Sunday morning at 9am, tune in to Atheist Talk radio to listen to Massimo Pigliucci. This should be very good — Massimo is an evolutionary biologist and an atheist, and is also full of interesting ideas.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Massimo Pigliucci also write for Skeptical Inquirer on occasion. He’s usually a good read.
I would also like to mention that the interviewer is Greg Laden. Score!
I heard the show last week for the first time and enjoyed it, so am looking forward to hearing tomorrows show as well.
That’s like saying you live in Minneapolis and in Minnesota.
Not really. There are atheists who are not evolutionary biologists, and (I think) evolutionary biologists who are religious. I suspect what was meant was something like That’s like saying you are a cretinist and a loon. (Or should that be a believer in ghosts and a fecking nutcase?)
Pity. He sounds like he could write an opera.
Sigh. It was OK. My criticism would be that it was too basic and covered a lot of familiar territory. Someone like Barb would do well to listen (though I doubt she would), but those of us who want to hear more about exciting current developments from an excellent teacher and communicator – I think that was the clearest explanation of epigenetics I’ve ever heard, and I believe he said he was organizing a conference on the topic in the next few weeks – it had less to offer. And the thing is I can’t really blame anyone. It’s sad that people who could be talking about exciting scientific work have to keep responding to the same dumb religious arguments, but you can’t just say “Ignore them” since these mistaken ideas are widespread and many who hold them wield political power. I don’t know – maybe they could’ve been ignored in this broadcast, since it was for a specific audience…
I also wish more time had been devoted to the discussion and criticism of Ken Miller’s lame anthropic, theistic-evolution bit.
gah. Charlie, horizontal gene transfer is not evidence for whatever Cosmic Ancestry is, nor, whatever it is, whatever bullshit it “holds.”
Nobody would argue that acquisition of some enzymes brand-new to a lineage couldn’t be a beneficial thing. It may have happened several times in the evolution of animals, even (cellulose in tunicates, chloroplast genes in a nudibranch, possibly even chitin).
So what? It’s one (apparently rare, these days) source of new genes among many. None of them require anything cosmic.
The podcast is now available.
SC, I’m going to push for getting Massimo back for a more focused show. I fully agree that his descriptions and explanations were beautifully clear, and I hope we can get him to talk about some more advanced topics in that same lucid way.
Thanks for the response, Stephanie. Hope you get him back (soon)!