Today, I continue my series of answering an apologist’s supposedly hard-hitting questions for atheists. This segment will cover largely questions of science, especially evolution. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments. You can review Part 1 of this series here. Continue reading…
There’s a fun little story up at The Times on the imperfections of perception and memory, due to our brains being, alas, less than mere receivers of reality.
It looks at phenomena that most readers are probably familiar with – the power of misdirection, the unreliability of our senses. However I never get tired of reading about these aspects of neuroscience — it seems fundamentally important to me that one always remember that not only are you your brain, but your brain is quite the trickster.
A lot of people know and understand this but do not necessarily apply it in everyday life. For example, how many times have you gotten into a huge argument with a friend about the particulars of certain events that took place maybe days, maybe years ago? Most of us insist our memory of the events are correct. But this is usually a mistaken confidence. More of us should probably, much of the time, really question how our accurately our brain has recorded these occurrences, notorious as it is for rearranging details to fit the narratives we like to tell ourselves.
I personally enjoy questioning my memories — especially my childhood ones — and wondering what was real, and what as been created in post-production. I suppose for some people meditating on this can make them uneasy — knowing that our memories and senses are not entirely reliable can disturb one’s sense of control and understanding. However, I like to look at my cognitive mistakes as another chance to get to know myself — what is my mischievous brain up to now, and what can I learn about my thoroughly human condition from its shenanigans and mistakes? Once you let go of the idea that “you” are completely in control, living with the fact that you are your brain and, moreover, you’re not always in the driver’s seat, instills not so much terror as intense curiosity. We’re all along for the ride, and we’re all unique, so go ahead and get to know your brain — which is to say, go ahead and get to know yourself.
In this essay, I’m going to take on a common claim that a form of narrow naturalism can rightly be called faith. The form of naturalism I have in mind is one that says for any given unexplained event, it is overwhelmingly likely that the real explanation will be a naturalistic one. So, for example, such a person would claim that something natural probably caused our universe via the Big Bang or other means. Or they would claim that something natural probably brought about the origin of life on this planet. These are events currently not explained by science, but the narrow naturalist is confident that science can one day explain them, if the opportunity actually presents itself. Continue reading…
I am not sure if Creationists will ever stop beating this dead horse.
Many theists, such as those involved in the production in the above video, and many more, are of the opinion that if one thing is shown to be wrong about evolution at any time in the past, then everything must be thrown out because how could we possibly trust these conniving evolutionists anymore about anything else? The man in the above video is talking about an old controversy within evolutionary biology and developmental biology. He is talking about Ernst Haeckel, an 18th and early 19th century biologist. The controversy around Haeckel had to do with his pet hypothesis that the stages of development an embryo undergoes during gestation reflect past evolutionary forms. You may have heard this concept formulated as “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” Ontogeny refers to the growth and development of an individual during its lifetime, and phylogeny refers to evolution, i.e., phenotypic changes that take place over generations as opposed to changes during an organism’s lifetime as it develops from a zygote on through adulthood. Continue reading…
Tom Rees, writing for The Secular News Daily, highlights a priming study done by Jordan LaBouff of the University of Maine: he inquired about the participants’ feelings toward various groups of people both in front of a church and in front of civic (secular) buildings in both London and the Netherlands:
The mix of people was pretty typical for the area – 39% nonreligious, the rest Catholics and Protestants with a few religious minorities …
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[A]ttitudes towards every single group were more hostile when people were asked outside a church. All the differences are statistically significant (except the difference in attitudes towards Christians).
This study needs to be reproduced and verified, of course, and does not take into account the differences in people who simply tend to go near churches vs civic buildings.
See the graph of responses at The Secular News Daily.
Every year, Republicans in the Missouri House of Representatives bring forth a bill intelligently designed to undermine evolution. Usually, they attempt to mask this attack as an attempt to promote critical thinking in schools. This was the case in 2011 when HB 195 was introduced.[i] It was preceded by HB 1651 in 2010, and similar bills in 2009, 2008, and 2006. Currently, however, we have a bill that is not so subtle in HB 1227.
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