Last month I commented on a conversation over at NewSojourn, “Where Does ‘Ought’ Come From?“, where he commits the fallacy of the false dilemma by saying that you either believe morality, ethics, “proper” civil behavior is dictated by a (the Christian) god, or else there is no such thing and any claim to believe in [...]
READ MORE »Posts in category SCIENCE
Life in the future! An ode to reason.
Welcome to the 21st century! ♦ Girl, 6, thrown on fire for being ‘lowest class’ If anyone denies that the earth is composed of literally two different worlds, they’re living a completely sheltered life in theirs. Here in the year 2008, we have machines that can literally detect thought before you have the thought, we [...]
READ MORE »It’s easy to make your point when you use lies and fantasy.
It’s hard not to comment on the horrific screed that is the movie “Expelled”. I’ve not seen it, and I’m not sure I want to (just as I’m not interested in seeing Michael Moore’s manipulative and half-truth pseudo-docs). But Scientific America has a great article listing a few things that the movies gets horribly wrong–and [...]
READ MORE »What Biblical scholars would prefer you didn’t know.
Here’s an interesting videotaped lecture from a Biblical scholar and former Christian evangelical (until, get this, after he learned Biblical scholarship), discussing how, well, basically how the masses’ religion is kept alive by people who don’t want it known what Biblical scholars know about Biblical history and validity. ♦ Hector Avalos: How Archaeology Killed Biblical [...]
READ MORE »Hopping onto the Expelled issue.
There’s a movie coming out called Expelled, which tries to argue that there are people in academia being fired and denied tenure because of Intelligent Design beliefs. And more ridiculously, how “Darwinism” (which is really a silly term) was the basis for Nazi holocaust. Well, let me allow others, involved in the film and the [...]
READ MORE »Dawkins and the oddness of science, on Zeus, and kindness.
Richard Dawkins is just the coolest! (Author of such books as The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion.) Here is a video (22 min long) of his talk at TED a couple of years ago where he discusses just how fantastically weird the universe is, because of the way our brains have evolved to apprehend [...]
READ MORE »On sexuality, feminism, and being a man, baby.
(Sorry for invoking the specter of Austin Powers with that title.) I almost never discuss sex and gender issues on my blog. I think I have only twice in the five years I’ve been blogging: ♦ The free market corrects (for errors in being trusting). ♦ For the Bible tells me so. ♦ Time for [...]
READ MORE »Nuclear doom?
Read: A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that some 50,000-100,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer caused by particulate air pollution, the biggest cause of which is coal-burning power plants in the midwest and east. Even taking the maximum predicted death toll from Chernobyl, we would need a Chernobyl-sized [...]
READ MORE »Proto-building blocks of life in space!
Fascinating article from BadAstronomy today, describing the recent confirmation of a organic molecules in space. Particularly a molecule that is a precursor to the amino acid that makes up living DNA: ♦ An organic farm in the galactic center You know what that means…. Well, nothing certain, of course. But it indicates that, in conjunction [...]
READ MORE »Unintelligent design.
Just listened to an episode of Air America’s “Atheists Talk” episode 8 where they interview “The Friendly Atheist” and biologist PZ Myers: ♦ Atheists Talk #008 Mar 2, 2008 (click the “listen now” link at the bottom to listen or download) The first half interview with Hemant Mehta of The Friendly Atheist is kind of [...]
READ MORE »“What Everyone Should Know About Science”
A quickie: Science blog Uncertain Principles has a great little post today to remind us that science is not a religion, it’s not a dogma, if it has any similarity to am ideology, it’s because it’s simply a model of how to look at the world but does NOT tell you WHAT to think or [...]
READ MORE »Making critical thinking and rational dicision making fun and entertaining!
I recently got a comment on one of my two year old posts: ♦ God’s Real Estate in which the poster brought up Pascal’s Wager as a reason to believe in God (the Christian one in particular). Another commenter supplied a link to a video that I found absolutely fantastic! It’s not religion related, by [...]
READ MORE »The free market corrects (for errors in being trusting).
I listen to a lot of podcasts, most of them about skepticism, humanism, science fiction, writing, grammar, literature…and there’s one I listen to called “Sex Is Fun.” It’s an educational show that focuses on sex-positive health issues, issues of sexual identity, lifestyles, concerns and dysfunction, product reviews, sexual politics, as well as being fun and [...]
READ MORE »Truly awesome and glorious!
OK, with my last post on religion getting that out of my system, probably for another few months at least (it’s a rather fantastic post, that one by John Loftus), it’s time to move on to good and positive things! And one of those things, for me, is the awesome wonder of the universe!!! “For [...]
READ MORE »“Dark energy is repulsive!”
OK, I took that quote from a commenter on one of today’s Bad Astronomy posts: ♦ Dark energy video from Hubble Phil Plait gives us a link to a Hubble Flash animation that does an amazing job explaining the discovery of dark energy and its role in the acceleration of the universe. This really is [...]
READ MORE »Will blow your mind!
Hopefully a quickie post today–on the subject of your spicy brains! Two really interesting podcasts this week (I understand some people still need reminding you don’t need an MP3 player, certainly not an iPod to listen to podcasts. They’re just MP3 files you can download and listen on your computer.) The first is The Skeptic’s [...]
READ MORE »Cool science roundup.
Been busy. Here’s a few items of science interest for you! Enjoy. A really amazing couple of animations from the Cassini probe exploring the Saturn system: ♦ Cool Cassini Animations One shows the “shepherd’s moon” Prometheus moving around in its space in Saturn’s ring, pulling out threads of the ring! The other is Mimas, or [...]
READ MORE »“Spiraling tentacles of galactic doom!”
Read this amazing post of on Bad Astronomer today: ♦ Spiraling tentacles of galactic doom! If you don’t think much about it, you look at that and go, “Cool, pretty. Interesting.” It kind of looks like eddies of foam in a pond or on the beach. But think about the fact that the tendril of [...]
READ MORE »The vital importance of science education.
Carl Sagan wrote in Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, pointing up why it’s so very important that we put more emphasis on good, reality-based science education: “We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no [...]
READ MORE »Spy powers, activate! Now…screw it up!
(I have a hard time coming up with titles. ) Kinda busy, so not going to expound on these too much, but here’s some interesting news in the world of surveillance and spying: ♦ Insect Drones ‘Spotted’ on U.S. Streets The natural evolution of technology, it’s bound to happen and there’s no stopping it. Spy [...]
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