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Pinker on LanguageLanguage as a window into human social relations.
Carl SaganSums it ALL up.
Toy StoryReveals the truth about religion.
Religion is Failed Scienceby Sam Harris.
Carrell and Corbert Debate ReligionCarrell is Christian and Corbet is a Muslim. Which one will win?!
Sam HarrisLiteral and metaphoric interpretations of the bible.
Obama On ReligionInclusion...
Ali G on ReligionSo perfect.
Ann Rand on AtheismAhead of her time.
Atheist WalkingUsing the handle Atheist Walking, Mitchell also conducts free-ranging inquiries into Christianity's contradictions with a rolling video camera and a satirically raised eyebrow -
On EvidenceWhat is evidence?
How Star Wars Destroyed My Faith in GodStar Wars apologetics...
Animal Hybrid PhotoshopsWhoa
Clergy Who Don't BelieveHow many of the pastors and ministers in our churches no longer believe in God?
Bible ContradictionsSo many...
Mom's of Gays"I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people."
The Competing Sexual StrategiesOf liberals versus conservative.
David Wolpe and Christopher HitchensDavid Wolpe and Christopher Hitchens debate religion, faith,God at John Hancock Hall, Boston, MA. Moderator: Tom Ashbrook.
Raj Patel: Reluctant MessiahIn a twist ripped straight from the script of the comedy classic, they said that this disavowal, too, had been prophesied.
RevelationHow some people establish what is proper action and thought.
My answer is that these two brands of bad science elide seamlessly into one another, with no sharp line to demarcate them. Nevertheless, I don’t call people like Francis Collins advocates of ID simply because that term conflates them with the hard-core, get-in-your school adherents of ID who populate the Discovery Institute. But let us [...]...
May-20 10:55
The Mencken quotes this week will all, of course, deal with religion and theology. Here’s your Sunday lesson, from Mencken’s Notebooks, p. 373: It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be [...]...
UPDATE: Richard will be discussing this live on the BBC World Service at 1.45pm BST (that's GMT+1) today. Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society will also be taking part in the discussion.
You can listen live via this link and if you can't listen in live, it will be available for a further 7 days on the BBC iPlayer.
Michael Gove, the education secretary, thinks there should be a c...
May-19 18:10
According to YouTube and HuffPo, this amazing video of several days in the Earth’s northern hemisphere were taken by a Russian weather satellite that snaps a photo every 30 minutes with a resolution of 121 megapixels. From YouTube: A timelapse of Planet Earth from Electro-L, a geostationary satellite orbiting 40000km above the Earth. The satellite [...]...
May-19 16:10
Where, oh where, are the journalists who can not only tell it like it is about faith, but do so with humor and invective? I’d give a million Krista Tippetts for one H. L. Mencken. This quote, from Minority Report, H. L. Mencken’s Notebooks (Knopf, 1956, p. 232), was brought to my attention by alert [...]...
May-19 12:20
Whenever you see an interview or article by David Sloan Wilson these days, you know he’ll be kvetching about one of two things: the horribly unfair neglect of group selection by evolutionary biologists, or the horribly unfair neglect of “evolutionary religious studies” (ERS) by evolutionary biologists. (“Evolutionary religious studies” comprise the efforts of schola...
May-18 19:49
Ancient bacteria living in deep-sea sediments are alive—but with metabolisms so slow that it’s hard to tell.
In the northern Pacific Ocean, buried 20 meters below the ocean floor, are bacteria that live life in the extreme slow lane. They have not received any fresh sources of food since they were buried 86 million years ago, when dinosaurs still walked the land. Still, they cling to life by ...
The peroxiredoxin active site is highly conserved in all domains of life. Image: Nature (2012) doi:10.1038/nature11088
Phys.org) -- A group of biology researchers, led by Akhilesh Reddy from Cambridge University have found an enzyme that they believe serves as a circadian clock that operates in virtually all forms of life. In a paper published in the journal Nature, they describe a class of enzym...
Christian-nationalist zealots are trying to rewrite US history, airbrush slavery and enshrine creationism in Texas schools
Texas Governor Rick Perry famously dismissed evolution as 'a theory that's out there', during his failed run for the GOP presidential nomination. Photograph: David J Phillip/AP
Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education from 2007 to 2009, is a "young earth"...
May-18 06:38
(via Giordano Cipriani)
(Also on Sb) ...
Say what you will about Bristol Palin, she’s a quick study. It didn’t take her long to master the ways of her elders on the censorious right and decide that personal circumstance and past error needn’t prevent someone from claiming righteous leadership. Uncle Rush must be proud.
Soon after President Obama stated support for same-sex marriage, Bristol publicly weighed in. Because, you know, ...
(via Cepolina.com)
(Also on FtB) ...
May-14 20:22
(via Australian Geographic)
(Also on FtB) ...
May-11 10:01
Meet Jeff Flake from Arizona. His number one goal is the destruction of the federal government, one piece at a time. His first target: the National Science Foundation. The NSF funds a big chunk of the country's basic research to the tune of about $7 billion/year, and Flake proposed cutting it by a billion dollars.
He didn't get what he wanted, fortunately.
But now he's fallen back on the tricks ...
May-11 09:03
(via Duke Institute for Brain Sciences)
(Also on FtB) ...
