I wouldn’t go to a church that would have me. On the other hand atheist gatherings have some appeal for those who like to gather for inspiration and companionship.

“Just because you don’t believe in God does not mean you do not need to get together in community and draw strength from that,” said Mike Aus, a onetime Lutheran pastor who is now an atheist and founder of Houston Oasis.

“We are open to any message about life as long as no dogmatic claims are made.”

Still, inside the conference room in a nondescript office building on the city’s west side, it’s hard to ignore the structural similarities to a Sunday morning church service. There is live music played and performed by members that is intended to spur reflection as well as entertain; a collection is taken up in a passed wicker basket.

A banner taped to a window declared what might be called Houston Oasis’ creed. It pointedly says “we think,” not “we believe”

“People are more important than beliefs.
Only human hands can solve human problems.
Reality is known through reason, not revelation.
Meaning comes from making a difference.
Labels are unimportant.
Everyone should be accepted wherever they are as long as they are accepting in turn.”

Hmm, not sure this is my cup of tea but I applaud any effort for humans to get together in good will without kneeling down, bowing, or genuflecting.

But don’t call this an “atheist church,” Aus insisted. He and other founding members are aiming for something new — a community that looks to nurture the common human qualities that can unite people.

“Homo sapiens is a tribal species; we thrive in community,” he said. “There are elements of church life that serve human needs but transcend church life, like the need to gather, the need to be together. We can offer those in a secular way.”

I guess the guy who wrote the headline is different than the reporter as the headline starts with “Atheist churches…” You get how any community gathering is called a church. If it’s not a concert, parade, or horse race it must be church.

I really miss the idea of the Greek theatre where you could talk, eat, drink, and move around. Those  venues where you have a little seat and are supposed to shut up are really not enjoyable to me. Like little boxes, in little seats, with no relationship between.

Houston Oasis is part of a growing trend. Atheists and other nonbelievers have long gathered for events with meaning and music, but in the last year, a number of nontheistic groups have initiated Sunday morning events that include elements of a standard church service.

The largest is London’s Sunday Assembly, which meets in a former church and has been turning away people due to lack of space since its launch in January. There are plans to establish Sunday Assemblies in New York and Melbourne, Australia. Calgary Secular Church meets in Calgary, Canada, and several humanist communities associated with large U.S. universities have regular Sunday morning events.

It’s not just gatherings though. People have a desire for the sublime, to feel elevated

Chris Stedman, author of “Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious,” said the Harvard Humanist Community, where he is an assistant chaplain, has begun to incorporate more churchlike elements in its Sunday gatherings at the request of attendees, including reflections and inspirational readings.

“There is a lot to be gained by looking at the forms of religion and in the ways that people make meaning and assemble a community,” Stedman said. “As a movement, I think we will struggle to appeal to people who are leaving religion if we cannot offer them the structures that religion has offered them. People need to come together and talk about meaning and value.”

It’s true. Many people desire ritual and inspiration. This trend needs to grow. It would be great to see kids in the streets again and people on their lawns. Neighbors who actually know each other.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

OH – IGNORANT IMBECILE

I was reading my latest newsletter from FFRF.org – Freethought Today and made it to page 14 where the “Crank Mail” was placed.  It’s one of my favorite features of this fine publication.  Crank Mail a sampling of the recent emails or contacts made by those most faithful Christians to call out and/or to “warn” FFRF of their impending doom.  Education is the cure for ignorance but for now the ignorance is entertaining.

Always a joy to read but this most recent edition sampled some of the best I’ve ever read.

“Whats wrong you assclown afraid of Islam?  You screwwbals have nothing to say or do to that fucked up piece of pig shit so called religion that teaches to kill everyone thats not like them. Where you fucks at on them hum. you bunch of chicken shits” - David Lupton

As with most of these short but sweet rants, they all appear to lack basic vocabulary skills.  Their spellcheck systems are useless and to hell with punctuation.  I often imagine the man or women behind the keyboard, typing feverishly, their mind whirling with anger as they describe how we are “screwwbals”, “assclowns” and “chicken shits” – and usually they include what they and/or their god is going to do to us.

I imagine as they type, that as the colored line appears below a misspelled word; “Oh look Mary Beth, even gmail knows that I mean bizness, it’s underlining all the impotant wurds.”

WEALTHY FUCKTARDS

“We are a group of Wealthy citizens of South Dakota, and many who not reside outside of South Dakota.  We have informed certain Rapid City politicians that we stand ready to provide significant financial support to defend their religious practices, views and opinions.  Please feel free to pursue any and all legal action you feel is necessary to attack the citizens of Rapid City, but be prepared for a lengthy and expensive legal costs, as we will fund any and all state court action, as well as federal court action.  God Bless Freedom of Religion!” – Our Lord Jesus Christ

Apparently from Jesus himself.  In response, I might say:

Dear Jesus Christ, I see that you now reside in Rapid City amongst other wealthy citizens.  I think that is a great move, it’s more believable than this “heaven” thing you spoke of and it means that you now can enjoy the U.S. Postal Service and actually get that money that so many have been collecting for you.

Your letter states that your group contains citizens of South Dakota and “many who not reside outside of South Dakota”.  Wouldn’t those be the same as the citizens residing in South Dakota?   I appreciate your permission for us to pursue legal action, we were hoping to get your blessing but couldn’t find your address.  I see that your group members are wealthy and wanted to ask, before this most recent commitment to defend your politicians, what were you doing with this wealth accumulated?  Have you been giving all to the poor and needy as you demand of your followers in the bible?

Can you imagine what this person was thinking?  I imagine a middle aged person, almost finished the 10th grade before having her second child and being forced to pick potatoes for a living.  I imagine she actually gave this some thought, she sat down and after much deliberation, decided that her best method of attack would be a threat using reverse psychology.  ”I’ll give them permission to sue as if we don’t mind but I’ll warn them of our wealth and how costly this might be, as if I care about their finances.”

I may be too kind, it may actually be a 5th grade alter boy who overheard his parents discussing the legal issue and figured while the internet was down would draft up a letter to threaten the FFRF.

NRA SUPPORTER

“Dear Mrs., Annie Laurie Gaylor, I just read this article about you proposing to the government to rename Christmas to “Family day”.  This nation was founded and started on Christian principles found in the Holy Bible.  I am a very strong, and powerful man, I can take on anyone in a fight, and win.  I have taken on people bigger than you and won.  Good day, God bless you.” - Jaye Sanders. Child of God, Brother to Jesus, American Patriot, NRA Supporter

Here we have one zealous Glen Beckistan citizen who thought it prudent to draft a letter in response to the FFRF’s Co-President, Annie Laurie Gaylor’s OP-ED piece about renaming the Christmas Holiday.  Not just any letter, but a threatening letter.  He’s fought and won, he can fight anyone and win.  This from a peace- loving Christ-tard and Brother to Jesus?

DAMN YOU TO HELL

“All of ypu people are going STRAIGHT to hell.  The sooner the better you FREAKS. FUCK OFF” – Tonya Haas

“u say this country is not christian or goddly. you all are full of shit are four father left england so they could worship god without all politics. its funny christianity is the only religion that is be tooking out of stuff. and for your info, the women so many years ago that started all thisso long ago.  ended up getting her head cut of and was a athist and her son turns into a preacher and that carma.  and now theres a muslim run the country in the ground and you all are try to hurt any one you can but carma get u alive or dad.and i am not christian and believe in christianity so go bit one” - Adam Phillip, Greenville, South Carolina

One of the funniest I’ve ever read.  Now do you see why I love this part of the newsletter so much?  Poor little non-Christian feller, folks trying to tooking his Christianity out of stuff.

IT’S ME – JESUS

“Why can’t you mind your own business and stayed your evil asses in WI Who do you think you are??? You are nothing but the scum of Hell.  You are nothing but COWARDS!  If you don’t love it then leave it! – Jesus Christ, Pickens, South Carolina

“i hope there is a god and he gives all your members and their families cancer”  (anonymous but apparently a true Christian)

“Get A FUCKING LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!: YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKERS.  IF YOU DON”T LIKE IT THE FUCK OUT!!! IT”S VERY SIMPLE HAVE SOMEBODY WITH BRAINS EXPLAIN IT TO YOU!” – Mike Griffin, Avon, Indiana

Awwww Mike, why don’t you try to explain it to us.  Surely you didn’t write that gibberish without a brain.  Are you saying that if only you had a brain you would explain it?  I’ll pray for you Mike.

Education is the cure for ignorance

There are many others quoted as well.  Be sure to check out www.ffrf.org and consider joining.  Your membership and support helps tooking religion out of government.  Education is the cure for ignorance.  It’s those like Phil Ferguson and Skeptic.org that recognize this, lending support to groups like the Secular Student Alliance , Junior Skeptic and Camp Quest.  We must offer our support as well, we must help educate children to be more skeptical, to use reason and to question everything.

TEDTalks has devolved into a reality show of eager self-publicizing, self aggrandizing idea generation. ROKU has a TED channel and I used to cruise through it as I had seen and quoted some great TEDTalks. After awhile it just got tedious as there was no good way for me to preview them and my time was better spent elsewhere like The Edge where the organization of the question, ideas, speakers, and position statements allowed better access.

Now TED has been bashed for censorship. Today is Friday, I am often burned out on writing after the week and the day is too intense for me to fit in a writing binge. Today is no different. Vaccinations for a child in the morning, an electrical inspection midmorning, and a long list of weekly chores I can’t possibly finish by night.

Yet, I find myself awake way too early deeply annoyed at  Deepak Chopra’s post in HP whining that science isn’t being served, TED censorship is real, and that militant atheists are unwarrantedly attacking god and miracles called external consciousness and physical anomalies. Cruising through a search of TED censorship, I see many entries castigating TED as if they have never posted or removed idiot talks before. Oh wait, there was that one guy last year who had really bad data supporting the correct idea that the rich don’t create jobs. Good idea, bad data–too bad.

Hmm, TED does not represent itself as the science community. It is entertainment meant to showcase ideas they wish to publish. Like the New Yorker, Discover, or any other rag, electronic or not, editors can choose what they publish. It is in no way meant to be an airing of all ideas regardless. By definition it can’t be censorship. If it were then by that standard we can say Depaak censors as well because he doesn’t promote science without god in his books. I suppose we could bandy about self censoring as a concept but no one is using that term. Critics act like there is a third party organization limiting TED’s discussion in science.

The real issue is as usual money and status. TED has gotten famous and cool enough, or had, that being on was a great perk to one’s reputation. It was a jazzy selfpromoting showcase that was free, other than membership should you choose to join. But:

Graham Hancock had publicly expressed his frustration in being censored by the people who run the TED conferences.  Another well known researcher, Rupert Sheldrake was censored in the same manner.  Days later we discovered that entrepreneur Eddie Huang had similar experiences with TED, and even compared their organization to a cult.

TED is clear even in its title, “Ideas worth spreading” that it intends to be selective. Its Terms of use states:

By inviting you to participate in TEDTalk comments and TED Conversations, we are seeking to build a mature online community centered around ideas that matter. Please be aware, when participating, that we will remove:

• content promoting pseudo-science, conspiracy theories, zealotry, proselytizing, self-promotion, product-hawking, and new-age fluff
• content written in txtspeak, all-caps, or otherwise lazy grammar
• content posted by members using joke names or non-names
• disrespectful, distasteful, unconstructive, or illegal content

“New age fluff” is indicative of their publishing measure.

I don’t think anyone would contest that god as external consciousness belongs to the New Age movement which has long been defined within pseudoscience. That there are many other stupid talks in TED doesn’t mean they should allow any or all of them. Do we need to debunk Uri Gellar and telekinesis yet again?

Damn, I remember years ago being pestered to read the Carlos Castenada books, the Bermuda Triangle books, and the Van Daniken “aliens came to earth” books. How much time did I lose having to analyze these works so I had the intellectual fodder needed to combat pop science forced on me by a fanatical group of people who wished for there to be aliens creating Mayan civilization–how cool would that be? What a great explanation for the seeming appearance of gods. Who doesn’t get that hallucinations expand consciousness? Who hasn’t wondered if Earth was seeded with life?

That one of the TEDTalks encourages the study of psychotropics, something with which I totally agree, seems great as the law idiotically blocks that research (not science by the way but conservative politics). To connect that to the belief that they expand consciousness where consciousness is god and to use that to show that miracles occur is nothing but adding god to science. It’s like those big bills in congress with all the little add ons that have nothing to do with the bill but pander to lobbying.

If our incredulous reaction is militant atheism then Deepak and his ilk are militant pseudoscientists in publicly promoting their ideas in a forum that has by definition excluded them because they are not promoting science but hanging on to theology by merging bronze age mythology with modern physics and biology–nay, even totemism, and prototheology with quantum physics. Entanglement is god! This pantheism is no kind of recognizable or realizable god whatsoever. Certainly not the anthropomorphic entities and attributes then assigned to it. Fine, make a misnomer of natural laws as god but don’t assign them human or animal qualities. Indeed if there isn’t evidence that can be evaluated then it’s utterly solipsistic mysticism; if there is evidence then it is by their own definition within science and can be studied. What is mystical cannot be discussed because it is a dimension so out of reach we don’t even know it exists as it shows no sign of its existence.

This is egostical and arrogant fetishism. Haven’t we spent long enough trying to make the world better by discerning subnaturalism from naturalism? If myths worked I’d be the first to join. Oh, wait, like Susan Blackmore I did explore them and found them incredibly wanting on all levels but mental masturbation and false comfort that took me away from real solutions.

Scientists studied maggots when they looked to how they help in wound infection. Scientists studied bloodletting and leeches as medicine. Both, again, long after they were originally discredited. There are plenty of far out things that are looked at. Indeed, a recent criticism of science by a pubcon was they were spending millions looking at worms. Turns out they are Guinea worms a bane to humans which if eradicated would relieve tremendous suffering.

That so many criticize TED reveals the depth of the New Nones, the spiritual ones, those that can’t leave their mythology and yet can’t go to antiquated institutes called churches. Pagans often do the same. It’s not that Carlos Castaneda was wrong it’s that he was right conceptually, hallucinations can provide insight, but his story was fabricated but it could have been real, true. No, these guys are charlatans like Tony Robbins who at a moment of deep depression and pennilessness decided he needed to make a mark on the world and get some cash. The best way to do it was to sell something that was tasty but unprovable. Fire walking is a miracle of intent. Mind over matter. Brilliant marketing! Bullshit made monetary.

When I was 9 I got a crystal radio. I took it out to the farm where we were celebrating a holiday and removed myself to put it together. I was amazed that so few parts could transmit radio. A crystal, a coil, a few bits of metal and yet so much information. Like many think, it seemed like magic. Just as our bodies are mostly water, and solids are mostly space. So much magic! The brain is not a crystal and consciousness is not a frequency. That so many stories took on vibrating crystals as signifying consciousness shows how deep our phantasms can be and how much we use symbol not only as representation but as reality itself. Hell, Hegel’s entire philosophy is devoid of a material world–it’s all idea. Schopenhauer said the world was nor more than will and idea. Yeah, until you trip on the banana peel. Air theology versus earth theology. It’s great to be dreamy and go up to the mountain but who stays and home and helps mom raise the kids or helps the poor and disenfranchised succeed?

This disconnect between mind and body ensure the continuation of heuristic biases made material. They aren’t biases because they are perceived as real. Deconstructionism showed that if you act on an idea as if it were real then in a functional way living in the world it is real. However, at some point if you want to catch fish or grow corn you had better come to Earth. It’s a beautiful place.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

When Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time, semireligious people, whiskeypalians, ummm, episcopalians, for example, cited it as wonderful. It seemed to keep god in the equation. This is a promotional blurb.

Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected.

10 million copies sold. What later when Hawking made clear his disbelief in god? Like those who first read Carl Sagan and then dissed him as he expressed his atheism, accommodationists did not so much change their thinking but disinherited their midlife intellectual history, reverting back to childhood inculcation.

Hawking gave a free lecture at CalTech. He should have charged and donated the money to STEM support or some other rationalist group.

Stephen Hawking began the event by reciting an African creation myth, and rapidly moved on to big questions such as, Why are we here?

He noted that many people still seek a divine solution to counter the theories of curious physicists, and at one point, he quipped, “What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?”

After outlining the historical theological debate about how the universe was created, Hawking gave a quick review of more scientific cosmological explanations, including Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold’s steady-state theory. This idea hypothesizes that there is no beginning and no end and that galaxies continue to form from spontaneously created matter.

Hawking continued with more on cosmic origins within Physics and the quipped.

In another observation of modern religion, Hawking noted that in the 1980s, around the time he released a paper discussing the moment the universe was born, Pope John Paul II admonished the scientific establishment against studying the moment of creation, as it was holy.

“I was glad not to be thrown into an inquisition,” Hawking joked.

I was homeschooling then and noted on a homeschool site that Christians weren’t proeducation as they were claiming as the pope had said not to educate. While creationists were insisting to teach the debate as a means of forwarding their vapid agenda. At the same time the pope canonized John Henry Newman who wrote of education and promulgated the idea of a university, no one got that his assumption was that study inevitably led to belief in god–he wished education to be an arm of that.

The University [...] has this object and this mission; it contemplates neither moral impression nor mechanical production; it professes to exercise the mind neither in art nor in duty; its function is intellectual culture; here it may leave its scholars, and it has done its work when it has done as much as this. It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.

It sounds great. But the truth was religious. He worried that growing secularization would make fringe Catholic canon. By imbedding Catholic education within general universities he sparked controversy against Catholic universities. But he was smart in seeking to include canon within universities. He never wished to include comparative religion but rather Catholicism.

In 1858, Newman projected a branch house of the Oratory at Oxford; but this project was opposed by Father (later Cardinal) Henry Edward Manning, another influential convert from Anglicanism, and others. It was thought that the creation of a Catholic body within the heart of Oxford was likely to induce Catholics to send their sons to that university, rather than to newly formed Catholic universities. The scheme was abandoned. When Catholics did begin to attend Oxford from the 1860s onwards, a Catholic club was formed and, in 1888, it was renamed the Oxford University Newman Society in recognition of Newman’s efforts on behalf of Catholicism in that university city.

Hawking isn famous for promoting space exploration. He has given up on this world as possible to save. Like the Club of Rome (“Limits to Growth“, 1972, 12 million copies sold) that posited an extinction of humans unless issues of resource management, production, and reproduction were met soon. I remember reading that book and being chilled to the bone. It is hard not to agree with Hawking that the trajectory we have set, upon which we cannot vary because of blindness will lay huge immense suffering on the planet, furthered by theologists that insist god will save us or technocrats that say technology will save us. I wonder why “Limits to Growth” is less generally known though more published copies.

I refused to have children by my first marriage but later did. I don’t know why other than the intensity of the genetic push to breed–actually, it was to give my dying father-in-law (ALS) a grandchild before he passed away. However, I did conclude at some point that we were not yet going to be extinct. The planet could lose 99% of the population even but enclaves of humans would survive–assuming nuclear war did not sterilize the planet which is a very real danger. Depressing? Hmm. Maybe. But unless we look into the darkest corners we will miss the Black Swan and be blindsided.

He closed by outlining “M-theory,” which is based partly on ideas put forward years ago by another famed physicist, Caltech’s Richard Feynman. Hawking sees that theory as the only big idea that really explains what he has observed.

M-theory posits that multiple universes are created out of nothing, Hawking explained, with many possible histories and many possible states of existence. In only a few of these states would life be possible, and in fewer still could something like humanity exist. Hawking mentioned that he felt fortunate to be living in this state of existence.

In a graduate seminar I was shut down by a visiting Logic Prof  by asking about a logic of a multiverse. Symbolic logic I mean. I had taken symbolic logic early and wondered how a logic might look in a multiverse. I was unconvinced that Godel’s incompleteness theory was the end of the story. Perhaps, if a multiverse existed then bracketed logic might lead to a means of discussing the underlying logic of entanglement and resolve the logical inconsistencies of string theory and the sui causa, ex nihilo (self created, from nothing) aspect of modern cosmology. What young philosophy student doesn’t want to create some sort of unified theory?

At any rate, Hawking promotes a Big Bang universe that won’t collapse and bang again.

Therefore, time began at the moment of singularity, and this has likely occurred only once, Hawking said. The age of the universe — now believed to be about 13.8 billion years — fits that model, as the number and maturity of observed galaxies seem to fit in the general scheme.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

Wishing to reward myself for surviving another tax season I was looking up Susan Jacoby’s book on Robert Ingersoll, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought, when I saw a number of his works offered free as Kindle editions. I happily downloaded all I could. True, I had much of his work already but having Kindle versions meant I could read him anywhere on my phone and I wasn’t reading the books. For me, I find I read much more on electronic devices than I do on paper though I love my books.

Last night I read again his “Hell Warm Words on the Cheerful and Comforting Doctrine of Eternal Damnation.” His way of writing is difficult for me to recite. I once volunteered to speak his works for a podcast library but found I stumbled through. My voice doesn’t work like his. His oratorial style is unique and thunderous. It is not hard to imagine him as America’s most famous orator and disheartening to consider how he was later pressed into obscurity.

There is little I read by other atheists that he hasn’t already discussed. The foolishness of religion has long been spoken and repressed. You can’t tell the tale too often!

The first paragraph blows me away–how quickly I forget his intensity:

THE idea of a hell was born of revenge and brutality on the one side, and cowardice on the other. In my judgment the American people are too brave, too charitable, too generous, too magnanimous, to believe in the infamous dogma of an eternal hell. I have no respect for any human being who believes in it. I have no respect for any man who preaches it. I have no respect for the man who will pollute the imagination of childhood with that infamous lie. I have no respect for the man who will add to the sorrows of this world with the frightful dogma. I have no respect for any man who endeavours to put that infinite cloud, that infinite shadow, over the heart of humanity.

I worry so much about offending people and then here, this man, lays it out.

I always had an idea that I should have some voice in choosing my representative. And if I had a voice I never should have voted for the old gentleman called Adam. Now in order to regain man from the frightful hell of eternity, Christ himself came to this world and took upon himself flesh, and in order that we might know the road to eternal salvation he gave us a book, and that book is called the Bible, and wherever that Bible has been read men have immediately commenced cutting each others’ throats. Wherever that Bible has been circulated, they have invented inquisitions and instruments of torture, and have commenced hating each other with all their hearts. But I am told now, we are all told, that this Bible is the foundation of civilization; I say that this Bible is the foundation of hell, and we never shall get rid of the dogma of hell until we get rid of the idea that it is an inspired book.

He does not mince his words.

I deny this wretched doctrine. Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to protect the rights of man, I am a rebel. Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to give man liberty, to clothe him in all his just rights, I am on the side of that rebellion. I deny that rulers are crowned by the Most High; the rulers are the people, and the presidents and others are but the servants of the people. All authority comes from the people, and not from the aristocracy of the air. Upon these texts of Scripture which I have just read rest the thrones of Europe, and these are the voices that are repeated from age to age by brainless kings and heartless kings.

Damn, I wish I could write like that.

What sort of a law must it be that would be satisfied with the suffering of innocence? According to this plan, the salvation of the whole world depends upon the bigotry of the Jews and the treachery of Judas. According to the same plan, there would have been no death in the world if there had been no sin, and if there had been no death you and I would not have been called into existence, and if we did not exist we could not have been saved; so we owe our salvation to the bigotry of the Jews and the treachery of Judas, and we are indebted to the devil for our existence. I speak this reverently. It strikes me that what they call the atonement is a kind of moral bankruptcy. Under its merciful provisions man is allowed the privilege of sinning credit, and whenever he is guilty of a mean action, he says, “Charge it.” In my judgment, this kind of bookkeeping breeds extravagance in sin.

The man is on fire.

I believe the time will come when every criminal will be treated as we now treat the diseased and sick, when every penitentiary will become a reformatory; and that if criminals go to them with hatred in their bosoms, they will leave them without feelings of revenge. Let me tell you the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice had been carried away by the god of hell, and Orpheus, her lover, went in quest of her. He took with him his lyre, and played such exquisite music that all hell was amazed. Ixion forgot his labours at the wheel, the daughters of Danaus ceased from their hopeless task, Tantalus forgot his thirst, even Pluto smiled, and, for the first time in the history of hell, the eyes of the Furies were wet with tears. As it was with the lyre of Orpheus, so it is to-day with the great harmonies of science, which are rescuing from the prisons of superstition the torn and bleeding heart of man.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com