodox Jew yet works primarily for an organization mostly funded and populated by Christianists has a lot of issues already.

Posted by: Tulse | July 11, 2009 4:16 PM

If I may quote at length:

It looked like a radiate, but was clearly something more. It was partly vegetable, but had three-fourths of the essentials of animal structure. That it was marine in origin, its symmetrical contour and certain other attributes clearly indicated; yet one could not be exact as to the limit of its later adaptions. The wings, after all, held a persistent suggestion of the aërial. How it could have undergone its tremendously complex evolution on an new-born earth in time to leave prints in Archaean rocks was so far beyond conception as to make Lake whimsically recall the primal myths about Great Old Ones who filtered down from the stars and concocted earth life as a joke or mistake

The things once rearing and dwelling in this frightful masonry in the age of dinosaurs were not indeed dinosaurs, but far worse. Mere dinosaurs were new and almost brainless objects - but the builders of the city were wise and old, and had left certain traces in rocks even then laid down well nigh a thousand million years - rocks laid down before the true life of earth had advanced beyond plastic groups of cells - rocks laid down before the true life of earth had existed at all. They were the makers and enslavers of that life

It was under the sea, at first for food and later for other purposes, that they first created earth life - using available substances according to long-known methods. The more elaborate experiments came after the annihilation of various cosmic enemies. They had done the same thing on other planets, having manufactured not only necessary foods, but certain multicellular protoplasmic masses capable of molding their tissues into all sorts of temporary organs under hypnotic influence and thereby forming ideal slaves to perform the heavy work of the community. These viscous masses were without doubt what Abdul Alhazred whispered about as the "Shoggoths"

In other words, the stories of the Cthulhu Mythos are primarily stories of intelligent design. Odd that Klinghoffer misses this point.

Posted by: raven | July 11, 2009 4:31 PM

His argument against convergence is that if it were true, then evolution could have led to something truly repulsive, like Cthulhu.

Klinghoffer is a stupid liar.
1. Convergent evolution is ubiquitous and a fact. There are countless examples.

2. Cthulhu, what? This is the fallacy of Argument from Consequences. If nuclear fission were true, then humans would be making atomic bombs. Ooops they are.

3. There are tons of repulsive creatures out there. The urethra runner fish, Candera or whatever it is called that crawls up the downspout and plugs it up. Malaria, TB, leprosy, death plague and all the scourges that used to kill us by the millions.

Finally, the most repulsive is in the eye of the beholders. I would find humanoid toads like Bush, Falwell, Ham, and Klinghoffer right up there at the top in the repulsiveness scale. They are conscious, malevolent, and evil humanoids. All the other creatures are just making a living any way they can. Malaria isn't trying to make people sick, it is trying to make more little malaria protozoans.

PS Anyone know what Klinghoffer does for a day job? He can't be making much of a living lying so ineptly for xian death cultists.

Posted by: TheVirginian | July 11, 2009 4:44 PM

I'll eschew jokes to point out something skeptics might find interesting about Lovecraft. If you read Klinghoffer's commentary, he actually makes some of the points I make below and cites Lovecraft biographer/editor S.T. Joshi's arguments.

In "The Weird Tale," Joshi makes a case that HPL, an avowed materialist and atheist, has often been misread as simply trying to create a modern, fictional pantheon of godlike entities for horror purposes - 20th century Greek, Egyptian, etc. gods.

Rather, Joshi basically argues, HPL was attempting (in certain works) to put into fictional form the philosophical recognition that humanity is helpless or a mere minor functionary in a universe of vast forces and greater powers that care nothing for humanity. These forces don't hate us, but also don't care if we are squashed like bugs, just as an elephant doesn't care if it steps on a mouse. The vast sweep of time itself is one force, as humanity replaced other dominant life forms before us, and some day can (likely will) be replaced by yet others.

His "gods" are simply manifestations of, say, atomic forces or cosmic events that oculd destroy humanity or the Earth ("Death from the Sky"). The realization of humanity's cosmic insignificance and our vulnerability to forces beyond our control is a source of deep philosophial horror -- I'm boiling down Joshi's argument here. He goes into other aspects of HPL's fiction, which was a mix of politics, science and non-science (racism, in particular).

Some ancient Greeks actually made similar arguments about the Greek gods, as Klinghoffer himself notes.

Lovecraft is hardly a love object for "Darwinists" (the mere use of this term is a sign that we're reading anti-science propaganda, not a serious argument), given his ideas about races and biological degeneracy.

Racism is, after all, a Christian invention (as I've pointed out before, it originates in Bible-based anti-paganism and historically was mainly defended on religious/biblical grounds), and is fundamentally denied by evolution. Even if "races" appeared, they would not be biologically fixed forever as some immutable core attribute, as racism presupposes and creationism claims, but would be in flux due to interbreeding and, well, evolution, via mutation and natural selection.

For a moment, consider the various hominid species that we know existed in the past as being "races." They vanished, via natural selection. Yet we are descended from some of these species/races, so they still exist in our genes. If "Lucy" passed on her genes to offspring and their genes are part of our makeup, then "Lucy's" "race" was successful. Creationism does not allow this; in evolution, races do not exist in the racist usage because species are in flux.

In effect, Lovecraft was both right and wrong -- we are subject to vast, impersonal forces, such as mutation and natural selection, and therefore have no guarantees that we will survive as a species; yet racism is wrong because it denies evolution. As a creationist, Klinghoffer and HPL are singing from the same book on this issue, even as Klinghoffer denies Lovecraft's materialism/atheism.

But I agree with Klinghoffer on one point: At his best, Lovecraft is indeed "wickedly entertaining." So, I doubt Cthulhu would save Klinghoffer for dessert; as an admirer of the Prophet Lovecraft, Klinghoffer probably would be washed down with a fine wine sometime in the main course. I think Rick Warren is more likely be the Elder Gods' after-dinner mint. Evil likes to savor evil.

Posted by: Jack | July 11, 2009 4:51 PM

Clark A. Smith, what little I have read of him, completely lacked Lovecraft's eloquence in all matters scientific-- from what I recall, the man rambled on and on, with more of a love for words than the natural phenomena described by those words.

Smith may well have been less scientifically literate than Lovecraft, but come on - how much scientific literacy does either man show in his stories, and what does it matter? They were writing horror fantasy; it doesn't have to be scientifically literate! And what you call "rambling" and a "love of words" I call fevered poetic fecundity and... errr... a love of words.

Smith's use of language was simply superior to Lovecraft's. Both dealt in flights of overheated dark fancy but Lovecraft mined a much narrower seam than Smith in terms of ideas, and his purple prose was more repetitive and more corny. It has also dated more thoroughly than Smith's (I say this as someone who loves Lovecraft and who recognises that both authors have dated terribly)

I favour the épée; a gentleman's weapon. I trust it will not be entirely unfamiliar to you, you bounder!

Posted by: Skemono | July 11, 2009 5:01 PM

Racism is, after all, a Christian invention (as I've pointed out before, it originates in Bible-based anti-paganism

What? Bullshit. Preference for ones own race / people well predates Christianity. It existed in China, Egypt, India, Greece, and in Judaism, as well. Christianity hardly "invented" racism.

Posted by: Anton Mates | July 11, 2009 5:08 PM

antistokes,

(Does Smith have on-line stuff too? If so I'll read & respond.)

Here you go.

IMO Smith has a lot more sex, a lot more humor, and a lot less emotional honesty than Lovecraft. Both have their tics, but I tend to consider Lovecraft's best writing more memorable than Smith's best.

Posted by: antistokes | July 11, 2009 5:21 PM

Smith may well have been less scientifically literate than Lovecraft, but come on - how much scientific literacy does either man show in his stories, and what does it matter

"..insight into mathematical depths perhaps beyond the utmost modern delvings of Planck, Heisenberg, Einstein, and de Sitter." -Dreams in the Witch House

Lovecraft wanted to be a scientist before he took up writing, and allowed his love of science (and astronomy in particular) to color much of his work, right down to the linguistic tone he takes. I read his works and it's like reading an extremely well written science document, which in my mind lends to the horrors he conveys.

Smith's use of language was simply superior to Lovecraft's. Both dealt in flights of overheated dark fancy but Lovecraft mined a much narrower seam than Smith in terms of ideas, and his purple prose was more repetitive and more corny.

Please, give me an example. I tried to read a few shorts of Smith's, but stopped within a few pages because of the sheer floridness. Heh, probably a matter of opinion! Lovecraft would get repetitive in his longer works, but his shorts are, I think, sheer mastery of language ("The Strange High House in the Mist" and "Pickman's Model" are both to my mind exemplary in their use of language.)

I favour the épée; a gentleman's weapon. I trust it will not be entirely unfamiliar to you, you bounder!

Knave! Forsooth, I do have a google bar!:)

And, Sir, I am no gentleman! (Got a uterus and everything!)

Posted by: Anton Mates | July 11, 2009 5:37 PM

TheVirginian,

Rather, Joshi basically argues, HPL was attempting (in certain works) to put into fictional form the philosophical recognition that humanity is helpless or a mere minor functionary in a universe of vast forces and greater powers that care nothing for humanity. These forces don't hate us, but also don't care if we are squashed like bugs, just as an elephant doesn't care if it steps on a mouse. The vast sweep of time itself is one force, as humanity replaced other dominant life forms before us, and some day can (likely will) be replaced by yet others.

And, notably, virtually all of those forces were themselves helpless before still more potent (and often more impersonal) factors. Cthulhu's people can be rendered catatonic simply by the stars drifting into the wrong configuration; the star-headed vegetables of Antarctica, technologically advanced enough to fight Cthulhu's people to a standstill, perished mostly due to climate change. The only supreme power is Azathoth, who is simultaneously totally powerless through its idiocy and immobility. No one gets to be a real god.

In Lovecraft's later stories like At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow out of Time, some optimism creeps in, and we start to see a few species that follow some sort of utopian socialism and manage to thrive for at least the greater part of Earth's lifespan. But it's never due to benevolent gods; the species which thrive are merely those that came to terms with the impersonal hostility of the universe early on, and learned to bootstrap themselves into forces to be reckoned with. And in the end, they're usually brought low by some Big Dumb Threat they can't defeat.

Even if "races" appeared, they would not be biologically fixed forever as some immutable core attribute, as racism presupposes and creationism claims, but would be in flux due to interbreeding and, well, evolution, via mutation and natural selection.

But Lovecraft knew this, of course; it shows up in both his fiction and his nonfiction. Racism fueled his stories of horror and loss because he knew that, scientifically, his feelings were irrelevant--there wasn't anything biologically special about the particular cultural and physical traits he treasured. Anglo-Saxons had emerged from other races fairly recently and would melt back into them fairly soon, and humanity wouldn't particularly care.

Posted by: Jack | July 11, 2009 5:56 PM

Please, give me an example. I tried to read a few shorts of Smith's, but stopped within a few pages because of the sheer floridness.

Smith did floridity better than Lovecraft; that's what I'm saying. He was a poet before he was a short story writer and it shows, even in the now-dated excesses of his lexical lasciviousness. This is the end of one of my favourite Smith stories: The Dweller In The Gulf.

"The thing, it seemed, was old as that dying planet: an unknown form of primal life that had dwelt always in the caverned waters. Before it, the faculties of the earthmen were drugged by an evil stupor, as if it were composed, in part, of the same opiate mineral as its image. They stood with their flashlights playing full on the Terror; and they could not move nor cry out when it reared suddenly erect, revealing its ridged belly and the queer double tail that slithered and rustled metallically on the rock. Its numerous feet, beheld in this posture, were hollow and chalice-like, and they oozed with mephitic wetness. No doubt they served for suction pads, enabling it to walk on a perpendicular surface.

Inconceivably swift and sure in all its motions, with short strides on is hindmost legs, levered by the tail, the monster came forward on the helpless men. Unerringly the two proboscides curved over, and their ends came down on Chivers' eyes as he stood with lifted face. They rested there, covering the entire sockets - for a moment only. Then there was a wild, agonizing scream, as the hollow tips were withdrawn with a sweeping movement lithe and vigorous as the lashing of serpents.

Chivers swayed slowly, nodding his head, and twisting about in half-narcotized pain. Maspic, standing at his side, saw in a dull and dreamlike manner the gaping orbits from which the eyes were gone. It was the last thing that he ever saw. At that instant the monster turned from Chivers, and the terrible cups, dripping with blood and fetor, descended on Maspic's own eyes.

Bellman, who had paused close behind the others, comprehended what was occurring like one who witnesses the abominations of a nightmare but is powerless to intervene or flee. He saw the movements of the cupped members, he heard the single atrocious cry that was wrung from Chivers, and the swiftly ensuing scream of Maspic. Then, above the heads of his fellows, who still held their useless torches in rigid fingers, the proboscides came towards him...

With blood rilling heavily upon their faces, with the somnolent, vigilant, implacable and eyeless Shape at their heels, herding them on, restraining them when they tottered at the brink, the three began their second descent of the road that went down forever to a night-bound Avernus."

Posted by: Aquaria | July 11, 2009 6:00 PM

I'm not discounting the possibility that some weirdoes might buy into the whole Lovecraftian mythos, but, for most of us, it's a joke to wish we're the first to be eaten and the like. Anybody with a brain can see that.

Proof that David Jacob Klingenheimerschmidt, or WTF his name is, doesn't get humor.

Then again, most fundies, regardless of religion, are usually missing the humor gene (although they can make us laugh at them unintentionally). This lack of humor might explain everything about them.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | July 11, 2009 6:10 PM

TheVirginian #31

Racism is, after all, a Christian invention (as I've pointed out before, it originates in Bible-based anti-paganism and historically was mainly defended on religious/biblical grounds), and is fundamentally denied by evolution.

Chinese racism and Japanese racism are alive and well. Neither of these groups of people are particularly Christian.

Posted by: Anonymous | July 11, 2009 6:25 PM

But what if the intelligent creature that resulted from all the purposeless churning, and that was intended to reflect God's own image, had been something really horrible.

I think the jury's still out on the benevolent disposition of what was created...

Why is it that when people talk this way, they don't see the idiocy of creating a fictional character and then asking us to argue about how 'good' or 'bad' it would be?

---

I agree. That guy last.

Posted by: Rolan le Gargéac | July 11, 2009 6:42 PM

Rieux #1

He'd also mock the Old Ones and write imperceptibly tongue-in-cheek paeans to Yah-Weh, the chordate god.

Surely that would be Yah-Noh-Weh !

Posted by: Skemono | July 11, 2009 7:00 PM

I guess I should have added Christianity is the source of racism "in the Western world," but it always seems unnecessary.

Ah, I see. Apparently, by "racism" you only mean Western 17th-century racism beginning with slavery. In that case, and with the case you make, I could agree with most of your points. In fact, I have often thought the same. But I still disagree with what you said earlier, that "racism is ... a Christian invention"--I think that is not nearly the same as what you are arguing here.

However, you seem to start with slavery, but I'm pretty sure that racist ideas in the West predated that, I think inherited mostly from those crazy Greeks and Romans.

I get this all the time from people, even some freethinkers, because most people simply know nothing about the history of racism and think it's very old.

Uh, yeah. Contrary to your assumption that people who disagree with your fallaciously over-broad contention know nothing about the history of racism, I in fact already knew everything you went on to spout, since I've spent the last several years reading up on this stuff. In fact, I have often mused myself that slavery was in the beginning a religious institution instead of a racial one.

Incidentally, you don't really make your point well at the end of your penultimate paragraph. Instead of using the 1663 Maryland law, try using something that explicitly links whites with Christianity or blacks with paganism. You just quote a law and then assert these connections.

In the future, you might try quoting Virginia's 1662 act instead:

Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.

There you go, that makes it explicit that "white" meant "Christian" and "negro" meant "pagan".

The intriguing thing here: Why would there be "interracial" marriages at all if the concept of racism existed? Please explain this paradox, in 500 words or less.

I don't know what you mean. What paradox? If the concept of racism exists, then necessarily the concept of races exists (I don't think I've ever heard of anyone who was racist without believing in races). If races exist, people of two different races can marry--hence, interracial marriages. There's no paradox at all.

Posted by: Marc Abian | July 11, 2009 7:11 PM

The only true horror writer is Garth Marenghi.

http://www.garthmarenghi.com/canon.htm

Posted by: TheVirginian | July 11, 2009 7:32 PM

No time now for a long response on issues raised.

I don't see tribalism/ethnocentrism as being the same as racism because historically tribes often tolerated or pushed intermarriage. The Greeks had no general problem or prohibition on marrying non-Greeks, and accepted "Hellenized" outsiders who adopted Greek customs, language, etc. "Greekness" could be ethnocentric (and often city-centric - Athenian vs. Spartan) but also was cultural. Ditto basically for the Romans.

I don't deny that racism or some equivalent is found in other cultures, including Asia, but it appears in the West in the 18th century. Prior to that, the only prohibitions I know of are religious. The Spanish conquistadors/ settlers intermarried or had sex with natives and Africans. Spanish "racism" first appears in the purity of blood laws against marriage with Jews. (Short version of longer argument here)

Skemono:
Based on your original comment, I assumed you were spouting off. I apologize, but you're still missing a point. I don't see racism in the 17th century. I knew of the Va. law; did not cite it as it was subsumed in the other comments. The paradox is, "racism" is based on the idea that some groups of people are so inherently different and inferior that mating with them is like having sex with animals. Some people might do it for kinks, but "interracial" marriage would be unthinkable, unlike inter-ethnic marriage. So 17th-century marriages between Englishwomen and Africans/descendants strongly suggest "racism" in the modern sense did not exist. And the first use of "race" in the modern sense dates from the 1770s.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | July 11, 2009 7:37 PM

"Apparently, we aren't just unbelievers, or even merely Satan-worshippers anymore — we've moved on to worshipping inimical alien beings beyond space and time that intend to remorselessly destroy us."

Not only that, but we're worshiping fictitious inimical alien beings. So what they're really complaining about is that our gods are not their fictitious god (who's equally inimical).

Posted by: PStryder | July 11, 2009 8:11 PM

Cthulhu == Jehovah == Allah

Posted by: Douglas McClean | July 11, 2009 8:18 PM

#8 said, (emphasis added):

On a similar vein, I think you might find that only the right-wing (or would that be right-tentacle?) cephalopods would not only find us strange hairless ape types icky, but would probably deny the possibility of non-cephalopod intelligent life existing, as that would deny that the Old Ones made cephalopod-kind in their image.

I wonder if they would have a more nuanced political discussion simply by virtue of having more appendages. ;)

Posted by: Skemono | July 11, 2009 8:52 PM

I don't see tribalism/ethnocentrism as being the same as racism because historically tribes often tolerated or pushed intermarriage. The Greeks had no general problem or prohibition on marrying non-Greeks, and accepted "Hellenized" outsiders who adopted Greek customs, language, etc. "Greekness" could be ethnocentric (and often city-centric - Athenian vs. Spartan) but also was cultural. Ditto basically for the Romans.

You may be right about those cultures--I don't enough about them to say so either way--but taboos against exogamy also exist well before slavery in many other cultures. However, despite how important the topic of miscegenation is to racism, particularly American racism (and I should know--miscegenation in particular has been the focus of my research these past years), I think it is a mistake to consider it the crux of the issue. To say something is racist if it forbids intermarriage, and not racist if it doesn't, seems a poor defining feature. For instance, there were racists who insisted on intermarriage to "elevate" those poor genetically-inferior breeds.

Further, it is hard to look at statements such as this one from Aristotle,

This is a subject which can be easily understood by anyone who casts his eye on the more celebrated states of Hellas, and generally on the distribution of races in the habitable world. Those who live in a cold climate and in Europe are full of spirit, but wanting in intelligence and skill; and there they retain comparative freedom, but have no political organization, and are incapable of ruling over others. Whereas, the natives of Asia are intelligent and inventive, but they are wanting in spirit, and therefore they are always in a state of subjection and slavery. But the Hellenic race, which is situated between them, is likewise intermediate in character, being high-spirited and also intelligent. Hence it continues free, and is the best-governed of any nation, and if it could be formed into one state, would be able to rule the world.

and call it anything but racist, even if there was no prohibition against marrying those people.

The paradox is, "racism" is based on the idea that some groups of people are so inherently different and inferior that mating with them is like having sex with animals.

That's certainly an extreme definition. Racism is based on the idea that same groups of people are inherently different, I agree. Often (perhaps always) this difference means that one race is 'superior' and the other 'inferior', though I have read many who insist that they believe two races are different, yet neither is inferior--they just have different qualities, which predisposes them to certain lifestyles and cultures (and of course necessarily excludes them from foreign ones). The idea that mating with such a person is like having sex with animals is one possible and often popular conclusion to draw from this, but it is not necessary nor universal. Heck, as someone who has studied this, I'm sure you are aware of how many slave-owners and manifestly racist white people in American history had sex with their "inferior" black slaves. To use one famous example, Jefferson had quite a lot to say about black people, but that didn't stop him from having sex with Sally Hemings and having children by her. I particularly like this one story that drives home the point:

A white man admitted that he had kept a Negro mistress for thirty years, but he indignantly denied that he favored "social equality." He had "never," he said hotly, "sat down to breakfast with her."

There are countless incidents of undoubtedly-racist people taking black lovers and having children with them.

Posted by: Ian A. A. Watson | July 11, 2009 11:22 PM

Glad you enjoyed the T-shirts, PZ. (:

Posted by: Dorkman | July 11, 2009 11:55 PM

I was going to get that shirt, but it unfortunately makes it ambiguous and almost appears as though the idea is that the entire world is a fevered dream of lord Cthulhu.

Which is patently absurd, as we all know that it is in fact the Daemon Sultan Azathoth who actually dreams this universe of ours into being.

Dunno if this has been posted before, but it's also appropriate here:

http://www.myconfinedspace.com/?attachment_id=83672

Posted by: John Morales | July 12, 2009 1:37 AM

Flex @64, that's not plagiarism, unless you claim the incantation was not in the public domain at the time, but was copyrighted by the Encyclopedia.

PS: it's "Gorgo", not "Gogro".
The Horror at Red Hook.

Posted by: Aquaria | July 12, 2009 5:11 AM

#72:

Because, of course, there are no lesbians to counteract the loss of gay males from the marriage pool.

Posted by: Flex | July 12, 2009 10:34 AM

John Morales @71, Um, no. Taking someone else's literary work and passing it off as your own is plagiarism.

There is no time limit, nor copyright concerns, it doesn't matter if the work is in public domain or not. If I submitted a paper on Greek literature and cribbed a paragraph from Aristotle, without properly citing the source, I'm guilty of plagiarism.

What you mean is that what HPL did is not a violation of copyright. True enough. He was in no danger of being sued by Britannica or the original third century author for his plagiarism.

Plagiarism and copyright violation are similar ideas, but not identical.

The difference is that the core idea behind copyrights is to protect the value of the work for the creator. That is, the creator of the work isn't denied the profits from their creativity.

The only penalty for plagiarism is the loss of respect because the person didn't do his own work, or credit the real author properly. (And, of course, plagiarism is generally concerned with written works while copyright covers all creative works.)

And yes, it's "Gorgo" in both places. Put me in the same typo-prone bin as the Rev. BDC, it's good company.

Posted by: Acronym Jim | July 12, 2009 11:33 AM

these beings would consider their own forms beautiful, and us strangely twisted chordates as hideous.

Just to pick a nit, shouldn't that read "strangely untwistable chordates"?

Posted by: amphiox | July 12, 2009 12:08 PM

Ah, I get it. This is Klinghoffer's explanation for mass extinctions.

Way back at the end of the Cretaceous, some half feathered, pointy toothed, sickled clawed Troodontid was about to evolve consciousness, but it was the wrong image, you see. Thus, SMITE!

And back at the end of the Permian, there was this misshapen sabretoothed Gorgonopsid that was just about to discovery fire. But, wrong image, so, SMITE!

Posted by: Gruesome Rob | July 12, 2009 12:51 PM

It's worthy of note that Lovecraft was generally regarded as a skeptic.

Ya think?

We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction. - HP Lovecraft

Posted by: Anton Mates | July 12, 2009 5:49 PM

Flex,

In other words, a famous work (or a much quoted work) is less likely to be seen as plagiarism because of the assumption that both the reader and the author are familiar with the original source.

Thing is, HPL was a) extremely well-read and b) a raving cultural elitist; he expected his readers to be familiar with a mile-long list of literary works (or, if they weren't, at least to look on admiringly while he demonstrated his own familiarity with them.) This particular incantation is from a fairly well-known work—Hippolytus' Philosophumena or "Refutation of All Heresies," originally credited to Origen. Here, by comparison, is an 1886 translation by J.H. MacMahon:

Infernal, and earthy, and supernal Bombo, come!
Saint of streets, and brilliant one, that strays by night;
Foe of radiance, but friend and mate of gloom;
In howl of dogs rejoicing, and in crimson gore,
Wading 'mid corpses through tombs of lifeless dust,
Panting for blood; with fear convulsing men.
Gorgo, and Mormo, and Luna, and of many shapes,
Come, propitious, to our sacrificial rites!

HPL drops a couple of clues to its origin in "Red Hook," noting (correctly) that it's written in Greek, and also that the protagonist had seen it before "in Dublin college days," which suggests that it was not unique to the particular cult of this story.

Given all that, I suspect he figured that any reader with sufficient education and interest could quickly track down the original.

Posted by: Flex | July 12, 2009 10:18 PM

Anton Mates,

Thing is, HPL was a) extremely well-read and b) a raving cultural elitist; he expected his readers to be familiar with a mile-long list of literary works....

Even if I concede these two points, that doesn't explain why HPL and the Britannica are word-for-word identical incantations, unlike the MacMahon translation you quote.

I still feel that the evidence strongly suggests that HPL simply cribbed the incantation from the Britannica. After all, we know he had a copy of the 9th in his library, and we know that he used it. Further, looking over the entry in the Britannica again, it's clearly stated that the original was in Greek. But the original author, either Hippolytus or Origen, is not mentioned. There is nothing suggestive of Dublin, but that doesn't have to be anything more than HPL's addition to a character background.

The Britannica article is written by Edward Burnett Tyler, which doesn't give us many clues as to where he got the translation he used. Of course, knowing E.B. Tyler, he probably translated it himself, which would again be suggestive of HPL simply cribbing the incantation.

The only other reasonable solution is that E.B. Tyler and HPL used the same source. Which means that HPL simply cribbed from a different book rather then the Britannica, and so did E.B. Tyler.

It's pretty clear to me that HPL found an interesting incantation to use in the 9th ed. of the Britannica. When an appropriate place to use that incantation occurred in his writing, he simply bunged it down.

However, I do thank you for the link to the MacMahon translation to Hippolytus' Philosophumena. It will enjoyable to read it in it's entirety, as much as survives. I've only read fragments before.

Posted by: Flex | July 13, 2009 9:43 AM

Anton Mates wrote, "I'm just saying, he probably didn't think any reader he cared about would conclude that the original incantation was his own creation."

Ah, okay. That I can understand and agree with. It's another piece of evidence for the position that HPL wasn't plagiarizing, but using the incantation with no intent to claim it as his own.