On the pressing need to rename the planets.
- Atheists often complain (it's their forte) of religionists getting involved in science. They scold all concerned that such interference ought not to be, and I don't know how any real writer (or real philosopher, or real human being for that matter) can disagree. We need to rid science of all vestiges of religion, and I think a good place to start is with the planets.
When you look at the planets (thru a telescope or in a book) you see the heavy hand of religion has been instrumental in naming them. The outrage here (and I think all real commentators feel it) is that they've all been named after various gods. This ought not to be. Can any rational person deny that they ought to be renamed. Just go through the list and see if you don't feel a rising anger in you.
The infamy of the situation;
We have Mercury (the winged god) Venus (the god of love) Mars (the god of war) Jupiter (the god of the sky) Saturn (the god of agriculture) Neptune (god of the sea) and so on. What real scientist can fail to be incensed at such a list.
What can we do? I suggest we rename the planets. My suggestion (and I think it's a good one) is to rename them after cartoon characters from Walt Disney films. My preliminary list goes as following; starting nearest the sun and heading out. (I leave it to others more worthy than myself to decide whether or not we need to rename the sun, as I believe star is another word for a god. We might in fact rename the sun Walt.) So we could start with renaming Mercury as Donald, Venus as Daffy, Mars as Goofy, Jupiter as Daisy, and so on.
I'm sure there's going to be a fierce debate over whether or not we need to rename Pluto as I think some people mistakenly believe it already is named after a Disney character. My research (I spent at least 10 seconds on Wikipedia) tells me this is not the case and it actually refers to one of the important gods of religion. [1.]
Certainly I have no desire to force my suggestions on the greater community (though I think they're going to be hard to beat). What I think we need is an international conference of all the leading scientists (the real kind) and have them decide by vote on this very important subject.
Addendum;
After writing this post someone suggested to me (no, it wasn't Walt) that perhaps we could use this great renaming event as a way of getting children and teenagers interested in science; and a way to do that would be to hand the naming process over to them. In this scenario they would vote on the Disney characters they wanted planets named after. Since I don't have a degree in the philosophy of childhood education I don't feel able to comment on this suggestion and leave it to my more qualified colleagues to decide.
- Mike Johnson [frfarer@gmail.com]
Notes;
1. The name Pluto was proposed by Venetia Burney (1918–2009), an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England. Venetia was interested in classical mythology as well as astronomy, and considered the name, a name for the god of the underworld, appropriate for such a presumably dark and cold world. - Wikipedia
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