The first part of this video bugged me — it sounded like Pascal’s Wager for global warming warriors — but hang in there. He admits that treating the alternatives as equal in probability is bogus, and what you need to do is rational risk assessment, and it makes a lot more sense.
And it’s a good one, too.
I was dismayed to read that MIT has decided, after a hundred years without, that it needs a chaplain.
MIT is about science and engineering and mathematics. There is no place for belief in those disciplines. Only doubt: we accept evidence but constantly test it.
Our students, especially the ones from America, have grown up in cultures saturated with religiosity. We should give them a little break from it while they’re here.
MIT needs religion like a bull needs mammaries.
Sincerely,
(Professor) Joe Haldeman
I have to take exception to that last line, though. I can think of many situations where male contributions to nursing would be useful. I don’t see that believing in baseless superstitions has any virtue at all in modern civilizations, so Haldeman is being too generous in his assessment.
…people send you their weird and suggestively shaped fruit and vegetables. This reminds me of something:
Thanks, Ema! It even smells nice and lemony.
The 2007 Medical Weblog Awards are accepting nominations — and they’re giving out prizes to the winners this year. Get over there and tell ’em who your favorites are.
Larry Moran has had a couple of articles up lately on Dr Sharon Moalem, a fellow who has a book out called Survival of the Sickest, and who also has a blog. Larry noticed a couple of things: he’s writing utter tripe about junk DNA, he’s editing and deleting comments about his science from his blog, and he’s been misleading about his credentials — although, to be fair, Moalem does plainly and accurately list his background on the endflaps of the book (some of this has come from a student blog that has been dissecting his dubious claims).
This month’s Mad magazine (I know, I’m probably the only person over 14 who doesn’t like vomit jokes who ever cracks the magazine open) has a feature on the the 20 dumbest people, events, and things of 2007, and guess what won a slot on the list?
Too bad it only made #14. Ken Ham needs to try harder and bring on the dumbth.
(Coming in ahead of the Creation “Museum” are Michael Vick, GW Bush, Don Imus, Britney Spears, the Walter Reed Army Hospital, the Anna Nicole Smith paternity trial, Paris Hilton, Lisa Marie Nowak, toy recalls, Isaiah Washington, Keith Richards, Scooter Libby, and the Sopranos finale. I admit that the competition at the top is awfully fierce, but it should have placed higher than 14.)
Revere makes a bunch of good points in his Sunday Sermonette. One is the sheer insanity of current American politics:
Enlightenment thinking is taken for granted by modern Europeans, so it’s no surprise they are aghast when the leaders of a 21st century power think Divine Guidance is a good reason for exercising overwhelming power over its own and other peoples.
And another is the importance of secularism and reason in any Democratic nation.
Democracy without rationality — or in my terms, Enlightenment values — is a hollow promise, or worse, mob rule.
Religious values are intrinsically autocratic and irrational, relying on ignorance for their propagation, and are therefore anti-democratic.
It’s a little bit of an oversimplification of the history of atheism, but it’s funny anyway…and the diagram for religious history is also grossly simplified.
People have actually tried to argue to me that science is so complicated, but “god” is simpler and should be the preferred explanation…but isn’t “no god” even simpler than “god”?
Timothy Sandefur has an excellent quote from H.L. Mencken on how we ought to be responding to creationists.
This actual conflict is joined, and it is the height of absurdity for the…compromisers to seek to evade it with soft words. That conflict was not begun by science. It did not start with an invasion of the proper field of theological speculation by scientific raiders. It started with an invasion of the field of science by theological raiders. Now that it is on, it must be pressed vigorously from the scientific side, and without any flabby tenderness for theological susceptibilities. A defensive war is not enough; there must be a forthright onslaught upon the theological citadel, and every effort must be made to knock it down. For so long as it remains a stronghold, there will be no security for sound sense among us, and little for common decency. So long as it may be used as a recruiting-station and rallying-point for the rabble, science will have to submit to incessant forays, and the same forays will be directed against every sort of rational religion. The latter danger is not unobserved by the more enlightened theologians. They are well aware that, facing the Fundamentalists, they must either destroy or be destroyed. It is to be hoped that men of science will perceive the same plain fact, and so give over their vain effort to stay the enemy with weasel words.
Mencken sure was right — his prediction came true. It’s the 21st century. Let’s finally get around to demolishing the old superstitions.
At least ten.
Personally, I find that an unctuous purveyor of holier-than-thou morality’s failures as a parent damning…although his son’s amorality wouldn’t be such a problem if Huckabee hadn’t tried to cover it up.
