Sam Harris responds to critics of his book The Moral Landscape.

on the question of homosexuality and natural selection.

C-SPAN founder and CEO Brian Lamb sat down for a Q&A with Christopher Hitchens (video. or check out a transcript) to talk about life and mortality. 

PZ Myers pointed to this cool little site that allows you to evolve a car. it uses a genetic algorithm, producing generation after generation each with little mutations that produce different shapes, some more or less successful as cars. let it run for several hours or over night and watch how the complexity ratchets up and the cars become more successful as cars.

Stephen Asma wrote a critique of the "new atheism", to which PZ Myers responded. Asma replied to address PZ's critique. Russell Blackford commented on the back and forth. Sean Carroll too. Christopher at The Teapot Atheist critiques Asma as well. Alonzo Fyfe took issue with one thing Asma said in his response.

Tom Rees at Ephiphenom points to a new analysis that rates countries on relative democratic-ness. Rees points out that the less important god is to the lives of the population of a country, the more democratic that country is.

Brian Dunning's Skeptoid podcast tackled Scientology recently. many people were troubled by Dunning's coverage of the cult. Dunning posted to the SkepticBlog to better describe his thoughts behind the way he covered Scientology. Jason Brown took particular issue with some of the things Dunning said in that post.

how many species of humans were there?

after a local magazine in Uganda printed the names and pictures of a number of gay people, David Kato, a gay man and gay rights activist was beaten to death in his home.

astrologers in Britain are upset that Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain have labeled astrology "rubbish". PZ Myers comments. Greg Fish as well. Rebekah Higgitt points out that the position of the angry astrologers is being a bit misrepresented, that astrology is rubbish, but perhaps not for the reasons why Cox and O'Briain were saying it was.

sigh-- science education in the US sucks. PZ Myers says that's the impression he gets from incoming freshman to his school and classes he teaches there. Andrew Moseman comments.

John Loftus dismantles the offered apologetics from a Christian scholar. informative, great reading.

celebrating female science bloggers- Ed Yong lists a whole slew of great female science bloggers.

the powerlessness of positive thinking as a medical cure.

astronomers spot record-breaking galaxy 13.2 billion light years distant! Ethan Siegel comments.

Larry Moran pointed to a recent talk Daniel Dennett gave (video. also embedded at Moran's site) that's now been posted online on the subject "what should replace religion?"

viable cold fusion or scam? two Italian physicists claim to have cracked cold fusion. Greg Fish comments, points out some red flags.

many ID'ers point to the obviously designed monument at Mount Rushmore in saying that biology is just as evidently designed. but what happens when you turn an image of Mount Rushmore on its side?

the orangutan genome has been sequenced, some interesting findings.

biology teachers in the US often dismiss evolution. it comes down to training since many of the biology teachers said that they just don't feel they have the educational expertise to respond to pointed questions on evolution.

many outlets reporting this week on a new paper that says that "life chemicals" may have formed around a distant star and seeded Earth. fundamental to the paper's conclusions is the truth of the "prebiotic soup theory". Larry Moran is critical.

Ex-apologist points to a new argument against the existence of god put forth recently by philosopher Dennis Whitcomb. the paper argues that omniscience is impossible and, as such, the god of classical theism does not exist.

Ethan Siegel takes a look at images of our closest neighboring galaxy Andromeda in different wavelengths of light. click the link as much for the interesting subject matter as for the beauty of the images.

Christianity is incoherent, here's why.

arch accomodationist Chris Mooney posted to his blog about the claims of "birthers", those that claim that Obama was not born in the US. Mooney wants to treat the absurd unevidenced claims of birthers one way and the absurd unevidenced claims of religion another way without justification for the different treatment. Jerry Coyne takes him to task.