Good and Bad

We made the Atheist Blogroll, yay!

Faithinate does not like the flu, boo.

Everyone else, have a lovely day.

Edit: You knew I couldn't leave it there, didn't you? Article of the day is a follow-up to the Spaghetti Monster article from, what, yesterday.

In spite of their best efforts to appear as the objective, rational party, those opposed to Intelligent Design and the influence of religion upon the state have shown themselves to not be so “neutral” after all.

Well whoever started trying, or claiming, to be objective in the Spaghetti Monster movement is just being silly. The whole point of it is to be nonobjective, to take a (rather lighthearted) stand against the foolish "reasoning" behind support for Creative Design. Anyone in any group that has anything to do with religion or atheism is taking a personal stand based on his/her opinions, and that's the opposite of neutral.

The original stated intent was "to represent the discourse between people of all different beliefs". The writer of today's article/editorial takes offense to the idea that nonXians would want to "mock or belittle" Christians. Back to Dawkins again, who questions WHY religion is sacrosanct...why are we forbidden from criticizing religion, when nearly ALL religious people do is bash sinners, atheists, homosexuals, feminists, liberals, and essentially anyone who doesn't go to THIS church and tithe to it.

Now I get the idea that the TN government shouldn't necessarily participate in this back and forth, but let's be fair: they ARE the ones that put the statue of Jesus carrying the cross on their front lawn.

Interesting side note that I know a lot of people have made before. Jesus is their hero, partly because he's such a good guy but mostly because he died, thus enabling all the faithful to get into Heavan. But why on EARTH do we have to harp on about the cross? Sir William Wallace was/is a hero to the Scots, but you don't see them displaying pictures of the man being drawn and quartered, or wearing hangman's noose pendants. The crucifix is even more morbid than we, who've been desensitized, even recognize. Anyway.

The point is that I think the Spaghetti Monster statue should (and has) do as intended. It's promoted discourse on religious differences. And as a bonus, it leveled the playing field a bit. Or at least the front lawn of that TN courthouse.

"The spaghetti monster unveils the secular myth of neutrality when it comes to politics." May I say again that I certainly never claimed to be neutral? Did you? Okay, who claimed neutrality... It isn't the goal here. Certainly religious folk wouldn't claim to strive to be neutral on any of a number of issues, e.g. abortion, gay rights and so forth. So accusing people of not being neutral in the context of religious debate and free speech isn't much of an insult. "Oh yeah?? Your eyes are BLUE, HAH!" Ummmmmkay.