FNIMN: Communication Breakdown

This week's Friday Night Is Music Night is on the theme of communication.
—Daz

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MRA Atheist Asks (With No Apparent Irony) “Why Be Good Without God?”

I recently came across this statement:

I fail to see how refusing to believe in God leads to the 'logical conclusion' of abandoning the belief that women exist to serve men.

"So what?" you may be thinking. "To any person who doesn't think fifty-one percent of the human race should be treated as second-class citizens, this is just a narrow reformulation of 'why should you be good without God?' I hear this all the time."

And, Gentle Reader, you'd be right. Given that very basic moral principle, that's exactly what it is and you most probably do.

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Are There Any Eng. Lit. Teachers Out There?

This is purely out of personal curiosity.

Does any reader know whether William Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy is used in an English Literature class somewhere? I ask because this has turned up multiple times today as a question in the search engine terms section of my site stats, with the exact-same wording:

how does dixie flatline fit in the theme of identity

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“How Do You Talk To People Who Don’t Believe In God?”

This, or versions of it, keeps turning up in my stats, under "search terms." (The term someone's typed into a search engine, in which this blog has shown up as a result, and they've clicked it.)

how do u talk to people that dont believe in god

Let us pass lightly over the ugly grammar ("people that"; ugh!) and the use of "u," and focus on answering the question.

Method One: This assumes that the question is meant literally. That this person hasn't knowingly met any disbelievers before, and thinks they come from the planet Zog or summat. In this case, we open the conversation thusly:

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Memorial Day: The Ballad Of Ira Hayes

I'm not American, but such is the power of the internet that I could hardly miss the fact that it's Memorial Day in the US and, for some reason, the various posts I've seen on the subject reminded me of this song. It's a handy reminder, I think, that not all battlefield casualties happen on the battlefield, or even at the time of the battle. And not all injuries are the obvious ones to flesh and bone.

I strongly suspect that what Ira Hayes suffered from would, these days, be called combat stress reaction (more commonly known as combat or battle fatigue) or post traumatic stress disorder. And it's a sad reflection on the human species that we've been waging wars for thousands of years, yet even with all the experience that's provided of such afflictions, until very recently his condition would have been dismissed as cowardice, if still serving, and denigrated as "unmanly" if it cropped up later in life.

Here's Johnny Cash.
—Daz

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Douglas Adams: Parrots, The Universe And Everything

Happy Towel Day, everybody!
—Daz

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FNIMN: (6^6)^6: The Exponential Of The Beast

Bloody 'ell, it's Friday again! Where on Earth did the week go?

This week's Friday Night Is Music Night is courtesy of Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela, Archbishop of Madrid. Faced with all the ills of the world, and all the good things he could do with the church's money, he's decided that what's really, really, needed at the moment is more exorcists! Yes folks, he's bravely stepped up to the plate to single-handedly tackle the word's disgraceful shortage of trained evictors of things what go bump in the night!

Bravo I say. Bravo!

It's a hard and dangerous job, battling figments of the imagination. Just ask the crew of the United Planets Cruiser Belarathon.
—Daz

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On tornadoes and atheists

My own tirade would have been, I suspect, unbroadcastable. (Whaddya mean, “that’s not a word”?

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Two Hundred

Wahay! I have two-hundred followers!

Of course, a hundred and eighty-odd of you probably gave up actually reading my inane drivel bloomin' ages ago, but hey ho. If the Catholic church gets to count lapsed members as fully paid-up Catholics, I can use the same methodology, eh?

Anyways, thank you, Gentle Readers and double-thanks to those who comment (even to disagree). I'd probably carry on shouting anyway, but it's always nice to know someone's listening.
—Daz

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The Bible’s Buried Secrets

Been seeing this topic—how much of the Bible can be confirmed by archaeology—a lot in blog-posts and conversations, of late. I watched this documentary when it was broadcast, and my only real problem with it was that it was such a short series.
—Daz

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Episode 1 – “Did King David’s Empire Exist?”

Episode 2 – “Did God have a Wife?”

Episode 3 – “The Real Garden of Eden”

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