Neil De Grasse Tyson really buries the Goldilocks Effect in this short video from Beyond Belief '06.
It's a valid point: if we are indeed the apex of 'creation', stewards of all we observe, how is it that our planet alone is a lethal obstacle course, let alone the fact we can exist only on this world?
Enjoy.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Stupid Design - Dystheism At Its Best
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Teaching The Fable - Again, I Agree With Norris
(Cross-posted at Gods4suckers.net)
Recently, (Chuck) Norris' kata of cognitive dissonance actually resembled something of note. Bringing the Bible back into public schools Three hundred eighty-two public school districts have voted to implement a course on it. Over 1,350 schools in 37 states can now offer it as a textbook. Approximately 190,000 students have already been taught from it as a course curriculum. I'm talking about the Bible in public school. It's no joke! And I want to help you get a course on it offered in your school district, too. I'm actually in agreement with this idea. More on this a little later on. The Bible is big news! Over the past few years dozens of news agencies from all over our nation have reported on the re-entry of Bible curriculum back into classrooms. Just this past week, Time ran a cover story, "Why we should teach the Bible in public school." Georgia's Legislature approved and is preparing its 180 school districts to offer two literature classes on the Bible. More than 800 Craig, Colo., residents are petitioning to get an elective class at Moffat County High School on the history and literature of the Bible. In my own state of Texas, the House Public Education Committee is presently considering requiring the state's 1,700 school districts to offer history and literature courses using the Bible as the primary text. History and literature? The bible is most distinctly not historical in the slightest. Literature? Sure. Just like the Popul Vuh is, or Homer's The Iliad. But of course, them thar nasty 'libruls' are hatching nasty plots in the background (supply your own farcical vaudevillian laughter): Liberal attacks on Bible curriculum Of course, liberal groups are fighting at great expense to keep the Bible from being taught in public classrooms. The Texas Freedom Network, or TFN, is one of them – a self-admitted adversary of any biblically conservative movement, calling themselves "a mainstream voice to counter the religious right." The TFN, for example, is requesting five unnecessary changes to the Texas bill, which is intended to assure students are taught this classic text: These are all RATIONAL intelligent responses. Note #3 (must really stick in their craws): NO EVANGELIZING OR PROMOTING PERSONAL RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES. I'll bet when the Koran is offered as such, they'll all be nodding their heads in agreement at that clause. Because of course, 'That's DIFFERENT!' Much more subtle than the TFN are the liberal ''compromises'' being offered by such individuals as Charles Haynes, the head of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, who purports to be a helper ''for schools and communities [to] find common ground on conflicts involving religion and values in public schools.'' Haynes' address of this issue remains suspect due to his continued track record of pushing a very pro-liberal platform – something that would make any card-carrying member of the ACLU proud. His conflict of interest also lies in the self-promotion of a textbook, ''The Bible and its influence,'' which he has partnered in developing and marketing to public schools. Oh, the horrors! Oh, the humanity! Think of the children! How dare they promote tolerance of anything else?!?!? Groups like TFN, or masked secular progressives like Charles Haynes, are offering a paranoid and polemic reaction to protect children from being preached at with the Scriptures. In the end, however, if they have their way, they will inadvertently prohibit the children of our land from learning about the one sacred text that has influenced more spheres in our nation than any other. Even more, they are fighting against the very positions and purposes for which our Founding Fathers raised up this country. Hello? First amendment, anyone? There's plenty of real world examples where people get preached at at the drop of a hat. Gimmee a break here. The Word from your Founding Fathers Anyone who has studied early American history knows that the Bible has always been embedded throughout our culture, from classrooms to congressional halls. This was especially the case in the origins of our nation. I get sick to death of people who claim that they 'speak for the Founders' (what're you using, the Ouija board? Get spirit messages?) - but of course Norris is listening to my least favorite propagandist, Barton, so small wonder there. A study by the American Political Science Review on the political documents of the founding era, which was from 1760-1805, discovered that 94 percent of the period's documents were based on the Bible, with 34 percent of the contents being direct citations from the Bible. The Scripture was the bedrock and blueprint of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, academic arenas and heritage until the last quarter of a century. Bad news, chuckles: that's called plagiarism. Spouting off biblical verses for eighty percent of your speech (or document) is just what my old English writing teacher called using 'driftwood'. ('Psst! You've got half an hour to kill!' 'Quick, hand me a bible!') No, the scriptures weren't the bedrock nor blueprint for our society. Bibles were brought in via the Northwest Ordinance because we didn't have a school system - what's the cheapest possible textbook you can use? That's a rhetorical question, by the way. Citing a few of our Founding Fathers, the NCBCPS website notes: "The Bible is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed." – Patrick Henry "It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom." – Horace Greeley "I have always said, and will always say, that studious perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens." – Thomas Jefferson While president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson was elected the first president of the Washington, D.C., public school board, which used the Bible as a reading text in the classroom. Besides the fact that Horace Greeley isn't even on the Founder's list, Paine was a Deist and anti-Christian, Jefferson was a (closet) Deist, Franklin was an open Deist, Washington didn't even hang around for the communicant (and when criticized for not doing so, stopped attending services altogether), Jefferson AND Madison both were advocates of Separation of Church and State - I could go on at length on this alone. If men like Jefferson believed in biblical education, it is not difficult to understand why liberal groups like TFN are losing the battle to prohibit the Bible and its influence on Western civilization from being taught in public schools. Try as they might, they will succumb to a force far bigger than themselves. Oh, please. Jefferson trimmed all the crap out of the bible (read: Old Testament and all miracles in the New), thereby creating his own bible. National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools Gena and I ponder and pray through many requests to endorse certain causes and products, but it took us only a few minutes to decide to support and even join the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, or NCBCPS. Oh geez. I'm glad there is that provision that doesn't permit evangelization. NCBCPS's course helps students understand the Bible's influence and impact on history, literature, our legal and educational systems, as well as art, archaeology and other parts of civilization. In this elective class, students are required to read through their textbook – the Bible. Um, let's see, yes (influence), yes (history), yes (literature) no (legal, no, educational, provisional), yes (art), archaeology's pretty much savaging the 'historical' part, and it HAS had a profound effect on our culture. Not all of it good. Most of it not good, in fact. Unknown to most, it's legal and our constitutional right to be taught the Bible in public schools! As a literature/historical elective? Sure. That is why, from California and Alaska to Pennsylvania and Florida, 93 percent of boards approached with NCBCPS's Bible curriculum have voted to implement it. You can preview some of the curriculum or the teacher's guide at their website. This is a stupid maneuver on their part: I'll get to that in a moment. Your first step to get God back into your public school To learn how anyone can help their local school board to implement Bible curriculum, please write or call NCBCPS at the contact information below. I'm all for this. As a compilation of literature that's had a profound impact on Western civilization, there's no argument. Problem is, when I first started 'cracking the books', I had the Internet to balance the perspective. I began weighing all the elements, the debates, the points/counterpoints, and spent many, many hours of research looking into the subject. I am now an atheist. For good reason. The book comes apart at the seams with an alarming regularity (especially given the claim that it was divinely dictated). It is by no means an historical work. Between contradictions, interpolations (both obvious and subtle), the nearly weekly archeological finds that contravene its allegedly 'holy' contents, it is, as Mary says in The Amber Spyglass, "A powerful and convincing lie." "The More You Know," as the commercial states. I'd quote Asimov again, but then perhaps we should take a clue from one of the Founders: "To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise ... without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820
Profiles In Atheism - The Jailed Journalist
I learned of this via Jonathan Miller's A Brief History of Disbelief (links to be found at my dear friend, Beep's blog) - and the history is most...illuminating.
"Richard Carlile (9 December 1790 – 10 February 1843) was an important agitator for the establishment of universal suffrage and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom.
Early life
"He was born in Ashburton, Devon, the son of a shoemaker who abandoned the family in 1794 leaving Richard's mother struggling to support her three children on the income from running a small shop. At the age of six he went for free education to the local Church of England school, then at the age of twelve he left school for a seven year apprenticeship to a tinsmith in Plymouth. In 1813 he got married, and shortly afterwards the couple moved to Holborn Hill in London where he found work as a tinsmith. Jane Carlile gave birth to five children, three of whom survived.
Politics and publishing
"His interest in politics was kindled first by economic conditions in the winter of 1816 when Carlile was put on short-time work by his employer creating serious problems for the family: "I shared the general distress of 1816 and it was this that opened my eyes." He began attending political meetings where speakers like Henry Hunt complained that only three men in a hundred had the vote, and was also influenced by the publications of William Cobbett.
"As a way of making a living he sold the writings of parliamentary reformers such as Tom Paine on the streets of London, often walking "thirty miles for a profit of eighteen pence". In April 1817 he formed a publishing business with the printer William Sherwin and rented a shop in Fleet Street. To make political texts such as Paine's books The Rights of Man and the Principles of Government available to the poor he split them into sections which he sold as small pamphlets, similarly publishing The Age of Reason and Principles of Nature. He issued pirated copies of Southey's Wat Tyler and after the radical William Hone's arrest in May, he reissued the parody of parts of the Book of Common Prayer for which Hone was to be tried, then was himself arrested in August and held without charge until Hone was acquitted in December.
"He took on distributing the banned Radical weekly The Black Dwarf at a time when the government was prosecuting publishers: "The Habeas Corpus Act being suspended ... all was terror and alarm, but I take credit to myself in defeating the effect of these two Acts upon the Press... Of imprisonment I made sure, but I felt inclined to court it than to shrink from it".
"Carlile then brought out a radical journal, Sherwin's Political Register, which reported political meetings and included extracts from books and poems by supporters of the reform movement such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. The popularity of this helped to soon bring his profit from his publishing venture to £50 a week.
Peterloo and The Republican
"Carlile was one of the scheduled main speakers at the reform meeting on 16 August 1819 at St. Peter's Fields in Manchester. Just as Henry Hunt was about to speak, the crowd was attacked by the yeomanry in what became known as the Peterloo massacre. Carlile escaped and was hidden by radical friends before he caught the mail coach to London and published his eyewitness account, giving the first full report of what had happened, in Sherwin's Weekly Political Register of 18 August 1819. His placards proclaimed "Horrid Massacres at Manchester".
"The government responded by closing Sherwin's Political Register, confiscating the stock of newspapers and pamphlets. Carlile changed the name to The Republican and in its issue of 27 August 1819 demanded that "The massacre... should be the daily theme of the Press until the murderers are brought to justice.... Every man in Manchester who avows his opinions on the necessity of reform, should never go unarmed – retaliation has become a duty, and revenge an act of justice."
"Carlile was prosecuted for blasphemy, blasphemous libel and sedition for publishing material that might encourage people to hate the government in his newspaper, and for publishing Tom Paine's Common Sense, The Rights of Man and the Age of Reason (which criticised the Church of England). In October 1819 he was found guilty of blasphemy and seditious libel and sentenced to three years in Dorchester Gaol with a fine of £1,500. When he refused to pay the fine, his premises in Fleet Street were raided and his stock was confiscated. While he was in jail he continued to write articles for The Republican which was now published by Carlile's wife Jane, and thanks to the publicity it now outsold pro-government newspapers such as The Times.
"To curb newspapers the government had raised the ½d tax on newspapers first imposed in 1712 to 3½d in 1797 then 4d in 1815. From December 1819 it set a minimum price of 7d and further restrictions. At a time when workers earned less than 10 shillings (120d.) a week this made it hard for them to afford radical newspapers, and publishers tried various strategies to evade the tax. Groups would pool their resources in reading societies and subscription societies to purchase a book or journal in common, and frequently read it aloud to one another as was the case with James Wilson (Scottish Revolutionary).
"By 1821, Carlile was a declared atheist and published his Address to Men of Science, in favour of materialism and education. In the same year Jane Carlile was in turn sentenced to two years imprisonment for seditious libel, and her place as publisher was taken by Richard Carlile's sister, Mary. Within six months she was imprisoned for the same offence. The process was repeated with eight of his shop workers, and over 150 men and women were sent to prison for selling The Republican. Carlile's sentence ended in 1823 but he was immediately arrested and returned to prison for not paying his £1,500 fine, so the process continued until he was eventually released on 25 November 1825. In the next edition of The Republican he expressed the hope that his long confinement would result in the freedom to publish radical political ideas.
"He then published further journals, The Lion which campaigned against child labour and The Promptor. He argued that "equality between the sexes" should be the objective of all reformers, and in 1826 published Every Woman's Book advocating birth control and the sexual emancipation of women."
Ironic, is it not, that his publication was named the Republican, of all things, given it's current definition?
Amazing. What is it about free-thinkers, that we believe that women should have equal rights, birth control, freedom of religion as well as freedom of expression?
This is far from topical: by and large, secular humanists seem to share this preoccupation throughout the ages.
That is, when they're allowed to speak.
Monday, May 07, 2007
God Is Good, God Is Great - Hey, That's Me!
(Hat tip to Pharyngula for these)
Turns out, not only am I a good guy, I'm also YHVH incarnate! Hey, I'm only kidding, being omni-anything is way too much work, so if any of you decide to worship me, then count yourself as Deists and carry on with your lives.
I do retain the divine right to peek in voyeuristically on the naughty bits: I was only human at one point, ya know, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, know what I mean?
(Can't seem to get the percentages to show properly, go figure.)
How evil are you?
| Which God or Goddess are you like? Your Result: The Christian God You are the Holy Lord. You are the shepherd and those that follow you are your lambs. You are kind and patient, but when need be, you are vile and creul. You are often asked for advice or wisdom, and you willingly give it. Congratulations!! You are God!! | |
| Buddha | |
| Jesus | |
| Goddess Bast | |
| Goddess Sekhemet | |
| God Zeus | |
| You are your own God or Goddess | |
| Satan | |
| Which God or Goddess are you like? Make Your Own Quiz | |
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Darwin As Devil Worshipper - And They Wonder Why They're Not Taken Seriously
I chanced across this piece of tomfoolery recently - and the inherent stupidity of it just crosses my eyes.
I can only hope this person teaches Kindergarten - because they're not fit to do much else.
I'm going to just cherry-pick a few of the choicer idiocies.
A long time ago, don't know when and don't know where, because there wasn't any where and there wasn't any time. But, a long time ago there was nothing and it was no where that makes sense. Nothing can be no where. Nothing doesn't have to have somewhere to be, because it is nothing, and nothing can be no where. A long time ago there was nothing no where, a long time ago when there wasn't anywhere.
Silliest damn fool thing I've read in a while. For those of you not well versed in this kind of foolspeak, this is obviously a moronic effort at misrepresenting a misconception we all know as nihil ex nihilo (how many scientists posit something from nothing? Exactly ZERO). I confess I'm startled (not shocked anymore: it happens way too frequently) that these bozos blather on about something violates the First Law of Thermodynamics. So said dilettante blathers on in a bad fit of simplistic reductionism for some time.
It's all too silly for words, isn't it? But think about those eyes. Oh dear! The sun kept playing on a freckle until an eye came out, they say. But why did it choose a freckle beside the animal's nose? And then choose another freckle on the other side of its nose? Why didn't it choose a freckle on the back of its head, or on its legs, or possibly on its tail? Indeed, why didn't eyes start bobbing out all over its body?
A freckle is the result of melanin, you idiot. The larger part of the reason species have eyes, is that life shares a common ancestor.
And then, if it really were the rays of the sun that caused the freckles to turn into eyes, why didn't they make them strong enough to bear the light? Why, after making eyes, did the same sunbeams form eyelids to keep the light out?
(Human) eyelids are to keep the eyes moist. To protect them, as they are very poorly constructed, and the mechanisms are right out front, something an intelligent designer wouldn't have done.
And now we come to those poor monkeys who are supposed to have turned into men. They lost their hair because they discovered fire, and so didn't need it any more!
Smacks of Lamarckism. More stupidity follows:
Did they, indeed? Why, then, didn't they lose it off their heads at the same time? And why don't cats lose their hair nowadays when they sleep by the fire? And why do monkeys that live in hot countries still have their hair today?
It's called Thermoregulation, you simp.
No, children, this story that is going around is neither true nor sensible. It has been made up by people who do not love the Bible and are trying to find some other explanation of how things carne on this earth. And if you ask me, I think their story is a thousand times more difficult to believe than the simple Bible story of Creation.
Christlation: "Ooooh, it's too hard to engage my brain and try applying logic or do research! Let's just say someone (you know who) waved their magic wand over everything, and it all sprouted up from nothing!"
This dimbulb tries to swat some flies:
Evolutionists believed that one animal gradually could change into a different one through ‘mutations’. That means an ‘accident’ happens in the genes, and the animal is born different than its parents. They believed that with all these generations of fruit flies they could see this happen.
Surprise! This did happen. And again, not good enough for the magic wand-ers:
But even though some flies would hatch out with different colours, or longer legs, or more or less bristles, or facets in their compound eyes, they were still fruit flies, nothing more, nothing less. How would you like to spend years counting bristles on a fly or facets on their eyes? Trying to prove evolution isn’t much fun.
Like most religious folks, they expect that this experimentation would produce an absolutely distinct family that wasn't 'fly' anymore.
Let's skip over the more pompous declarations, and cut to the quick:
Darwin had no aim in life so His dad decided to get him a nicely paid job as an Anglican minister. Darwin did not object.
But a relative got him a chance to go as unpaid "naturalist" on a ship planning to sail around the world, the Beagle. The voyage lasted from December 1831 to October 1836.
So far, so good. Here's where it gets jiggy.
It is of interest that, after getting into spiritualism, certain men in history have been seized with a deep hatred of God and have then been guided to make evil teachings that have destroyed large numbers of people, while others have engaged in wars, which have killed millions. We think of such known spiritists as Sigmund Freud and Adolf Hitler.
Well, Freud never destroyed anyone that I know of: and Hitler thought he was doing gawd's will. But hey, we're engaging in character assassination (as if this even has any bearing on the subject whatsoever), so what the hell?
Most people don’t know that Charles Darwin, while a naturalist aboard the Beagle, was initiated into witchcraft in South America by devil worshippers. He took part in their ceremonies and, as a result, something happened to him. Upon his return to England, although his health was strangely weakened, - he spent the rest of his life working on theories to destroy faith in the Creator.
I just got through watching PBS's Evolution series, 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea'. He was a quiet, thoughtful man, who wrestled with himself over publishing his observations (and married to a deeply religious woman, to boot). This, again, has absolutely no bearing on the matter whatsoever. But this presuppositionalist Dr. Seuss seems to think it does.
After leaving South America, Darwin was on the Galapagos Islands for a few days. While there, he saw some finches, which had blown in from South America and adapted to their environment, producing several varieties. He was certain that this showed evolution and change into new species. But they were still finches; they weren’t something different. This theory about the finches was the main evidence of evolution he brought back with him to England.
This is just idiotic. Much of it is left out: the finches in question were so different, that at first, some of them were mistaken for alternate genuses. Major variations in size, color, plumage, beaks: it had to be pointed out to Darwin that these were all finches.
This fucktard goes on to say:
His book, Origin of the Species, was first published in November 1859. The full title, On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, reveals the viciousness of the idea; this theory led directly to two of the worst wars in the history of man-kind.
Say what?!?!? So this clown is blaming Darwin for World Wars I and II? No proof, no citations, just errant crap.
In his book, Darwin had little evidence if any for what he had to say. Modern evolutionists are ashamed of the book with its foolish ideas. Most people believe it is a wonderful, scientific book, but they haven’t read it. Evolutionists today prefer that people don’t read it. But because it said what people who didn’t want to obey God wanted to believe, it became very popular.
Oh, you're kidding me, right? People only pay attention because it's popular? Because dat ole debbil wants folks to stray away from the 'straight and narrow'? God who? That silent voyeur who micro-manages our little lives (and poorly at that, from the state of the world), who mis-designed not only his children (if we were built in his image, the prototype must be a mess), but everything else as well?
Darwin would say he would have more evidence later to prove what he was saying; But, although he wrote other books, try as he may he never could find the proof for his stories. No one since has found it either. Basically the whole thing is a fairy-tale for grown-ups. With thinking like this, who needs science? But remember that Charles Darwin never had a day of schooling in the sciences.
These folks just get right up my nose. There's mountains of forensic evidence that validates these observations: because that's what science does. It observes and catalogues. You want the why of it? Read the philosophers. You want the who, what, where, and how of it? You go to science.
I'll just top this off.
As mentioned earlier, scientists today are ashamed of Darwin's ideas. He frequently commented in private letters that he saw that there was no evidence for his theory, and that it could destroy the morality of the human race.
Who? What? Where does this mental midget get this crap from? Answer: it was pulled straight from a specific orifice.
"Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without in some degree becoming staggered" (*Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species, 1860, p. 178. "Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a phantasy" (*Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, 1887, Vol. 2, p. 229).
So there were doubts and problems? So BFD. Most of which as been resolved. The gaps are closing daily. This was back in the 19th century: a lot has happened since then.
After taking part in the witchcraft ceremonies, not only was his mind affected but his body also. He developed a chronic and incapacitating illness, and went to his death under a depression he could not shake. What a sad life story to have written in the books of heaven!
Ummm...excuse me? He died of a heart-attack at the age of 72. Where do these prats get their...? Oh, never mind, I answered that earlier.
It's a tu quoque wrapped in a non sequitor with a liberal dose of poison-the-well.
If evolution was about philosophy, or it even qualified as a 'religion', this would all be most damning.
Problem is, it's not and it's not, it's about scientific observations and the deductions drawn from them.
It most distinctly not about old Scratch whispering sweet nothings in our ears to distract and confuse us. Since there's no such critter.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
A More Urbane Re-telling Of The Atheists' Favorite Fable - That Boat Don't Float
(Click on the picture to enlarge)
Here's a brief clip (8 minutes) from the Joe Show (Joe Rogan).
It's very funny, and he sums it up pretty nicely.
Time to desert the sinking ship, I think.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Profiles in Atheism - The Mad Poet
THE WANDERING JEW'S SOLILOQUY.
[Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Bertram Dobell, 1887.]
Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He
Who dares arrest the wheels of destiny
And plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells?
Will not the lightning's blast destroy my frame?
Will not steel drink the blood-life where it swells?
No--let me hie where dark Destruction dwells,
To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair,
And, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire,
Light long Oblivion's death-torch at its flame
And calmly mount Annihilation's pyre.
Tyrant of Earth! pale Misery's jackal Thou!
Are there no stores of vengeful violent fate
Within the magazines of Thy fierce hate?
No poison in the clouds to bathe a brow
That lowers on Thee with desperate contempt?
Where is the noonday Pestilence that slew
The myriad sons of Israel's favoured nation?
Where the destroying Minister that flew
Pouring the fiery tide of desolation
Upon the leagued Assyrian's attempt?
Where the dark Earthquake-daemon who engorged
At the dread word Korah's unconscious crew?
Or the Angel's two-edged sword of fire that urged
Our primal parents from their bower of bliss
(Reared by Thine hand) for errors not their own
By Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown?
Yes! I would court a ruin such as this,
Almighty Tyrant! and give thanks to Thee--
Drink deeply--drain the cup of hate; remit this--I may die.
Another blast from the past - radical, free-thinker, poet.
"Is ranked as one of the great English poets of the romantic period.
A Tempestuous Life
"The son of a prosperous squire, he entered Oxford in 1810, where readings in philosophy led him toward a study of the empiricists and the modern skeptics, notably William Godwin. In 1811 he and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg published their pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, which resulted in their immediate expulsion from the university. The same year Shelley eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, by whom he eventually had two children, Ianthe and Charles.
"Supported reluctantly by their fathers, the young couple traveled through Great Britain. Shelley's life continued to be dominated by his desire for social and political reform, and he was constantly publishing pamphlets. His first important poem, Queen Mab, privately printed in 1813, set forth a radical system of curing social ills by advocating the destruction of various established institutions.
"In 1814 Shelley left England for France with Mary Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin. During their first year together they were plagued by social ostracism and financial difficulties. However, in 1815 Shelley's grandfather died and left him an annual income. Laon and Cynthna appeared in 1817 but was withdrawn and reissued the following year as The Revolt of Islam; it is a long poem in Spenserian stanzas that tells of a revolution and illustrates the growth of the human mind aspiring toward perfection.
"After Harriet Shelley's suicide in 1816, Shelley and Mary officially married. In 1817 Harriet's parents obtained a decree from the lord chancellor stating that Shelley was unfit to have custody of his children. The following year Shelley and Mary left England and settled in Italy. By this time their household consisted of their own three children and Mary's half-sister Claire Claremont and her daughter Allegra (whose father was Lord Byron). On July 8, 1822, Shelley was drowned while sailing in the Bay of Spezia, near Lerici.
Poetry
"Shelley composed the great body of his poetry in Italy. The Cenci, a tragedy in verse exploring moral deformity, was published in 1819, followed by his masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound (1820). In this lyrical drama Shelley poured forth all his passions and beliefs, which were modeled after the ideas of Plato. Epipsychidion (1821) is a poem addressed to Emilia Viviani, a young woman whom Shelley met in Pisa and with whom he developed a brief but close friendship.
"His great elegy, Adonais (1821), written in memory of Keats, asserts the immortality of beauty. Hellas (1822), a lyrical drama, was inspired by the Greek struggle for independence. His other poems include Alastor (1816) and the shorter poems “Ode to the West Wind,” “To a Skylark,” “Ozymandias,” “The Indian Serenade,” and “When the Lamp Is Shattered.”
Assessment
"Most of Shelley's poetry reveals his philosophy, a combination of belief in the power of human love and reason, and faith in the perfectibility and ultimate progress of man. His lyric poems are superb in their beauty, grandeur, and mastery of language. Although Matthew Arnold labeled him an “ineffectual angel,” 20th-century critics have taken Shelley seriously, recognizing his wit, his gifts as a satirist, and his influence as a social and political thinker."
Some quotes, to wet the palate:
"Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted."
"There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!"
"Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep -- he hath awakened from the dream of life -- 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife."
"Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, -- but it returneth."
"Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability."
"Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality."
"Here I swear, and as I break my oath may eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge. Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon; to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again -- I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry."
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