The Primate Diaries

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Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)
2007-07-30 20:58:00
Swedish Filmmaker and Atheist Scatters His Atoms Into the VoidPlaying Chess With Death from The Seventh Seal (1957)It's an image that has become iconic in the annals of film history, but now fifty years after creating his most celebrated work, film auteur Ingmar Berg man has finally forfeited his king to Death. As in many of his celebrated works this son of a Lutheran pastor infused his art with the epic struggle to find an answer to God's silence.Bergman wrote in his autobiography, The Magic Lantern:I have struggled all my life with a tormented and joyless relationship with God. Faith and lack of faith, punishment, grace and rejection, all were real to me, all were imperative. My prayers stank of anguish, entreaty, trust, loathing and despair. God spoke, God said nothing. Do not turn from Thy face.The lost hours of that operation provided me with a calming message. You were born without purpose, you live without meaning, living is its own meaning.When you die, you are extingu...

Gorilla Massacre in Perspective
2007-07-30 17:05:00
Deaths Are Equivalent to the Entire Population of EnglandThe shocking news that four more critically endangered mountain gorillas were killed last week should make all primates of good conscience wince. Furthermore, one of the females was pregnant and another was nursing a five month old infant who is not expected to live.According to the World Wildlife Foundation, there are an estimated 700 mountain gorillas alive in the wild. The loss of these six gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo represents 0.86% of the total population. This would be the equivalent of slaughtering 5,910 endangered African elephants or 60 million human beings in a single week. In human terms this is the death of every man, woman and child in England (and nearly as many as the population of Congo).While it's unknown who is responsible for the killings one of two possibilities is the most likely: they were killed by supporters of rebel leader Gen. Laurent Nkunda who were also responsible for killin...
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Heliocentrism is an Atheist Doctrine
2007-07-30 16:42:00
I recently suggested that Ken Ham's new book urging fundamentalists to back away from flaky evidence in favor of simply denying evidence about evolution was about as absurd as making the same claim about the sun not being the center of our solar system. Apparently the loonies were already well ahead of me.
More About: Atheist , Theist , Elio