here we are again! thanks as always for stopping in to see what i've collected for you. hope you enjoy!

but first!

so, first off, last week i told you i had just finished locking down our next contest, and that it would be for 3 signed copies of John Loftus' new anthology The End of Christianity. i can now release more details! the contest will be held August 5-7, Friday, Saturday, Sunday; we've already recorded a segment with Mr. Loftus wherein he talks about his goals for the book, why he thinks he accomplished those goals, and why theists must engage with the book. we'll play that segment on the show August 7th and then announce the 3 winners! in the meantime, do check out some of the contributors to the anthology that we've already had on the show-- Richard Carrier, Matt McCormick, Valerie Tarico, and Robert Price. and stay tuned for our upcoming show with another contributor Hector Avalos. (and this week we recorded with another contributor Jaco Gericke for a show to air later!). of course, don't miss our chat with Loftus himself.

tonight, on the heels of our recent contest for 5 signed copies of his book, we're having Dr. J. Anderson Thomson join us on the Think Atheist Radio Show live. he'll be talking about his book Why We Believe in God(s), about how it is that evolution provided our ancestors with the cognitive mechanisms that produce in us religious thought. fascinating stuff. don't just argue lack of evidence or hefty philosophical arguments, be able to explain that religious thought is just a hijacking of evolved cognitive mechanisms in the first place! make sure you join us! and get primed for the discussion by reading Dr. Thomson's article in the LA Times from this week. fascinating!

finally, always remember that you can listen to any of our previously aired shows from the archive. do follow the show on the main page or on iTunes. follow me on Twitter or G+ for the latest updates on contests, scheduling, and guests! (and, hey, if you enjoy the show please consider leaving a review on iTunes and telling others about the show on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Google+, or where ever else you may hang out on the internet! take a look at the list of guests we've had join us. listen to the show. tell me that you don't think that others should be listening to us too!)

alright. now that that's all taken care of...

on the latest idiocy to come out of the Discovery Institute...

as Atlantis touched down this week so ended NASA's shuttle mission. and we have nothing to replace it with. when the Apollo Moon missions ended it was 8 years before the shuttle missions were launched. hopefully it won't be that long before we're reaching for the stars again.

in the meantime, honor the brave men and women and all of our accomplishments with this fantastic video showing every one of the shuttle missions spliced together in such a way as to show a single shuttle mission from take off to launch in the form of a collage of every single mission.

the end of evolutionary psychology as we know it.

stuff like this is fairly well inexplicable on the theory that the brain and the mind are two different things. if brain injury results in what people would consider to be a different person (in the sense of "person" meaning your personality, your goals, your desires, your memories), then how does the death of the brain allow for the continuance of the "person" intact as the idea of a soul that persists into an afterlife demands?

lots of authors these days writing polemics against fundamentalist Christianity (and all forms of Christianity generally). but already in the 2nd century CE there was a man who wrote an extremely modern critique.

some new results at the LHC are exciting physicists. does this mean new physics?

religion. money. power. two new books just out expose the relationship those three have in Scientology and the Roman Catholic Church.

a victory for Texas schoolchildren on the education standards regarding evolution!

Ex-apologist points to a new Steven Maitzen paper (pdf) that answers the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" by explaining that the question is meaningless. the purported failure of naturalism to answer the question is no mark against naturalism when the question isn't even properly posed so that it can be answered. 

Jason Rosenhouse talks about why he rejects cosmological arguments.

witness President Obama's weak tea answer on the subject of religious discrimination in hiring on the part of federally funded religious organizations.

house mice picked up poison resistance gene by mating with related species of mouse.

it won't be long before we're able to image the event horizon of a black hole!

John Wilkins continues on with parts three and four of his series of posts on atheism, agnosticism, and theism and their meanings. well worth the read.

why is religion stronger in economically unequal societies?

a new report says that the BBC devotes too much time to fringe nonsense in the name of false balance.

what's it like to be a woman skeptic and/or scientist in a male dominated world?

yet another discovery under Hubble's belt: Pluto has a fourth moon!

why and how to debate charitably.

the Catholic Church in Ireland deliberately lied and misled says a new report. Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenney is the first major politician to really say what needs to be said if anything is going to change.

Sean Carroll suggests 5 books on physics/cosmology that even the science-shy can understand and enjoy.

a new study out on asthma and placebos is getting discussed for what it says about the value of placebos. check out PalMD's post and Steven Novella's post as well.

do the few assumptions we make within cosmology undermine the mass of evidence that points to the existence of dark matter?

what better to defeat the flood myth than the flood myth itself?

John Danaher is back with the follow up to his first post on The Problem of Heaven. great stuff!

the Qur'an is not a perfect work of Arabic