Atheist, Gnostic, Theist, Agnostic

Here's an interesting delineation of terms often thrown around during religious debate, using a diagram that looks like it could appear in the appendices of Deities & Demigods. He's definitely coming to this from a certain point of view, and I'm not sure he gets everything right. For instance, I bet there are a lot more theist agnostics around than he thinks. Also, you can make his diagram out of origami.

One for de Foogoo!

Found this in a random wandering through the Wiki.
I think Fugu will appreciate...

The Stylish Richard Dawkins

Creation SCIENCE!

After seeing religion being pwned by children, I think we often don't give equal time to different points of view on this blog. Thusly... here!

Now, having given them a minute: How completely self-centered and egotistical do you have to be to be so close to getting perspective right, but still think that you're the center of the universe?

Bill Maher's final comment from Religulous

More great quotes here than you can shake a cross at.

Douglas Adams: Is There an Artificial God

This is a guy who didn't even reach his prime. He's known for those staggeringly good Hitchhiker's books, but really, he only found his true calling when he branched out into science and conservation. 

Here's a talk he gave at a tech/biology conference in the late 90s. I've listened to this about three times now; it's crappy quality, and since he's talking more or less off the cuff his logic goes a little sideways at times, but it's still brilliant. If you're not an audio listener, here's the text.

A quote—his analogy of why we so often seem to believe we're the center of the universe:

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me so staggeringly well, it must have been made to have me in it!" This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.