Mike G, walking in the footsteps of a serial killer, on the set of Dexter

Mark, does it hurt that your friends invite other bloggers on excursions like this?

I would contribute $100 toward an effort to get Dexter, in this upcoming season, to kill Blair Warner. But why stop there? Why not an entire season of him hunting down the actresses from the Facts of Life?

Oh, and thanks for giving me the honor of appearing on your blog, Mark. I miss the experience and it’s made me want to get back into the blogosphere to talk about inane, inconsequential things like Spiderman Snuggies again.

If Dexter were to seek out and dispose of Lisa Welchel, the actress who played Blair Warner on The Facts of Life, I’d suggest that he drown her in hot sauce. Given her history, it would be appropriate.

http://www.nospank.net/n-m92r.htm

Speaking of religion on Dexter, the following comes from NPR:

Every season Dexter confronts a soul brother, another serial killer. The difference between Dexter and his victims is that he has tamed his “dark passenger,” the killer instinct that drives him relentlessly to murder. Maybe “tamed” is too strong a word. He has compromised, turning his killer instinct into a force for the good. Or, at least, he’s turned it into a force for justice where ordinary justice has failed.

This season is particularly interesting. For the first time, Dexter, an atheist who bases his actions on a logical, deductive approach, faces faith; the killers are acting in the name of their own distorted version of Christian faith, and believe to be completely justified. Their role is to bring the end of the world by precipitating the actions depicted in Revelation. Clearly, the show is a parody of faith-based murders that have stained the history of civilization, and still do. In particular, it skewers apocalyptic sects, a topic I examined in my book The Prophet and the Astronomer: Apocalyptic Science and the End of the World.

In a conversation between Dexter and Brother Sam, an ex-con turned-earnest-preacher, the issues are laid bare. Brother Sam says: “I can’t prove to you that God exists; but science can’t prove that God doesn’t exist either.”

There you have it, the age-old argument between science and religion: the faithful claiming that you can only find God in ways that exist beyond the plane of scientific deductive thinking, while putting the burden of proof on the scientist, pointing out that science is good at proving what does exist, but has little to say about what doesn’t.

An atheist would reverse the argument and state that the burden of proof is on the believer. “If you are sure God exists, then prove it to me. I can’t find any evidence.”

Carl Sagan used to apply a similar logic to the question of extraterrestrial alien life when he said that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Quite often his quote is misused to explain why science can’t say anything about God: the fact that we have no “evidence” cannot be used to disprove His existence.

There is, however, a very crucial difference between using science to prove the existence of aliens and using it to prove the existence of gods. Aliens, weird as they might be, still follow the laws of nature, being creatures with a biochemistry and metabolic rates. They can interact with our sensors and thus be detected. Gods, on the other hand, are, by definition, beyond the laws of nature: they don’t interact physically with sensors and other detecting devices scientists may use to find out what’s “out there.”

At the crux of this argument is a fundamental incompatibility between scientific and faith-based reasoning. In a sense, Brother Sam’s logic says it all: to those who believe in supernatural presences in the world, a scientific discourse is useless. This may answer a question Dexter asked himself, which went something like, “you’d expect that in an age of science people would stop believing in the supernatural; but that’s clearly not happening.” Essentially, to the faithful, science has very little to say when it comes to the existence of God. They may take antibiotics and send email with their iPads, and they may find the pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope really amazing, but that’s about where it stops. When it comes to ultimate questions, religion has the upper hand.

You would expect that some sort of pacific coexistence could be achieved, whereby the faithful and the non-faithful agreed to disagree about their beliefs and ways of dealing with reality and life. If you believe in God go on ahead believing, and if you don’t, don’t. Unfortunately, the two worldviews clash too often in everyday life, leading to serious political, educational and even life-threatening disputes.

The separation of state and church should take care of some of this. In practice, it doesn’t. Things get contentious when religion attempts to influence public policy or school curricula. (Of course, the faithful would perceive this as from a mirror, saying that things get contentious when atheists try to control what their kids should learn in school. It’s concerning that the solution is often home schooling, which takes away any exposure a child might have to different points of view.)

On TV, this clash was portrayed in a funny conversation — which I paraphrase here — between Dexter and the Mother Superior running the religious school where he wanted to enroll his little boy:

“You are a Catholic, right?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Protestant?”

“Nope.”

“Jewish?”

“No.”

“Muslim, then?”

“Sorry, I don’t believe in … anything.”

To the faithful, not believing simply doesn’t make sense. They are much more forgiving of someone of a different faith than of someone with no faith at all. Atheists are at the bottom of the social chain.

I am not sure where the writers of Dexter will go as the season progresses. Obviously, they are taking a stance by choosing the killers to be religious fanatics. On the other hand, Dexter is also a killer. And he is godless. One kills for God, the other in the name of his own subjective sense of justice. Both are wrong. I’m hoping that, at least on TV, a compromise of sorts will be achieved.

It will be very disappointing if Dexter ends up a believer.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/10/28/141757714/dexters-killer-commentary-on-science-and-religion

I searched “spiderman fetish” in hopes of finding something to top Elf, and I was successful. Now, though, I can’t bring myself to add the link. After seeing your sweet parents, I just couldn’t do it. If you’re interested, though, Mike, just search “Spiderman has an anal mission.”

I too watched the video. And it made me have to take a penis dump.

PENISDUMP:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/numbers-and-letters-australian-game-show-awkward-video_n_1661642.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

And when I say video, I don’t mean the Spiderman one. I mean the one of Mike’s family. Sorry.

Is there a statute of limitations on your Ypsi exit interviews? If not, I’d like for you to talk with this guy about leaving Ypsi to write for Touched by an Angel.