Mexico has atheists!

And I’ll be meeting some of them tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll see a few people from Ateísmo desde México at Coloquio Mexicano de Ateísmo, and more…I actually get to spend a few days in Mexico City. I hope they’ll forgive the fact that I don’t have a lick of Spanish, which is a bit embarrassing nowadays…I should probably sign up for a few classes here at UMM sometime.

It’s not too late to get yourself to the big city for a great meeting.

Oh, and look: there’s a poll! I can guess what it’s saying.

Vas a asistir al Coloquio: ¿Cómo te identificas?

Librepensador(a)
17%
Creyente
4%
Deista
2%
Panteista
1%
Raeliano(a), Cientólogo(a), New Age…
6%
Agnóstico(a)
13%
Ateo(a)
58%

The new pick-up line: “I have a very large MRI device…”

A team of neuroscientists has made the coolest nerd porn film ever. They gave 16 women vibrators and asked them to bring themselves to orgasm while they made a movie…of their brains, using an MRI scanner. It’s going to premiere at the Society for Neuroscience meetings.

While it sounds like they have some interesting results — there is a consistent, wide-spread pattern of brain activity during orgasm, and specific areas are known to fire up — the article is not going to do a lot for Professor Barry Komisaruk’s reputation. The interviewer asked a few too many trivial questions.

“In women, orgasm produces a very extensive response across the brain and body,” said Barry Komisaruk, professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who oversaw the research.

“In one experiment we asked women to self-stimulate and then raise their hands each time they orgasmed. Some women raised their hands several times each session, often just a few seconds apart,” Professor Komisaruk said. “So the evidence is that woman tend to have longer orgasms and can experience several of them.”

So…the women in Professor Komisaruk’s life have never had a satisfactory sexual experience with him, so he needed a multi-million dollar machine to figure this out? I’m glad he finally learned this!

(I joke—I’m sure there are interesting neurological results, this article just highlighted the obvious, as if it were news.)

The Mass Libel Reform Blog — Fight for Free Speech!

This is a message from Simon Singh:

This week is the first anniversary of the report Free Speech is Not for Sale, which highlighted the oppressive nature of English libel law. In short, the law is extremely hostile to writers, while being unreasonably friendly towards powerful corporations and individuals who want to silence critics.

The English libel law is particular dangerous for bloggers, who are generally not backed by publishers, and who can end up being sued in London regardless of where the blog was posted. The internet allows bloggers to reach a global audience, but it also allows the High Court in London to have a global reach.

You can read more about the peculiar and grossly unfair nature of English libel law at the website of the Libel Reform Campaign. You will see that the campaign is not calling for the removal of libel law, but for a libel law that is fair and which would allow writers a reasonable opportunity to express their opinion and then defend it.

The good news is that the British Government has made a commitment to draft a bill that will reform libel, but it is essential that bloggers and their readers send a strong signal to politicians so that they follow through on this promise. You can do this by joining me and over 50,000 others who have signed the libel reform petition at
http://www.libelreform.org/sign

Remember, you can sign the petition whatever your nationality and wherever you live. Indeed, signatories from overseas remind British politicians that the English libel law is out of step with the rest of the free world.

If you have already signed the petition, then please encourage friends, family and colleagues to sign up. Moreover, if you have your own blog, you can join hundreds of other bloggers by posting this blog on your own site. There is a real chance that bloggers could help change the most censorious libel law in the democratic world.

We must speak out to defend free speech. Please sign the petition for libel reform at
http://www.libelreform.org/sign

Tone, again?

The cartoon is amusing.

i-bc61d0992c37dbd32928660873a61aff-slowpoke.jpeg

Wouldn’t it be nice to have something in between the raving insanity of Beck and Limbaugh, and the mannered, fearful timidity of, say, almost every Democrat currently in office?

Maybe it would help if pundits stopped reacting to everyone who criticizes the wimp on the left as if they were the firebreathing freak on the right.

The question of hell

From the depths of the endless thread, Owlmirror asks an interesting and provocative question, so I thought I’d toss it up top for everyone to take a stab at it.

At what age were you taught about Hell? Was it described as a place of eternal torture, or just being apart from God? Was it taught in a way that you thought was serious, or might there have been some skepticism in the teacher? Were you specifically told that you yourself were in danger of going there unless you met the exacting standards of your religion? Were you told that everyone who did not believe as you were taught was doomed to hell?

Richard Dawkins describes a young girl who was traumatized by the thought that all her friends who were not of the same religion as herself were doomed to hell. I was just wondering about the sequence of when young children are taught about the “stick” of Hell, to go with the corresponding “carrot” of Heaven, in different religions and religious subcultures, and in what contexts.

I’ve known people who had Hell drilled into their heads from an early age, and I know of many sects that preach hellfire, and I know the concept has deep historical resonance (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and all that), but it was never brought up that I recall in the church I attended, and definitely never threatened by anyone in my family. It was a generic cussword, and I had the general idea from popular culture of what it was all supposed to be about — flames, pitchforks, devils — but really, my image of it was mostly the product of Hot Stuff the Little Devil and such frivolities.

The first time I learned anyone took it seriously was probably in my early teens, when I vividly recall being accosted by a wild-haired screechy old lady who intercepted me as I was walking down the street and ranted at me about the Lake of Fire and an eternity of torment unless I got down on my knees and accepted Jesus into my heart right now. It was scary, all right, but it wasn’t the idea of hell that had me worried — it was that this deranged woman was unbalanced enough to be threatening kids with it.

So no, I never in my life took the threat of hell at all seriously. How about you?

Consider Humanism

The American Humanist Association is starting a new campaign to increase awareness of reasonable values: Consider Humanism. They have adds that contrast Christian sentiments with humanist ideals, like this one:

Consider Humanism – Richard Dawkins from American Humanist Association on Vimeo.

Probably too shrill and militant, huh? I swear, I heard the horses whinny and stampede at that voice, and I don’t know how I’m going to clean up all the saliva and blood splattered all over the inside of my video display after playing that.

Actually, I think it strikes a nice balance of calmly pointing out the ugliness of religious dogma, while also presenting the positive ideas that drive freethought. They are looking for donations — this is not cheap — to get the ads on TV stations, and they also have some nice printable versions.