Words

A few randomly-assorted thoughts for the day.

From Charles McGrath again, Charles McGrath of the pessimistic view of Harry Potter’s geriatric years; this time he’s talking about Beowulf:

Far more entertaining than a lonely troll with grief issues, or one working through identity questions, is the thing from the night who (to adapt Mr. Heaney) bites into your bone lappings, bolts down your blood and gorges on you in lumps.

Yup. Don’t wanna hear about the troll’s identity questions (or why it’s clutching that Volkswagen) or grief issues, wanna hear about the munching thing from the night. Next from PZ commenting on some fundamentalist silliness about why ‘Homosexuality is sin’:

I wish someday someone could explain to me why a vast Cosmic Intelligence, omnipotent and all knowing, is so darned worried about which appendage touches which orifice in a mob of billions of busy, short-lived beings in whom he has imbued a desperate desire to bump appendages/orifices. It seems so petty and futile.

Also from Pharyngula, this time from the sidebar random quotation, from Taslima Nasrin in an interview in Free Inquiry magazine, winter 1998/1999, Vol. 19 No. 1:

I don’t find any difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalists. I believe religion is the root, and from the root fundamentalism grows as a poisonous stem. If we remove fundamentalism and keep religion, then one day or another fundamentalism will grow again. I need to say that because some liberals always defend Islam and blame fundamentalists for creating problems. But Islam itself oppresses women. Islam itself doesn’t permit democracy and it violates human rights.

And a point Stewart made in a comment on ‘Domain, Nothing’:

What Bunglawala doesn’t do is address his completely different standards for evaluating scientific and religious claims. But then, he doesn’t evaluate religious claims, he just accepts them. How many religious people would there be left if they raised the bar as high for the claims of religion as they do for those of science?

Very good question. Not, of course, one that Bunglawala is likely to answer.

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