Uncommon Descent must have noticed ERV’s comment that no one reads their site, because now they seem to be frantically chumming the waters with bizarre bait. I’ll bite; like a shark, I’m a mindless eating machine, exquisitely sensitive to the thrashing of victims and the scent of blood. And it makes for great street theater!
The Rational Response Squad has a “competitor”: a group calling itself the Righteous Response Squad. I think we can already see a problem—we can expect a dearth of originality and imagination from this new gang. And to fulfill that prediction, this collection of fundies decided to declare the Bible literally true and internally consistent, and issued a challenge: “Do you have bible contradictions? Do you think you can prove the bible false?”
Some local godless heathens got mentioned in the Mankato Free Press, in an article titled “Becoming atheist akin to finding religion”. It highlights August Berkshire of Minnesota Atheists and an attorney, Jim Manahan, who say pretty much the exact opposite of what the title suggests. The article itself is good and explains a little bit about how one comes to abandon religion, but I suspect the title is an example of an editor doing some editorializing.
Here’s some useful local information from the Minnesota Atheists, too: A brief history of disbelief is being broadcast next week in the Twin Cities. Check the website for specific times.
We also have a couple of distinguished speakers coming to the big city: Steve Pinker on the 20th of September (Skatje will probably go “oooh” and tell me I have to take her), and Ian McKellen will be speaking in October (Skatje might just go “squeee!” and tell me to take her to that one, too.)
Oh, and big news: the Twin Cities will be hosting the American Atheists National Convention on March 21-23, 2008. I shall have to be there.
This Canadian Cynic tells me I have to recommend this new blog, Progressive and Cynical. I think it’s because they’re Canadian and cynical too … I’ll go along with it since they bear the mark of the scarlet A.
I knew this was going to happen, but I’m no prophet — it’s just what the creationists always do. Frank Pastore follows the lead of our national news media and declares evolution debunked because of recent discoveries in paleontology. You can probably guess which ones.
He gets to live to enjoy his Darwin award!
John Allen Paulos, in an interesting essay on the co-option of mathematics into religious apologia, makes a useful explanation. To counter the idea that the elegance of mathematics is a reflection of the divine, he suggests otherwise — it is a reflection of the natural world.
The universe acts on us, we adapt to it, and the notions that we develop as a result, including the mathematical ones, are in a sense taught us by the universe. That great bugbear of creationists, evolution has selected those of our ancestors (both human and not) whose behavior and thought are consistent with the workings of the universe. The usefulness of mathematics is thus not so unreasonable.
Sad to say, the comments to the article are a bit depressing: the creationists descend and start yammering about transitional fossils and mangling Gould and that sort of thing, the usual foolishness we expect from them. It deserves better.
A new poll seems to be showing that the efforts of those ferocious agitating atheists are working — either that, or the corruption of the theocratic right is driving more people into our arms. Daylight Atheism reports that atheists are at 25% of the American population, which isn’t quite right: the numbers include atheists and agnostics at 18%, with another 6% preferring not to say. It would be more accurate to say that about one in four Americans is a freethinker of some sort…and I suspect that that is an underestimate. There are many who affiliate themselves with a church for reasons of tradition and the lack of other social outlets, but don’t really believe in this weird personal god others favor.
The article in The Nation on this subject is interesting and positive, although I also see a little timidity in its efforts to find much to criticize in the “New Atheists” (I also object to the title…this “New” nonsense is inaccurate and tends to minimize the fact that atheism has a long and worthy intellectual history). This part is right on, though.
The great success of the New Atheists is to have reached them [unbelieving citizens], both speaking to and for them. These writers are devoted, with sledgehammer force and angry urgency, to “breaking the spell” cast by the religious ascendancy, to overcoming a situation in which every other area of life can be critically analyzed while admittedly irrational religious faith is made central to American life but exempted from serious discussion.
Here you go, a few links with promises of interesting reading. Much more so than you’ll find here, where I’m buried beneath efforts to finish up my Seed column, prepare for a lecture tomorrow, get a lab organized for Wednesday, write an entry for an encyclopedia, and shovel through piles of administrative paperwork of various sorts…
Some good news for the upcoming Darwin Year of 2009 — Steve Jones will be publishing a new book, Darwin’s Garden, on time for the celebration. I have to say, though, that PR from publishers is a little disturbing: “Jones, who moved to Little, Brown from Transworld with c.e.o. Ursula Mackenzie” makes it sound like he’s had some very peculiar addresses and opens completely inappropriate speculation about his relationship with Ms. Mackenzie. It should be good anyway.
Other good fun can be had on the blog, Prehistoric Pulp. If you want to keep up with the latest books and games that involve primeval creatures, paleontology, and evolution, it’s a great source.
I was sent a link to Asimov’s The Last Question. I swear, I’ve got to have read a few dozen science fiction stories that have pretty much the same plot, and I suspect sf editors must get this one over and over. So now I’m wondering…was Asimov the first to unleash this cliche on us all (in which case, it wasn’t a cliche when he wrote it), or has it got antecedents?
Oh, no! Now Tiny Frog is giving ammunition to the producers of Expelled by revealing The Stifling Dominance of Secular Academia! At least biologists aren’t being picked on in this case — it’s those biased secular theories of physics that are being blamed.
