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Carnivalia, and an open thread

By pharyngula on January 8, 2007.

Talk among yourselves, or savor the expression of ideas at these fine compendia of articles that I find copacetic:

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carnivals
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Carnivalia, and an open thread
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Russell Blackford on the ongoing anti-Dawkins kerfluffle:

Since the publication last year of Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion, I've been aware of a mounting backlash against Dawkins, whose views have not merely been challenged on their merits (which of course is open to anyone to do in a free society), but typically dismissed for showing a lack of arcane theological knowledge that is really of little relevance to debates about either the truth or the social usefulness of religion. Worse, many attacks on Dawkins have become quite personal, reading his words in distorted, uncharitable ways to make him out to be, for example, a totalitarian monster who wants to prohibit parents teaching their religious beliefs to children, a philistine devotee of "scientism" (a word that has acquired so much baggage that its use in argument is now a signal that the person using it is some kind of irrationalist), or even the sort of mad scientist who would favour coercive experiments on human beings.

(Read the rest.)

Stolen hero

RALEIGH, N.C. - A North Carolina artist intrigued by the public obsession with celebrity has found herself feeding that obsession with a painting of actress Angelina Jolie as the Virgin Mary hovering over a Wal-Mart check-out line...

Ahem. Word has it that Jolie is likely agnostic.

I still want to know whether anyone has worked out where the Cephalopodmas year zero comes. Is it behind us or ahead of us? Given the concurrency of panto season, I have a bad feeling it really has to be "behind you!". Also, are there enough past sceptics, atheists, scientists, free-thinkers or similar dates for a whole calendar (and enough current pin-ups, pinnipeds or whatever for the other aspect of a calendar).

So far I haven't spotted any invading cephalopods though, just evil invading ladybirds. I have a pot here with a lot of them in it.