The Penguins Are Talking About Me Again

Now, as you guys all know, I’m not against atheism.  I think it’s a perfectly respectable – even logical – point of view in many ways: I also like many aspects of the secularist tradition.  What I don’t like is dogmatic – and what I might call sneering - atheism: the kind of atheism that not only mocks belief, but suggests you have to be an idiot to believe in God.  Viz someone on Facebook the other day who posted a link to Richard Dawkins.  I commented that I don’t like Dawkins because I find him dogmatic and intolerant: she responded that it’s better than believing in ‘invisible sky-wizards’.

So that’s me told… I commented that the phrase ‘invisible sky-wizards’ is kind of loaded and that I would wish for a more tolerant approach to the debate.  Still waiting on a reply…

Penguins are strangely anthropomorphic – I can’t help wondering if they believe in God.  The current BBC series on penguins is quite startlingly brilliant, even by the high standards of BBC nature programmes; they’ve developed some robot cameras which mimic penguins and eggs! so that for the first time we can see what happens inside when they all go into a huddle and talk about me.  (Oh, wait – that’s in rugby.)  They don’t make as much use of these cameras as I’d hoped, but the programmes are utterly fascinating. Go watch.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01qyh3t/Penguins_Spy_in_the_Huddle_First_Steps/

Some good news yesterday – I’ve had an acceptance from a magazine I sent stuff to a while ago.  When I looked up what it was, I saw I’d sent them a poem and a short story.  I emailed to ask which they were publishing: they said ‘both – they were very good.’  That gave me a boost…

And here’s the magazine – though not the relevant issue yet:

http://home.wtd-magazine.com/

I shall post a longer diatribe on atheism when I’m feeling a bit more together.

Kirk out

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