“Rational Atheism” at Scientific American

Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine writes an open letter to Messrs Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens in the Skeptic column of Scientific American. He argues that we should avoid defining ourselves as anti-religion, instead outlining what we support (presumably rationality and having the strength of character to see the world as it truly is). Quoting [...]

Guiding the Godless

I really should have mentioned this before, but so slowly am I reading the thought-provoking free ebook “A Guide for the Godless” by the philosopher Andrew Kernohan that I would like to bring your attention to it now, and perhaps we can get some discussion going. The table of contents reads as follows.
Preface

Meaning
Purpose
Death
Self-Realization
Pleasure
Desires
Reasons
Emotions
Judgements
Holism
Beliefs
Truth
Meaninglessness
Justice
Choice
Commitment
Culture
Happiness
References
Index

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Brights of many stripes

There are brights of many stripes, from the livid hues of vehement anti-religionists like Richard Dawkins, through the pale pastels of more moderate secularists, all the way out to the indistinct colourations of a few religious people who nevertheless welcome the secularization of society. I find myself more in the middle of this muddle, but [...]

Physicists make religion crystal clear - physicsweb

Physicsweb has a great little article about a peer-reviewed study showing how
[t]he rise and fall in the popularity of major religions can be described using the same mathematics that is used to model crystallization processes . . . The researchers have modelled the time evolution of the numbers of adherents to religions and claim that [...]

James P. Pinkerton - rhetoric and the use of logic

The Japan Times recently reprinted a Newsday article by James P Pinkerton “Christmas lives, thanks to atheism, Islam“. I recommend this article as a study in rhetoric and logic.
I use the word rhetoric here with the intended unfavourable nuance implied by one of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions: “Speech or writing expressed in terms calculated [...]

“Love thy neighbour” may be Darwinian

The title of the following Scientific American news article speaks for itself: Love Thy Neighbor Evolved Out of Vicious Competition.

Bayes’s Theorem and God

 
Scientific American has a well-written article entitled What is Bayes’s theorem, and how can it be used to assign probabilities to questions such as the existence of God? What scientific value does it have?

Extraterrestrial hurricanes, implications for Religious

The first hurricane-like system on another planet has been imaged by the Cassini probe. With a well-defined eye and eye-wall, this monstrous 8,000km-wide storm spins near Saturn’s South Pole with wind speeds of 550kph.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.) A movie of the storm in motion can be accessed from this page.
A hurricane two thirds as [...]