A god is born 14 Oct 2009 In 1502, an indigenous princess was born named in Spanish María de la Onza, or “Mary of the Jaguar”. She has become a mythological figure, and her name contracted to María Lionza, and she is the senior deity of a trinity of gods worshipped in rural regions near Caracas in Venezuela. As Wikipedia says, The other two figures in this trinity are Guaicaipuro, an Indian chief murdered by the Spanish colonists, and Negro Felipe, a black slave that was also murdered by the colonists. These three saints are the leading figures of the pantheon and lead several “courts” of lesser deities. This is a beautiful example of actual historical figures starting religions in which they are the gods. There is a pilgrimage each year that is presently underway. Religion
Biology Darwin was not badly received by the church 26 Nov 2009 Robert J. Berry is a geneticist at University College London. He is also an evangelical Christian and has written a number of works on the compatibility of religion (his kind, anyway) and evolution. He has a quite accurate letter in today’s Nature. Since that is behind a paywall, I have… Read More
Evolution Popper peeps papally at UD 15 Aug 2007 Popper’s view of science has been supplanted by a number of later views, not least being the sociological accounts of Kuhn and Lakatos, which, being sociological, don’t tell us what is science but only how it proceeds descriptively. Prescriptive views of science are much more nuanced than Popper these days, and they lack a simple slogan like the cry of “falsifiability!” They typically focus on the heuristics (rules of inference) and how they have developed overall and in particular disciplines. If you want to argue that ID is science, go read van Fraassen, or Hacking, or Giere, or Laudan and get back to me. Read More
Humor Teh LOLCat Bible 4 Oct 2007 LOLCats are one of those things you either hate or hate really really a lot. But the idea of translating the entire Bible into LOLCatese? Priceless. Someone has way too much spare time (and will we see battles fought over the Auterised Bibel translation versus the VulgarCat version? I hope… Read More