hey guys, good to see you back for another edition of Sunday School. thanks for always stopping in!

first off i want to tell you about some exciting news. just this week we passed through 10,000 members here on Think Atheist! we want to thank everyone for making TA what it is with your contributions and the sense of community that you offer freethinkers on the internet. go ahead everyone and stop by Schroeder Veidt's page and welcome him as our 10,000th member!!! he's going to be a featured member for the next month and he gets a free Think Atheist t-shirt! :)

second, just yesterday we finalized the details of a promotional contest whereby 3 members of TA will win a signed copy of Dr. J. Anderson Thomson's new book Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith (with a foreword by none other than Richard Dawkins!).

Greg will have more details during the podcast tonight! so even if we weren't featuring atheist philosopher of religion and author of Theism and Explanation, Dr. Gregory Dawes, you'll want to tune in!

remember you can always get show updates by joining the Radio Show Group here on TA, by following the show on our show page, or by subscribing to the show on iTunes! as always, should you miss the live show you can always listen to back shows from the archive!

alright, now, one more thing before we get to the links. this past week our friend Seth at The Thinking Atheist gave us a shout out on his Facebook page and a whole bunch of Seth's fans came over to have a look at TA and join our community. so first i want to say welcome to all the new people! and then i'd like to have you guys check out Seth's videos on YouTube and his podcast on the same site where our podcast is hosted. (don't worry, his podcast's air times don't conflict with the Think Atheist Radio Show so you can enjoy both!)

okay, i won't make you wait any longer! we now return you to your regularly scheduled links! remember to click "like" at the bottom (just above the comments) if you enjoy the links and the series!

John Danaher begins a series examining Joshua Thurow's paper that asks the question "does cognitive science show belief in god to be irrational?"

when are our intuitions useful for examining philosophical questions?

quantum gravity explained for philosophers (pdf; without all the dense math, that is)

are all religions equally crazy?

Jerry Coyne addresses a new study showing the religion is pervasive.

non-religious nations have a higher quality of life. indeed, religion only makes for happier people if there's a lot of it around.

your spine stores a memory of pain

how far away is the farthest galaxy? (closer than you'd think actually.... and farther)

regenerating an entire flatworm from a single adult cell.

access to the most recent science should be free to everyone!

simulating the human brain- too hard for science?

Ron Lindsey interviewed arch-accomodationist Chris Mooney on Point of Inquiry recently. PZ Myers, Ophelia Benson (and again), join in the postmortem. is Mooney ignorant of the relevant social psychology that shows his strategy is flawed?

insects that mimic ants as a survival strategy. fascinating.

an analysis of the 900 papers that support climate change skepticism found that 9 of the top 10 authors have links to Exxon/Mobil. classic.

rise of the superweeds! many weeds are now resistant to the weed killer Roundup. evolution. it happens.

nope. no Higgs yet. the rumors were just rumors.

a new study does NOT show that coffee prevents breast cancer.

the neuroscience of sex. orgasms unlock an altered consciousness.

"natural law" is the term give to the inner sense of morality given to us (so theists say) by god. but what happens when this natural law condemns the law-giver?

Richard Carrier has posted a fantastic resource- a fully researched case for Mark 16:9-20 being an interpolation, a later addition to the text of Mark.

Christopher Hitchens on the loss of his voice.

why the world might end next Saturday (May 21st rapture story)

why the world most certainly WON'T end next Saturday. LOL.

Richard Dawkins responds to all the May 21st rapture nonsense.

we all have some familiarity with dinosaurs right? you might even know when they went extinct (65 mya) and what caused them to go extinct (Yucatan meteor impact), but do you know where they came from?

autism prevalence higher than previously thought but it doesn't mean what anti-vaxx loons will spin it as. there just doesn't exist an "autism epidemic."

were you born selfish? Frans de Waal on the evolution of morality.

Patricia Churchland on what neuroscience can say about morality.

Elaine Ecklund is up to her old framing tricks again on religion and scientists.

last week i linked to a snarky post slamming Lydia and Tim McGrew's probability calculation of the reality of the resurrection. this week Tim McGrew posted to defend his case against some obvious problems with the critique. but, eh, doesn't matter: their case still fails.