Hey guys! Right off the bat I wanted to thank our friends for their support: we made our goal and are looking to institute those improvements to the show, possible because of your generous gifts! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Anyone else wishing to donate to the cause, remember, you can always do that by visiting this page. Besides donating directly you can also support us by making sure that everything you buy from Amazon, now during the holidays and whenever, on into the future, you purchase via this link. When you use that link you'll pay no more and your packages will ship just as fast, but the Think Atheist Radio Show picks up a tiny fraction of Amazon's profits on each purchase as support. Remember, even though we've certainly carefully selected some reading suggestions for you to consider from the store, you can buy anything using this link, no matter if it's books or not.

Have you guys found me on Google+ or Twitter yet? I share Sunday School links on G+ as I find them each day; no waiting till Sunday! And on Twitter is where we do our book giveaways! If you connect with me at either place, let me know you found me through Sunday School, say hi!

Alright, getting closer to the links... Raise your hand if you listened to last week's interview with UC Berkeley anthropologist Terrence Deacon about his new book, Incomplete Nature, on the origins of consciousness. If you haven't, give it a listen! In clear language he takes the listener on a ride through evolution, neuroscience, and the study of emergent phenomena to explain how the mind emerges from the brain. Fascinating!

And this week we have the last Think Atheist Radio Show of 2011! We'll be back on Sunday January 1st with the same level of guests you've come to expect but before we go we're going to leave you with our interview with Dr. Philip Kitcher! Dr. Kitcher, a giant in his field, is a Philosopher of Science with interests in the evolution of altruism and morality, the science/religion divide, and more. He is the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at New York's Columbia University and the winner in 2006 of the American Philosophical Association's Prometheus Prize for achievements in the Philosophy of Science. He is the author of the recently released The Ethical Project about the evolution and development of morality and ethics. He joins us to discuss the topic of his new book!

Alright, alright, HERE!:

Massimo Pigliucci posted some thoughts on determinism in the context of the debate over whether we have free will (and, if so, what it would look like) and Jerry Coyne responded with his thoughts. Sean Carroll offered his thoughts as well. Coyne responds to Carroll's post with some more thoughts. One of the things people object to about a lack of free will is that we wouldn't then have any moral responsibility. But that's not necessarily the case.

Let's say a doctor discovers a bacteria living on/in you that leads to the discovery a drug that cures cancer, or even just a new antibiotic. Do you see any money or recognition from the discovery? In what sense is it your microbiome?

The tendency is to think of religious people as believing that the only true god is their own. The numbers show that there's more nuance than we usually allow.

Climate contrarians ignore overwhelming evidence.

Is the Bible a reliable guide to morality?

The Habitable Exoplanets Catalogue ranks hundreds of exoplanets and exomoons on their suitability for life. But only 15 planets and 30 moons rank as potentially habitable. Kepler sees its first planet in the habitable zone of another star. How much like Earth is the newly discovered planet?

Vaccine acceptance is still an issue.

Lots of ink has been spilled over a new study that seems to show that people think just as badly about atheists as they do about rapists. But PZ Myers doesn't buy it.

Religion reduces science literacy in America. 

The physics of why the latest claims to have invented a cold fusion device collapse.

Newt Gingrich's anti-secularism greatest hits.

Three quarters of climate change is man made.

The climate change discussion. Faith, science, and lies.

Infant male circumcision is genital mutilation.

Is the Higgs boson real? Physicists offer their thoughts. But what if it isn't? We may not have much time to wait to find out.

Sometimes the most frustrating discussions we can have are also the most important.

How to picture the size of the universe.

Scientist manipulating people into having out of body experiences.

Are these the earliest fossil embryos or fossils of large bacteria?

What if our Homo sapiens intelligence is radically overrated? What if we’re smarter, but only quantitatively so, not qualitatively? What if many of our Earthly cousins are respectably intelligent after all?

Mirror image cells could transform science.... or kill us all.

The most popular atheist book ever written includes as a key argument against design the 747 Gambit. Does it work?

Is there a cloaked alien spacecraft orbiting Mercury? Take a guess...

A website produced a list of the top 50 atheists. The list went around the atheist blogosphere fast. But then people started taking a closer look and saw some weird things. Is the site actually a creationist website?

Moderate believers may benefit from less religion, not more.