JWMM published some of my poems, so I get to keep the “poet”

So that JMWW published two of my poems Class Warfare and Metamor.

This, of course, makes me happy.

Skeptilove

For those not at TAM 7, I think Skeptilove is possibly one of the most important skeptical projects out there. I have two reasons for saying this: 1) framing, and more importantly, 2) it will motivate skeptically inspired charity, which is something I have felt we were sorely lacking in compared to many of the groups we are critical. Or, more specifically, that we don’t organize our charity work in such as way that gives us some targeted influence and helps add the effects of individual charity together.

American Freethought contra Robert Wright

I am reading Robert Wright’s book on the Evolution of God and he too seems to have a bone to pick with the new atheists that seems based primarily on tone and a disagreement on the function of religion. Wright seems to be mostly in agreement with the materialist metaphysics, so the dreaded “f”word of framing seems to be one of the big issues. I may review this book in the future–and I have listened to several interviews with Wright in the last week–so I have a general understanding of the book, but I am currently reading it (as well as re-reading Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum book and reading Robert M. Price’s Paperback Apocalypse) so I won’t really go into the arguments in it today.

However, American Freethought gave the book a mixed review and then interviewed Wright on the podcast.

Strangely, American Freethought called Wright out for some over-generalizations of the politics of the New Atheists that he made for HuffPo. Apparently Wright decided to move the guys from American Freethought from Atheist to “New” Atheist to critique them.

It was this debate that prompted my wandering thoughts on teleology because I agree with the American Freethought critique: if Wright says that the “Four Horsemen” of the “New Atheists” are too simple in blaming religion, Wright tries too hard to remove religious beliefs from part of the problem. Whether religion spawns politics or politics spawns religion hardly matters in when trying to separate out the consequences of the mixing of these two areas of human thought that seem most prone to irrationalism.

Surly Ramics is awesome

So I don’t normally endorse products, but I am today as I finally saw one of these in person. Surlyramics does a line a ceramic jewelry and their smart jewelry line is quite good.

Now, I know most of you, dear readers, are already aware of this line of jewelry. I just wanted to point out this as a way to use art as a means for discussion and, as an artist, it means a lot to me.