Sunday School OCT 3, 2010
first of all, we don't know where we're goin unless we know where we've come from and so, with that in mind, and, damn, because his is a good series that picks up stuff even i miss(!), check out Johnny's Sunday Morning Service too!
also, a programming note- there won't be a Sunday School post next Sunday the 10th as i'll be out of town. but we'll pick it back up again the following Sunday!
how plants drove the first animals on land.
John Danaher takes a look at the Kalam Cosmological Argument through the lens of philosopher Wes Morriston's paper asking Must The Beginning of the Universe Have A Personal Cause?
Luke Muehlhauser addresses the Kalam himself in this post.
the edge of the solar system is a weird and erratic place.
a new paper just out says that time is likely to end within 5 billion years. Greg Fish laughs.
Cassini wows again with this incredible shot of Enceladus showing its south pole ice geysers.
PZ Myers is asking scientific journalists to stop with the simplistic pseudo-genetics stories. and on the subject of science journalism, check out this fantastic piece, a mock template for every bad science journalism piece ever written!
Luke Muehlhauser continues blogging through Gary Drescher's excellent Good and Real, this time addressing the apparent paradox of choice in a determined universe.
also, don't miss his first post in a series on the Fine-Tuning Argument.
by now i'm sure you've seen- as the entire internet seems to be buzzing about it- the Pew Forum has released the findings of a new survey showing atheists and agnostics know the most about religion among Americans. reaction has naturally followed from Hemant Mehta, Tom Rees, Matt at The Skeptical Teacher, The LA Times, The New York Times, and PZ Myers.
PZ Myers addressed the comments by one John Mark Reynolds, Catholic professor at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, that said that atheists may be good at trivia but they're poor thinkers.
coming in just behind atheists and agnostics were Jews and Mormons. Jason Rosenhouse has an idea why Jews score highly while Razib Khan pulls together some data that shows that the idea that Mormons scored highly because they're smarter than the average population just isn't true.
Hemant Mehta is asking if anyone has taken the Alpha Course, a course study offered by a UK Christian group that attempts to convert agnostics to Christianity. he links to this informative takedown of the course by an atheist who attended. i dug up another informative takedown i remembered reading a while back.
the US Congress finally passed a NASA plan, so what's in it?
can a society be successful without religion? we already know the answer.
Buddhism is normally seen as such a peaceful religion/philosophy but is it really without a dark side?
(how could i not include a link to a story about how) squirrels masturbate to avoid STD's. Ed Yong covers the findings too. (not that many animals don't also masturbate, they do.)
pray to the god of liver transplant patients!
lots of talk around the internet about the discover of Gliese 581g, a rocky planet similar to Earth about 20 ly away. the talk has centered around comments suggesting that the planet may harbor life. but don't get too excited just yet.
though the CFI's Michael De Dora had disagreed with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens' vocal stance against the pope, he's changed his mind and now says that honest and decent humans should oppose this pope.
"there’s a form of accommodationism that, while attacking the deficiencies of both science and faith, tries to combine them in a wooly-minded nexus.", says Jerry Coyne while exposing this "wooly-minded nexus" for what it is.
monkeys in the mirror and the nature of science- an interesting piece by Carl Zimmer on research into monkeys recognizing themselves in the mirror.
thanks to Greg for pointing me to the page of University of Colorado philosophy professor Michael Huemer, complete with lecture notes and reading lists. great stuff if you're interested in philosophy!
penguins haven't always worn tuxedos, so says a 36 million year old penguin fossil.
last week i linked to a piece by the CFI's John Shook that went after the "new atheists", and linked, too, to reaction from several sources. this week John Shook clarified what he meant- Jerry Coyne put quotes around Shook's idea of clarification, thinking it fell short. Shook's piece couldn't have come at a worse time given the release of the Pew Forum's survey results (see above), as was pointed out at The Teapot Atheist. (though it seems Shook is without a sense of irony) meanwhile, reaction to Shook's attack is still coming in- Larry Moran urges anyone to produce their most sophisticated argument for theism and let's see how it stands up. Greg Fish has his say. no one could leave Russell Blackford out (thanks Jeff!) and in response to the whole thing Jason Rosenhouse has set out to blog his way through Christian apologist Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God.
here's a simple atheist wish list for the real world.
this video is bouncing around the internet right now- it shows several physicists being asked two questions: do you believe in god? and what's your favorite astronomical phenomenon? check out their reactions to the two questions. the god question is responded to with a sort of "of course not" tone and the second question is responded to like little kids, with wonder and awe.
on treating statistics sensibly.
PZ Myers pointed out that Matt Taibbi has an excellent piece in Rolling Stone about the Tea Party. it's equal parts funny and scary.
David Sloan Wilson posted this open letter to Richard Dawkins asking him why he's still in denial about group selection. (thanks again Adriana!)
physicists may have observed Hawking radiation for the first time. Andrew Moseman has more.
every single Republican Senate hopeful is against climate change action.
the "evidence" for Jesus' resurrection debunked in one page.
also, a programming note- there won't be a Sunday School post next Sunday the 10th as i'll be out of town. but we'll pick it back up again the following Sunday!
how plants drove the first animals on land.
John Danaher takes a look at the Kalam Cosmological Argument through the lens of philosopher Wes Morriston's paper asking Must The Beginning of the Universe Have A Personal Cause?
Luke Muehlhauser addresses the Kalam himself in this post.
the edge of the solar system is a weird and erratic place.
a new paper just out says that time is likely to end within 5 billion years. Greg Fish laughs.
Cassini wows again with this incredible shot of Enceladus showing its south pole ice geysers.
PZ Myers is asking scientific journalists to stop with the simplistic pseudo-genetics stories. and on the subject of science journalism, check out this fantastic piece, a mock template for every bad science journalism piece ever written!
Luke Muehlhauser continues blogging through Gary Drescher's excellent Good and Real, this time addressing the apparent paradox of choice in a determined universe.
also, don't miss his first post in a series on the Fine-Tuning Argument.
by now i'm sure you've seen- as the entire internet seems to be buzzing about it- the Pew Forum has released the findings of a new survey showing atheists and agnostics know the most about religion among Americans. reaction has naturally followed from Hemant Mehta, Tom Rees, Matt at The Skeptical Teacher, The LA Times, The New York Times, and PZ Myers.
PZ Myers addressed the comments by one John Mark Reynolds, Catholic professor at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, that said that atheists may be good at trivia but they're poor thinkers.
coming in just behind atheists and agnostics were Jews and Mormons. Jason Rosenhouse has an idea why Jews score highly while Razib Khan pulls together some data that shows that the idea that Mormons scored highly because they're smarter than the average population just isn't true.
Hemant Mehta is asking if anyone has taken the Alpha Course, a course study offered by a UK Christian group that attempts to convert agnostics to Christianity. he links to this informative takedown of the course by an atheist who attended. i dug up another informative takedown i remembered reading a while back.
the US Congress finally passed a NASA plan, so what's in it?
can a society be successful without religion? we already know the answer.
Buddhism is normally seen as such a peaceful religion/philosophy but is it really without a dark side?
(how could i not include a link to a story about how) squirrels masturbate to avoid STD's. Ed Yong covers the findings too. (not that many animals don't also masturbate, they do.)
pray to the god of liver transplant patients!
lots of talk around the internet about the discover of Gliese 581g, a rocky planet similar to Earth about 20 ly away. the talk has centered around comments suggesting that the planet may harbor life. but don't get too excited just yet.
though the CFI's Michael De Dora had disagreed with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens' vocal stance against the pope, he's changed his mind and now says that honest and decent humans should oppose this pope.
"there’s a form of accommodationism that, while attacking the deficiencies of both science and faith, tries to combine them in a wooly-minded nexus.", says Jerry Coyne while exposing this "wooly-minded nexus" for what it is.
monkeys in the mirror and the nature of science- an interesting piece by Carl Zimmer on research into monkeys recognizing themselves in the mirror.
thanks to Greg for pointing me to the page of University of Colorado philosophy professor Michael Huemer, complete with lecture notes and reading lists. great stuff if you're interested in philosophy!
penguins haven't always worn tuxedos, so says a 36 million year old penguin fossil.
last week i linked to a piece by the CFI's John Shook that went after the "new atheists", and linked, too, to reaction from several sources. this week John Shook clarified what he meant- Jerry Coyne put quotes around Shook's idea of clarification, thinking it fell short. Shook's piece couldn't have come at a worse time given the release of the Pew Forum's survey results (see above), as was pointed out at The Teapot Atheist. (though it seems Shook is without a sense of irony) meanwhile, reaction to Shook's attack is still coming in- Larry Moran urges anyone to produce their most sophisticated argument for theism and let's see how it stands up. Greg Fish has his say. no one could leave Russell Blackford out (thanks Jeff!) and in response to the whole thing Jason Rosenhouse has set out to blog his way through Christian apologist Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God.
here's a simple atheist wish list for the real world.
this video is bouncing around the internet right now- it shows several physicists being asked two questions: do you believe in god? and what's your favorite astronomical phenomenon? check out their reactions to the two questions. the god question is responded to with a sort of "of course not" tone and the second question is responded to like little kids, with wonder and awe.
on treating statistics sensibly.
PZ Myers pointed out that Matt Taibbi has an excellent piece in Rolling Stone about the Tea Party. it's equal parts funny and scary.
David Sloan Wilson posted this open letter to Richard Dawkins asking him why he's still in denial about group selection. (thanks again Adriana!)
physicists may have observed Hawking radiation for the first time. Andrew Moseman has more.
every single Republican Senate hopeful is against climate change action.
the "evidence" for Jesus' resurrection debunked in one page.
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Comment by Nelson on October 3, 2010 at 11:33am -
@Jeff: thanks for the kind words Jeff, i'm glad i was able to point you to some things you enjoyed!
thanks, as always, for commenting. :)
@Adriana: thank you so much! i read fast and i read a lot. lol. plus, as i've said before here, Google Reader is a life saver.
love the Dunkleosteous, that's one gnarly lookin fish!
thanks for your comments! ;)
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Comment by Greg Gorey on October 3, 2010 at 1:54pm -
Also, I agree with Jeff. This has a little something for everyone. Very well rounded.
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Comment by Nelson on October 3, 2010 at 2:40pm
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@Greg: thanks for the comments my friend! appreciate the kind words. :)
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Comment by Gary Bergeron on October 3, 2010 at 3:52pm -
Wow! Great job, Nelson. You links here are always interesting and meaty!
In the article on the exploration of our outer solar system using the IBEX orbiter, there's a quote from one of the project's scientist. It's pasted below:
"If we've learned anything from IBEX so far, it is that the models that we're using for interaction of the solar wind with the galaxy were just dead wrong." [National Geographic]
The above quote shows the humbleness and honesty of scientific work that is part of the error-correcting machinery of science.... "we were dead wrong"....Do we find a comparable admission in religion? Do theologians question doctrine in such an open and honest way?
This is why science rocks!
Also, I sent the photo of the Cape Ground Squirrel to my brother Steve, an avid squirrel hunter, as a warning to watch out! Those rodents are packing some mighty big ones! :)
(For those who might wonder, I'm not a hunter. I can't bring myself to harm anything!)
Have a Happy Week ahead!
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Comment by Greg Gorey on October 3, 2010 at 4:11pm
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Hopefully, Hawking Radiation will be confirmed and Hawking will get a Nobel. It is egregious that he did not get one in literature for A Brief History of Time.
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Comment by Nelson on October 3, 2010 at 4:44pm
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@Gary: thanks as always for the kind words. totally agree with you on the way science as a methodology is about finding where we're wrong and replacing the wrong ideas with the better ideas.
hope your brother enjoys that image! lol.
@Adriana: i think you meant to reply to Greg instead of Gary :)
@Greg: totally agree. can't believe that guy doesn't have a Prize yet.
it's funny, i recently finished reading Sean Carroll's From Eternity to Here and Carroll says this when talking about HR, "Unfortunately, the numbers make it very hard for Stephen Hawking to win the Nobel Prize for predicting black hole radiation. For the kinds of black holes we know about, the radiation is far too feeble to be detected by an observatory. We might get very lucky and someday detect an extremely tiny black hole emitting high-energy radiation, but the odds are against it- and you win Nobel Prizes for things that are actually seen, not just for good ideas."
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Comment by Nelson on October 3, 2010 at 5:12pm
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@Adriana: it looks like Greg removed the comment of his you were responding to! lol
all part of Greg's plan to make you think you're going insane. :)
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Comment by Nelson on October 3, 2010 at 5:14pm
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keep fighting the good fight! lol
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Comment by Greg Gorey on October 3, 2010 at 7:18pm
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Oh shit i am sorry, I did not realize you were commenting towards me Adriana. it was an effort by me not to overwhelm this thing with my comments. i get shit for that on a lot of the websites I visit.
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Comment by Vince James Abernathy on October 4, 2010 at 10:10pm -
There's a simple quote somewhere one the net and it says; You keep your faith out of my schools and I'll keep my thoughts out of your churches.
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