Quotes of the Day: Morality vs. Authority

Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?

– Socrates (Euthyphro, by Plato)

On Prometheus and Lucifer

A friend of mine is living overseas at the moment. She’s getting stuck into writing, and sent me an email a little while back with her latest idea for a story. I’m anxiously awaiting the first draft of her first chapter.

One of the main villains in her story is going to be Lucifer. I offered to give her a run down of some of the symbolism that’s wrapped up under the surface of Lucifer in Christian mythology, and she said yes. I thought that my response would take a few paragraphs, but my fingers took over and she got herself an essay. A dæmon made me do it.

Anyway, this was cobbled together in the late hours of the evening after I’d had a few beers, so it’s a bit of a ramble. I also didn’t put in any references. Really, I was just vomiting up a chunk of knowledge that’s been sitting in the intestines of my brain for the few years. I’m putting it up here, in the harsh light of day, mainly to expose it to as much criticism as possible – in truth, I don’t know how right or wrong I am when I pieced all this together, and I’d like to know. So I open myself to your correction and dissent: It only makes me stronger.

Besides, there’s a small chance you might even find this interesting.

Austin Dacey PWNZ my soul

I stumbled across Austin Dacey’s blog recently – The Secular Conscince – and I can’t shake the feeling of having just been completely and utterly outclassed.

LHC Activated. World Not Destroyed. People Shocked.

Yep. Turns out that particle physicists are capable of poking at the universe without destroying life as we know it. Shocking, but true.

The LHC has passed it’s preliminary testing! Yay! It goes! It works! The machine LIVES!!!!

Mwahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!

They’ve been liveBlogging the LHC over at Cosmic Variance.

Re: Christian de Duve

This is a reposted comment of mine from Secular Philosophy. I touched on something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while now – the relationship between truth, morality and ethics – but as of yet the muse hasn’t struck me properly. Still, thought you might find this interesting.

The original has a few spelling mistakes, and I’ve decided to leave them in. Spelling in context.

Re: P.J. O’Rourke “On God”

On a similar theme to my last post, the same friend of mine sent me this email:

This one is too easy. But you’ll probably have fun ripping it to pieces anyway.

It’s sad that it’s this easy to push my buttons.

My mate was right. P.J. O’Rourke sets things up so badly I’m strongly tempted to call Poe’s Law – it’s so terrible that I want to believe it’s satire. Despite this, I’m going to work on the assumption that O’Rourke is actually serious – I open myself to correction if it turns out he was just making a joke.