What I think about in the shower

Well, that was a weird dream. I was in the battle of the Armarda, except the enemy were all in Stagecoach buses, and were boys between the age of 13 and 17. Also, instead of Sir Francis Drake and the Golden Hind, our flagship was the Starship Voyager, commanded by Captain Janeway. Also, there was a Karate-kid-esque moment. Take that, Sigmund Freud. I'm glad I made a jote of that in SMS form, or I'd never believe it.

I remember that episode of "All About Me" where some traditionalist relatives try to get the kids to have Sikh naming ceremonies. I mean, why didn't the just say they weren't sure they were Sikh. I suppose the relatives could turn around and say "You've got Sikh ancestors, of course you're Sikh". Coupling religion with ethnicity, it's like coupling religion with politics. i.e. always a bad idea. I suppose Brights tend to think of religion differently from most people i.e. we see it as an intellectual process of accepting or rejectiong postulates like "God exists" or "the Guru Granth Sahib is mostly reliable". When you look at it that way, it's really odd that whole countries would happen to come to the same conclusions. Disestablishment ought to apply to race, as well as to the state.

Wow, I'm thinking a lot of controversial things. I wonder if this is what Richard Dawkins feels like all the time. heh, that phrase reminds me of that bit in Night Watch, where Vimes is outsmarting someone and thinks it about Vetenari. I like Vetenari. He's probably one of my favourite fictional characters. Maybe I'll get a Pratchett from the library. If I die rich, I'll endow a library.
Yesterday I got a film about the Mercury space program from the library, called "The Right Stuff". Maybe I'll watch it tonight. What else should I do tonight? What shall I have for dinner? Maybe pasta. Oh, I know, Chilli Con Carne.

Maybe atheists are atheists because they think about religion as a series of intelectual postulates. It certainly doesn't seem to be the strongest suit in the Religion deck. I remember seeing an atheist discussion board. Someone put forward the "religion makes people more moral, even if it isn't true, so it's good" argument and someone else replied by posting the lyrics to "Santa clause is coming to town". I wonder if I should shave this morning. What he'd have said, if he was less festive, was that integrity over-rules the utilitarian principle in this case. Atheists normally rely on utilitarianism to derive their ethics, but we seem to treat integrity as a special case. That might be a point of weakness, actually. If you say Utilitarian rules apply to everything except integrity, then why not except Shariah law? Maybe you could argue that without integrity, you can't be happy and so it's not really an exception. You could argue the same about Shariah law too, though. Then it really is a matter of upbringing. I wonder how species seperate. Actually, in the case of the "Religion makes moral" you don't havbe to start making exceptions. or do you? No, you can say a) Religion doesn't always make moral, e.g. Salem, Massachusetts b) If you resort to the "noble myth", then you risk it going wrong when they confront the evidence and the result is a "Young CS Lewis" atheist rather than a "Jeremy Bentham" atheist. Yeah, that works.

Hey, the way the sun comes through the window sends a ray acorss my ankles. I look like the Colossus of Rhodes. If it stays sunny, maybe I'll clean out the garden today.

Right, it's half twelve. I'll have breakfast, go into college, then when I come back I'll start on some Physics.
What shall I do for my blog today?

Song in my head: "Immigrant song" by Led Zeppelin (or, indeed, the Viking Kittens (Flash)

P.S. I don't actually think with Hyperlinks, of course.