bakeparty

tamtrible, Kalin, Georgia, and Larry all came over yesterday for many awesome things:

• tamtrible baked not one, but two apple pies. Also brownies and some ground beef has browns.
• The rest of us helped, including Larry, who has considerable professional cooking experience.
• Several episodes of Penn & Teller Bullshit, other small videos. Nothing feature-length.
• Teaching the ways of the Rubik's cube to each other.
• We concluded that mall preachers are walking 4chan /b/ threads. Responding to them is completely pointless.

There's a lot to say, but somehow I don't feel very expressive.

(no subject)

So last night one of the episodes of Bullshit I aired was "The Bible: Fact or Fiction", in which is asserted that the Bible contains "equal amounts of facts, history, and pizza." I was a bit curious how tamtrible would respond, as she identifies as Christian, and at the same time believes strongly in science. I wasn't so sure about the beliefs of everyone else in the room, but the discussion that ensued was likely to be interesting at least.

Kalin and I were the only people in the room that were avowed atheists. Trible and Larry seem to be a bit more pantheistic, and Georgia wasn't particularly outspoken. I wouldn't presume to describe what they said accurately; as I'm only certain of a few details. With Trible, I know that she won't dismiss the claim that a Hebrew man rose from the dead, but she does dismiss that this Hebrew man had a monopoly on that kind of thing. Larry invoked nine-dimensional mathematics for a reason I couldn't fathom, and turns out to be an ordained minister who performed marriages. In both cases, it seemed apparent that one of the points where they disagreed with the Judeo-Christian story was that it's too provincial in nature.

This seems to be a trend in theists that avoids the most important pitfalls that are created by religious thinking, such as the denial of science, cultural insulation, and automatic credulity for religion-based authority. Such people are free to believe and learn from Darwin's theory of natural selection, they are able to relate to people and ideas outside of their own tribe, and they won't be protesting funerals or flying planes into buildings.

It seems that everyone in the room disagrees with ASU mall preachers, and agrees with Darwin. Beyond this, I consider it a minor detail whether they accept or reject the idea of God.

(edited to correct some small mistakes with large semantic effects)