Wankalot!

I'm nursing a headache (and apparently, I really am nursing it because I seem to be doing everything possible to help it along), so I'm going to take a moment to say, apropos of nothing, that I can't stand people who go on a tear about people quoting and referencing Monty Python as catch phrases.

The rationale they give is that the Monty Python philosophy was to eschew the tired old formula of catchphrase based humor and give the people something shocking and new and original. Which they did, in spades... Monty Python at the time was extremely shocking, extremely new, and extremely original.

You know what, though?

Seriously, do you know what?

Monty Python was also extremely funny.

That's right. It wasn't just new. It wasn't just shocking. It was clever and it was funny. If it hadn't been clever and funny, it wouldn't have worked so well. It would have been a bunch of avant-garde shit that nobody would have watched except for the very few people in the world who think "shocking newness" is the same thing as quality.

When people quote Monty Python, it's no longer shocking. It's no longer new. It's no longer original.

It's still funny. Decades on, it is still hilarious. People who see old clips for the first time, people who have them memorized... still laughing. It still works.

Saying that it's not funny... suggesting that it only worked in the first place because of its newness... is insulting to the comedic talents of the men of Python.

What's more? I think no more than twice in the history of wanking about people quoting Python has anybody come up with the idea that it's a comedic travesty to do so on their own. Everybody else? They're just copying a rant they heard somewhere because they figure it makes them look more clever than the people who are copying Monty Python.

Guess what?

You aren't. You're just an unoriginal hack, and you don't even have the extenuating circumstance of being funny.

And that, in the words of British philosopher Bertrand Russell, is all I have to say about that.

Richard E. Dawkins, Supergenius. I like it!

I really should finish writing the More Tales of MU chapter I'm working on, but I've got a bug in my brain about something, and I'll probably be more productive in the long run if I get it out of my system.

According to the 'kipedia:

[Richard] Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing", but reveals that he began doubting the existence of God when he was about nine years old. He later reconverted because he was persuaded by the argument from design, an argument for the existence of God or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, design or direction—or some combination of these—in nature. However, he began to feel that the customs of the Church of England were absurd, and had more to do with dictating morals than with God. Later, when he better understood the process of evolution, his religious position again changed, because he felt that natural selection could account for the complexity of life in purely material terms, rendering a supernatural designer unnecessary.

You know what?

Guy's totally right about natural selection being sufficient to account for the complexity of life. He's totally right about the physical world being a sufficient explanation for itself without dragging in an external force.

But the vehemence with which he preaches against religion now?

Overkill. Way overkill.

Atheism is such a straight-forward point of view to begin with that it doesn't actually need elaborate justifications and explanations. It doesn't require a manifesto. Such a document might be useful if it debunked misconceptions about atheisms... the idea that atheists are immoral and see no problem with lying or killing if they can get away with it because they don't believe in right or wrong, for instance... but that's a side point.

What I'm talking about his vitriol, which is the exact mirror image of Ben Stein's nonsense about how science == godlessness == killing people. You know what I hear every time I read a quote from Dawkins about religion and people of faith?

"The dwarves are for the dwarves! We won't be taken in again!"

That's a paraphrase (or attempt at quoting from memory, actually) of a scene in The Last Battle, the final phase of The Chronicles of Narnia. Having been tricked into following a fake god, a group of dwarves decide they won't ever believe in any god... and become downright nasty as a result of the feeling of having been tricked, doing things like shooting volleys of arrows indiscriminately, not caring who they kill in the titular battle because they're on no side but their own.

This would actually be a straw man caricature of atheism as it is often seen by theists... but it's actually a bit on the nose for a certain class of bitter "reformed theist" with wounded pride at having been "taken in."

Richard Dawkins seems to be one such individual. He got "tricked" into believing in God at an early age due to a spurious argument for the material necessity of a creator* and he, being the big giant brain that he is, feels deeply ashamed of this. People don't like feeling ashamed, though. They'd much rather be angry, given the choice. So, it's not enough for him to not believe in God.

He has to convince the world that they, the theists, are the fools, rather than Richard Dawkins, Supergenius.

In the process, he has essentially gone from being an atheist---which is nothing more or less than one who believes in no god---and become an antitheist, which is just about the most useless position one can imagine. It's one who shakes his fist at the sky cursing at somebody he's sure isn't there.

It's everything that ordinary atheists are painted as when given an unsympathetic portrayal by religious media.

I don't agree with every little thing the guy comes out with on other topics. I think he gets a lot of undue credit for merely having given the modern name to meme theory, an idea that many intelligent and world-aware people were conscious of long before and one which was fully articulated by others. But for all that, I think he's very intelligent and I'd love to see what more he could accomplish if he could get over his childish embarrassment at having been "taken in."

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* Note that all such arguments are spurious and miss the point. A spiritual power exists (whether memetically or otherwise) to address spiritual needs. I often wonder what sort of spiritual comfort people who are only converted by such "watchmaker" arguments actually derive from having been given a pat solution to a perceived plothole in the universe.