A Modest Petition
I generally don’t like petitions but this one seems to be a good and easy way to express our support for reason and science:
Please Sign Our Petition Urging President Obama To Recognize Darwin Day (International Darwin Day Foundation)
We need our elected leaders to speak out about the importance of scientific knowledge and its contribution [...]
Religion & Happiness Revisited
The Least Religious Nations Are The Happiest, Study Finds (The National Secular Society; Dec 4)
A new study (pdf) into the correlation between religious belief and contentment and security shows that the less religious a society is the happier and more secure it becomes.
The study, by Gregory Paul, published in Evolutionary Psychology [...]
Evolution Hall Planned for Smithsonian
Someone passed on to me a clipping from a newspaper (yes, a real one made out of actual paper and ink) that mentions the planned opening of a hall in the National Museum of Natural History dedicated to human evolution.:
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History plans to open a hall next year dedicated to [...]
Darwin & Eugenics
Charles Darwin’s relationship with “eugenics” (meaning well born) is often misunderstood or mischaracterized. The term itself was invented and first fully articulated by Sir Francis Galton – Darwin’s cousin – in 1883 (a year after Darwin died). Galton defined it as “the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the [...]
Galileo & The Church (2): Copernicus
Image via Wikipedia
Back to Part 1
Both John Draper and Andrew Dickson White used the Galileo Affair as one of their many examples of the religious oppression of scientific progress. However, lingering in the background to this affair is Copernicus and his monumental work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, which revived the heliocentric model [...]
Galileo & The Church (1): The Conflict Thesis
It would not be unreasonable to observe that the figure of Galileo Galilei has emerged as the emblematic example of the conflict between science and religion. Galileo was put on trial in 1633 by the Roman Catholic Inquisition for advancing a heliocentric cosmology, in contradiction to the sacred scriptures, found guilty, and placed under house [...]
Science & Religion in Unscientific America
A lot of blogging words have been spilled over Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, which I have now read. My opinion is that the major criticisms leveled at the book are generally fair and I have no intention or desire to pick through those again. Rather, [...]
Why I Think that Michael Ruse is a Disaster
Michael Ruse is a philosopher of science and a Darwin scholar who has written voluminously on Darwinism and the Evolution-Creation struggle. A self-proclaimed agnostic and skeptic, Ruse is also known as a strong supporter of reconciliation between science and religion. That said, he has taken creationists to task for promoting what he believes is definitely [...]
Harris Lays the Smack Down on Collins
As many of you know by now, Sam Harris published an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times on July 26th expressing reservations about Francis Collins‘ nomination as director of the NIH based on Collins’ views on the relationship between science and his evangelical Christianity. Unsurprisingly, the piece was roundly criticized. In response, Harris has [...]
Bad Astronomy
How many errors and dishonesties can you spot in this Young Earth Creationist answer to the argument that distant starlight proves that the Universe is older than 6,000 years?
Here is a start. They describe the “horizon problem,” which is a problem for the standard Big Bang theory of cosmic expansion:
The horizon problem is a problem [...]
http://www.anatheist.net