Turtles all the way down

I live in Kansas, so believe me I'm particularly sensitive to this issue. Last time Kansas rejected evolution, the Board of Education was voted out in the next election and evolution restored. I can only hope that the same thing happens here.

Where do your own standards of good and evil come from? When you say that an intelligent designer could fashion a world that is one or the other, you are sneaking in the assumption that you yourself know the difference. Do you?

Alex, that's been my general impression - that the main long-term effect of stuff like this is to get people to pay attention to local school board elections, and to not allow the circumstances where the only person interested in running is a fundamentalist looney. Do you know why the last restoration in Kansas apparently "didn't take?" The entire phenomenon of "Intelligent Design" is, I think, something of a victory for the good guys. The *only* way the creationists can possibly win is by travelling under the false flag of Science. The honest approach ("Evolution shouldn't be taught because God, and the Bible") won't fly anymore.

Mary Anne, are you saying you've been touched by His Noodly Appendage?

I thought the relationship between Cthulhu and the Flying Spaghetti Monster was so obvious as to not require comment. Very clearly, H.P. Lovecraft was drawing on buried human racial memory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster from earliest days....

"Mary Anne, are you saying you've been touched by His Noodly Appendage?" I am exploring the possibilities of Pastafarianism, let's just say that. "Do you know why the last restoration in Kansas apparently 'didn't take?'" Good question. Is this a different Kansas board of education? (In New York State, the boards are local -- there isn't just one board for the whole state.) "Where do your own standards of good and evil come from? When you say that an intelligent designer could fashion a world that is one or the other, you are sneaking in the assumption that you yourself know the difference. Do you?" Of course I know the difference -- they are encoded in our culture. That's where you get them, too... and people who profess to believe in a god who hands down such things know it too, though they may not want to admit it. Look: If whatever "God" does is automatically "good," then this god could, say, slaughter an entire population and it would hence have to be considered "good" because (supposedly) this deity does not do evil. But, the rejoinder is, "God wouldn't do that because it's evil." Well, that presupposes a measure of "good" and "evil" that is outside the puview of a deity. Either whatever God does defines good, or it doesn't. Can't have it both ways. And if anyone says "We can't always understand the things that God does," I'm gonna scream.

I can't believe I spelled your name wrong...my head is hanging in shame.

Well, I don't always understand the things I do, much less the actions of certain supernatural entities. But that's just me.

Alleged supernatural entities, don't you mean?

FSM is undeniably better, unless you happen to be on the Atkins Diet.

But FSM is very Atkins-friendly, because of his very high-carb nature! Of course we low-carb people wouldn't want to eat the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but what sort of followers would actually *eat* their deity? Oh, besides Catholics, that is.... ;)