This is the perfect example of when one should speak open and frankly to the lunacy of some religious practice, and of course Hitches rises to the occasion.
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Nightline Face-Off: Does God Have a Future?
This is a many part one but is very interesting. Not the least interesting to watch Chopra crumble under the frustration of his own woo woo.
Come Together and Build a Barn by The Electric Amish
Posting at the risk of exposing my unsophistication. Okay, it's probably way overexposed already...
BBC Horizon 2010: 1/6 What Happened Before the Big Bang
They are the biggest questions that science can possibly ask: where did everything in our universe come from? How did it all begin? For nearly a hundred years, we thought we had the answer: a big bang some 14 billion years ago.
But now some scientists believe that was not really the beginning. Our universe may have had a life before this violent moment of creation.
Horizon takes the ultimate trip into the unknown, to explore a dizzying world of cosmic bounces, rips and multiple universes, and finds out what happened before the big bang.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Eight reasons you won't persuade me to believe in a god
This is not a bad read from PZ Myers over at Pharyngula, and here is an excerpt....
The case for the non-existence of god is not simply a negative one, drawn from the absence of evidence, which can be corrected by throwing in evidence for a miracle. We are atheists because we have a scientific understanding of how the universe works, and the phenomena we observe do not seem to require divine intervention to function. So sure, show me a tap-dancing Jesus poofing loaves and fishes into existence with a snap of his fingers…and I'll ask how his existence influences chemistry, how the silly bearded man matters in the last few billions of years of evolution, and why he isn't publishing in the physics journals, where his omniscient insight into the machineries of the world might be better appreciated. Even there, though, I'd question whether adding tap-dancing Jesus to the long list of existent phenomena really helps us understand anything.
Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns on the Suicides of Gay Teens
Notice what was said to the teens, obviously the bullies are acting exactly like they were taught good Christians were supposed to act by their church and/or families. Kids would not have come up with these prejudices on their own.
America's True History of Religious Tolerance
The idea that the United States has always been a bastion of religious freedom is reassuring—and utterly at odds with the historical record
By Kenneth C. Davis
Smithsonian magazine, October 2010
From the earliest arrival of Europeans on America's shores, religion has often been a cudgel, used to discriminate, suppress and even kill the foreign, the "heretic" and the "unbeliever"—including the "heathen" natives already here. Moreover, while it is true that the vast majority of early-generation Americans were Christian, the pitched battles between various Protestant sects and, more explosively, between Protestants and Catholics, present an unavoidable contradiction to the widely held notion that America is a "Christian nation."
Click to read the entire article....
Voices of Reason -- Sam Harris: The Moral Landscape
Questions of good and evil, and right and wrong, are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But in his new book "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values," Sam Harris argues that science can -- and should -- be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.
The Center for Inquiry in New York City Oct. 7, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Wright Harris Debate at the Secular Humanism conference in L.A.
For some reason unknown to me, I cannot embed this video, so here is the link.... This is not the most entertaining debate, and it turns into more of a conversation. Perhaps they doth agree too much.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10106928
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10106928
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States Chapter 1 Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress
An excerpt by Bartolomé de las Casas, a young priest who participated in the conquest of Cuba.
It is important we understand the reality of the story of Columbus's intent and the results of that intent. Many people boycott Columbus Day, and the accounting presented here, present very good reasons to boycott, protest or at least educate. Columbus's justifications, of course, came from non other than God and the Pope.
. . . mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside . . . .
After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . .they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation . . . .In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile . . . was depopulated . . . .My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write . . . .
It is important we understand the reality of the story of Columbus's intent and the results of that intent. Many people boycott Columbus Day, and the accounting presented here, present very good reasons to boycott, protest or at least educate. Columbus's justifications, of course, came from non other than God and the Pope.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
"A Universe From Nothing"' by Lawrence Krauss
This is one of those lectures that sweeps you away and you wish it could have lasted longer.
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