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Pretty neat stuff in which Julia Child explains theories of abiogenesis and goes on to demonstrate how the various chemicals would hypothetically be combined for it to happen (via Pharyngula): Your Thoughts?
Archive for September, 2009
Julia Child Makes Primordial Soup
September 24th, 2009 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Biology, Cultural Secularism, Science, Videos 
Tags: abiogenesis, Chemistry, Julia Child, Vintage Videos 
No Comments »Gay Kids Coming Out In Middle School
September 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke The times sure are a-changin’. From a long interesting piece in the New York Times Magazine: Still, the younger they are when they come out, the more that youth with same-sex attractions face an obstacle that would be unimaginable to their straight peers. When a 12-year-old boy matter-of-factly tells his parents — or a school [...]
Nick Cave Interviewed About His New Book The Death of Bunny Munro
September 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Nick Cave is one of the coolest cats on the planet and this interview is no exception. via a huge geeking out fan who has great stories of meeting him repeatedly on his book reading tour and finding him extremely gracious: After the discussion, I got in line for the signing. I’ve asked him to [...]
The Tweet Commandments
September 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Camels With Hammers is now blessed to be followed on Twitter by Omnipresent G-d (LORD YHWH) and is delighted to learn that after a couple thousand years of silence and that whole Jesus era onward in which He stopped speaking for himself and started speaking only through spokesmen, YHWH is back with his own distinctive, [...]
The Atheism Tapes: Richard Dawkins Interviewed By Jonathan Miller
September 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke An interview from the time of the beginning of the Iraq war. He talks about the connection between religion and people’s tendency to personify evil and personify good and religion and whether such religious thinking is partly to blame for Bush’s and Blair’s judgments. Dawkins discusses how at 9 the plurality of religions initially led [...]
Posted in Atheism, Evolution, Videos Tags: Darwinism, Jonathan Miller, Richard Dawkins No Comments »Philosophical Ethics: Bruce Russell On Theories About What Makes An Action Rational Or Not
September 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In a series of posts this semester, I am going to blog all (or almost all) the lecture topics for the two Philosophical Ethics classes I am teaching this semester. Each of these posts will primarily explicate the reading or a theme that dominated class discussion in a way that should be accessible to novices [...]
Posted in Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Duty, Ethics, Featured, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Tags: Agent-Neutral Externalism, Agent-Neutral Internalism, Agent-Relative Externalism, Agent-Relative Internalism, Bruce Russell, Desires, Moral Externalism, Moral Internalism, Moral Universalizability, Objective Reasons For Actions, Philosophical Ethics 1 Comment »Blaghag Gives Presentation On Her Creation Museum Trip
September 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Last month we covered PZ Myers’ and the Secular Student Alliance’s tirp to Ken Ham’s Creation Museum quite extensively. Now comes this video of Jennifer McCreight (aka the blogger “Blag Hag”, senior biology major at Purdue, and president of Purdue’s Society For Non-Theists) with a presentation she gave at Purdue giving the lowdown on her [...]
Biblical Slavery, In Context
September 24th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Does the Bible REALLY endorse slavery, when read in CONTEXT??? Yes, yes it does. Leviticus 25:44-46: ‘As for your male and female slaves whom you may have– you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live [...]
Posted in Atheism, Bible, Featured, God, History, Judaism, Religion, Videos Tags: 1 Timothy 2:9, 1 Timothy 6:1, American Slavery, An Atheist Reads The Bible, Biblical Atrocities, biblical denial of human rights, Exodus 21:20-21, Leviticus 25:44-46, Old Testament, ProfMTH, Slavery, Slavery in the Bible, The Brick Testament, Titus 2:9 No Comments »And They Say The Atheists Are Angry…
September 23rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke There are a million Richard Dawkins interviews out there and in the next few weeks it looks like we’ll be seeing a million more with the release of The Greatest Show On Earth. This one is worth highlighting simply because the interviewer shows an astonishing hostility to the very idea that Dawkins would dare reject [...]
“The Atheist” As Symbol And Boundary-Marking Cultural Category In America
September 23rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke The hostility to atheism is so incredibly illogical, but there it is, from this paper out of the University of Minnesota, published in American Sociological Review in April 2006: The core point of this article can be stated concisely. Atheists are at the top of the list of groups that Americans find problematic in both [...]
On Failing To Grasp How Competition Can Be Cooperative And How Cooperation Can Be Counter-Productive
September 23rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Robin Hanson responds to work such as Frans de Waal’s which emphasizes the invaluable role that empathy and cooperation played in natural selection of humans by stressing that as good as cooperation might be, we are prone to making serious errors about what genuinely helpful cooperation entails in specific instances: The unstated moral behind most [...]
There Are No Theists In Hospital Waiting Rooms
September 23rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Have to post the video just for the great title alone. But the information is also important and sad. Before watching this video, please do yourself a favor and read Those Who Walk Away From Omelas if you never have before. It’s worth experiencing reading it for yourself before watching the video since the video [...]
Tesco: A Company With Subtle Theological Spokespeople
September 23rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Daniel Jones, 23 year old founder of a 500,000 member Jedi church, felt emotionally humiliated after employees at a Tesco forced him to remove his Jedi hood and mocked his beliefs after he gave them a business card which proved his religion. Mr Jones, from Holyhead, said his religion dictated that he should wear the [...]
Posted in Friendly Atheist, News, News Discussion, Religulous Tags: Cults, Daniel Jones, Jedi, Jedi Church, Religious Rights, Texaco No Comments »Edward Current Converts To Every Religion (Just In Case)
September 23rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke via JoeBible
Posted in Atheism, Comedy, Parody, Religious Satire, Satire, Videos Tags: Edward Current, Pascal's Wager No Comments »Daily Hilarity: The Sanity Fish
September 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke For those in need of some inspiration lest they regain faith in times of trial: (warning: somewhat gratuitous vulgarity in the video) Your Thoughts?
Posted in Atheism, Comedy, Parody, Satire, Videos Tags: Sanity Fish, Vapid Inspirationalism No Comments »Sex Offenders Or Curious Teenagers
September 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Andrew Sullivan points to this post arguing that the law is damaging many lives by not adequately distinguishing the difference: The sex offender laws will kick in and are guaranteed to destroy any ambition your child may have for success. Any attempts to better themselves, or become productive members of your community, will be throttled [...]
Adam Beane’s Sculptures
September 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Beane’s sculptures are beautifully realistic. Here’s his Eric Gagne: See more, including such figures as Billy Wagner, Brian Urlacher, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Pablo DiCanio, Evangeline Lily, Dante Toneguzzo, Roger Milla, Alessandro del Piero, a zombie teenager, and more.
Challenging Myths Of Eden
September 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Below is a thought-provoking video which critiques the notion of fallenness from several angles. It builds off of one point I’ve wanted to write about for a while and that’s that the non-literal reading of Genesis is just as false as the metaphorical one. When religious people argue that the Garden of Eden story is [...]
The Draconian Rules At Pensacola Christian College
September 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke The Student Voice, an unofficial website for discussing Pensacola Christian College describes some of the creepy and invasive extents to which their restrictions and punishments go. Here’s a kind of punishment called “Shadowing: Though not a specific punishment, it often accompanies the above disciplines. Shadowing is when a student is made to accompany a floor-leader or other [...]
Anti-Arab Sentiment Feeds Anti-Obama Sentiment In Israel Too
September 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke A dispiriting video: Your Thoughts?
Philosophical Ethics: R.M. Hare On Moral Consistency As A Form Of Logical Consistency
September 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke In a series of posts this semester, I am going to blog all (or almost all) the lecture topics for the two Philosophical Ethics classes I am teaching this semester. Each of these posts will primarily explicate the reading or a theme that dominated class discussion in a way that should be accessible to novices [...]
Posted in Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Duty, Ethics, Featured, Historical Ethics, Metaethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Tags: Act Utilitarianism, Deontology, Irrational Moral Judgments, John Searle, Judgementalism, Moral Formalism, Moral Judgments, Moral Situationalism, Moral Universalizability, Ought Statements, Practical Contradictions, Prescriptivism, Promises, R.M. Hare, Rational Moral Judgment, Utilitarianism No Comments »Convincing Muslims America’s On A Crusade
September 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke Chris Rodda has ten great tips on how we can do it! via Friendly Atheist Your Thoughts?
Posted in Christianity, Fundamentalism, Islam, Military, Politics, Religion, Religious Extremism, Separation of Church and State, Theocracy Tags: Chris Rodda, Christian Evangelism, Christianity in Military, Crusades, Huffington Post, Militaristic Religion, Religion In Military, The Great Commission No Comments »Zombie Cockroaches! (And Other Dissertation Haikus)
September 22nd, 2009 Daniel Fincke When you spend years writing away at a dissertation you learn how to do at least one thing exceedingly well—and that’s to describe your dissertation distinctly and succinctly. And sometimes succinctly means boiling it down to just a paragraph or a couple sentences or even one sentence. Or a haiku. Like these people have done: [...]
Daily Hilarity: The Dog Delusion
September 21st, 2009 Daniel Fincke (J-Walk Blog) Richard Dawkins’s hotly anticipated The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution hits shelves tomorrow! Happy reading everybody! Your Thoughts?
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