Posts

May 22, 2013

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Two days ago the second Women in Secularism conference ended. This is only the second time I’ve attended a non-religious or non-work related conference, (I’ve attended a lot of very large Christian conferences in the past,) and it was probably the most rewarding weekend I’ve had in many years. Not only because of the great speakers, but also because of all the great people there. Many of whom I’ve interacted with online for the past few years. I’m not sure what […]

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6:26 PM | Checking My Privilege and Still Speaking Out

It’s funny how that sort of thing works. One can realize the ramifications of one’s position in society that has been either been granted or attained and that realization can then make your life experience even richer yet. Then you can use that position to make the world better. I am privileged in many ways. I am a straight, able bodied, white person, living in the United States. All of those things provide me with benefits in the society that I live in. All of those things I can easily […]

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1:01 PM | Schaible child faith healing death ruled a homicide

An update to the Schaible case whose second child died after they did not seek medical treatment and chose to pray. Death of Faith-Healing Couple’s Son Ruled a Homicide | NBC 10 Philadelphia. The death of the son of a local “faith healing” couple has been ruled a homicide. Brandon Schaible, an 8-month-old boy, died on April 18 shortly after 8:30 p.m. His parents, Herbert and Catherine Schaible, are fundamentalist Christians who believe in the power of prayer instead of […]

May 21, 2013

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11:26 PM | Praying for Oklahoma is worthless

I’m dismayed at the news yesterday out of Oklahoma – the violent storm that ended lives. This morning on Facebook, I noticed that many of my pious friends were letting the rest of us know that they were praying for Oklahoma, or more specifically, for the victims of the storm. At the same time, the hashtag #prayforoklahoma is trending on Twitter with all sorts of people dropping that phrase into …

May 20, 2013

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11:13 PM | Black cat in a dark room – and the role of science

There are some really excellent quotes on social media – Facebook and Twitter. The one above really appeals to me. Sure the classifications are broad, and it would be interesting to break each one down. But the main message is … Continue reading →

May 18, 2013

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6:00 AM | Ethnocentrism, religion, and austerity: a science poster for the humanities

Artem Kaznatcheev and I presented a poster on May 4th at the University of British Columbia to a highly interdisciplinary conference on religion. The conference acronym is CERC, which translates as Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium. Most of the 60-some attendees are religion scholars and social scientists from North American and European universities. Many […]

Kaznatcheev, Artem & Shultz, Thomas R. (2011). Ethnocentrism maintains cooperation, but keeping one’s children close fuels it., Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 3174-3179. Other: Link

Citation

May 17, 2013

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4:00 PM | Crash Course US History #15 - 19th Century...

Crash Course US History #15 - 19th Century Reforms thecrashcourse: In which John Green teaches you about various reform movements in the 19th century United States. From Utopian societies to the Second Great Awakening to the Abolition movement, American society was undergoing great changes in the first half of the 19th century. Attempts at idealized societies popped up (and universally failed) at Utopia, OH, New Harmony, IN, Modern Times, NY, and many other places around the country. These […]

May 16, 2013

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8:08 AM | Did St. Brendan Reach North America 500 Years Before the Vikings?

Without hard proof, many great adventures from the past stand the risk of being ignored and ultimately forgotten.

May 13, 2013

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3:37 PM | Templeton Redux

Not much more to say about the Templeton Foundation, but in the interest of open discussion it seems fair to point to a couple of alternative viewpoints. My original post was republished at Slate, where there are over 3300 comments … Continue reading →

May 12, 2013

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11:37 AM | Islamic Blasphemy and the “Freedom” to Choose your Own Religion

In the last few weeks, Muslims from Bangladesh have been going crazy trying to fight back against the critical words of bloggers and other online heretics by violent riots that have so far led to the death of over 30 people. … Continue reading →

May 10, 2013

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3:56 PM | Beware Your Bedfellows

Back when I first joined Facebook in 1953 or whatever, I just added anyone who asked to be my friend. At the time, I saw Facebook as an easy opportunity for marketing Skepchick and The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe; a way for fans to hear what was going on and say hi. When I hit 5,000 friends a few years ago, Facebook prevented me from adding anyone else, so I stopped and only added people I knew in real life whenever someone got defriended for randomly posting racist, sexist, or […]

May 09, 2013

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3:30 PM | Politeness as Manipulation: Ray Comfort

In addition to helping fund-raise for the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference this year, I’ve been a volunteer for the con since its first year and spoke there last year. People who knew I was there asked me if I ran into Ray Comfort. When I’ve told them that I left during the dinner break, they have lamented the fact that I missed out on encountering the infamous Banana Man (he doesn’t like talking about that particular yellow, phallic fruit anymore). The truth […]

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2:56 PM | Pressing Patients to Change Their Minds

When my patient took herself off the active liver transplant list, I had to ask myself a question: Did I have some type of duty to get her to change her mind?

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11:30 AM | Evolutionary theory gone wrong

Survival of the fittest? Darwin never said thatEvolution? It is only a theory, many creationists will tell you. "Only a theory" is meant to be dismissive, yet much of science is based on things that are only a theory. Theories are important; they are how science works. Theories are not facts – theories are explanations of the world that we observe. Theories are based on facts but are not themselves facts. As they are the basic stuff of science, calling something only a theory makes no sense […]

May 08, 2013

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8:54 PM | On Templeton

A few recent events, including the launch of Nautilus and this interesting thread on Brian Leiter’s blog, have brought the John Templeton Foundation (JTF) back into the spotlight. As probably everybody knows, the JTF is a philanthropic organization that supports … Continue reading →

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6:41 AM | Ein Nachruf auf Christian de Duve

Vergangenen Samstag ist Christian de Duve im Alter von 95 Jahren gestorben. Er war ein Pionier der Zellbiologie. De Duve hat bei Experimenten zur Aktivität von Enzymen in Zellextrakten zufällig die Lysosomen und die Peroxysomen entdeckt. Beides sind Zellkompartimente, die bei Abbaureaktionen eine zentrale Rolle spielen und die sich durch geeignete Zentrifugationsmethoden aus Zellextrakten isolieren…

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4:15 AM | A beggar’s market?

Thus guy, James, from Austin, Texas, may have discovered something about the market. He is homeless man named James and is performing something of a social experiment. James has laid out nine bowls in front of him, each labelled by … Continue reading →

May 07, 2013

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7:00 PM | IndieUhOh: Crowdfunding Exotic Vacations–err, Religious Missions?

Ah, the wisdom of crowds! Two heads are better than one, so hundreds of heads must be super friggin’ smart. As we know from experience, people getting together always results in really smart things being done. Er, most of the time. Sometimes. Once in a while? Anyway, we’ve seen before that crowdfunding has the potential to do great stuff, like fund scientific research and awesome art, among other initatives. There are some excellent crowdfunded skeptical projects, ranging from Godless […]

May 05, 2013

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11:47 PM | Interfaith delusions

I am not claiming that “interfaith” activity is bad – obviously it can do a lot to reduce inter-religious friction, hostility and violence. And that is certainly needed in parts of the world today. No – the bad arises when … Continue reading →

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9:11 PM | The Mythology of Pax6

It is a mistake to think that artworks that borrow scientific terms or imagery are inspired by science. Rather, it is the non-scientific or even anti-scientific mythologies that grow up around science that provide the substrate on which new artworks grow.

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2:38 PM | Maybe End Times believers should just stay home and pray, not make decisions

Let reasonable people try and deal with the world’s problems. Belief That “Second Coming” Of Jesus Is Nigh May Be Preventing Climate Change Action: A Study : Science : Nature World News. Belief that the “Second Coming” of Jesus is nigh may be stemming climate change action, according to a study published in the Political Science Quarterly. The research, conducted by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado, […]

May 04, 2013

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9:48 PM | Most Muslims ‘accept’ human evolution

I’ve mentioned before that many (most?) Muslims are Creationists, broadly understood. According to Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey 42 percent of American Muslims accept that evolution is the best explanation for the origin of human life on earth. This is roughly in line with the American public, if a touch on the Creationist side. The numbers [...]

May 03, 2013

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8:18 PM | David Brooks Single-Handedly Solves the Fertilizer Shortage

Today’s BoBo column is useful, very useful indeed. It’s one of his nominally apolitical efforts, and as such, parsing its intellectual flaws and frauds yields a helpful guide to the ways Brooks puts his thumb on the scale of everything he writes. A column like this one helps expose his genius for bullshit without the [...]

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3:10 PM | Lose-iana continues rejection of the real world

Politicians do the most boneheadded things. Senators again reject repeal of Louisiana Science Education Act | NOLA.com. A Louisiana law that opponents say leaves the backdoor open to teaching “creationism” in public schools will stay on the books after a Senate committee Wednesday effectively killed a bill that would repeal the statute. After hours of testimony for and against House Bill 26, which repeals the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act, the senators narrowly deferred […]

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10:18 AM | 'Islamophobia' and the Atheist movement | by @mjrobbins

Whether or not 'Islamophobia' is a valid term, leading Atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have been confused, inconsistent and blundering in their attempts to talk about Muslims.Sam Harris is about as consistent as Glenn Greenwald is concise, which made their exchange of multi-thousand word cowpats last month particularly grueling reading. That's a shame, because Harris dropped a retrospective clanger that very few people picked up on. It came in a recent volley against Greenwald, in […]

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12:34 AM | Emotional Arguments

Is there a time and place for an emotional argument? Janet Kagan wrote a Star Trek novel some few decades ago called Uhura’s Song. When I got rid of all 200 of my Star Trek novels, I kept two. This is one of them. It’s an excellent book for many, many reasons. But the one [...]

May 02, 2013

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5:43 PM | Happy National Day of Reason!

Did you know that the National Day of Prayer is still a thing that is celebrated in the ostensibly secular United States of America? It is! It’s the first Thursday of every May, which happens to be today. And did you know that humanists celebrate today as the National Day of Reason? They do! At least since 2003, anyway. Did you also know that today is BAD CHART THURSDAY?? Well it is, and I was out of ideas until I started thinking about the National Day of Prayer, and how it stacks up to […]

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1:50 PM | Children Are the Future

This latest major incident about firearms has sparked some thoughts in me. Regardless of what one believes, wishes were true, hopes to be true; whether you place blame on the 5-year-old boy, his parents, the gun manufacturer, or legislation; whether you think guns are evil, holy, tools of death, or tools of survival… A LITTLE [...]

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