Courtesy of the very smart and very funny skeptical blogger, Crispian Jago. This link will give you the ability to hover your cursor over various kinds of “irrational nonsense,” in order to learn more about them.
Archived entries for science
Let me set the scene for you.
New York City. Mid-day. a 39-story apartment building on the Upper West Side and flying past all the windows is the body of 22-year-old Thomas Magill after he took an intentional step off the roof of the building.
Now get this: He lands in the back of a Dodge Charger and survives! Holy hell, he survived a 39-story fall? That’s unreal. Airspeed, friction and the way he impacted were so coincidental and perfect that he survived, that truly is amazing, isn’t it?
That is, unless you’re Guy McCormack, the owner of the Charger in question. If you’re this guy, then the survival of Thomas Magill’s purported suicide attempt is in fact a miracle. and what caused that miracle? How about rosary beads? That’s right. According to this article from the BBC, McCormack is “convinced rosary beads he kept inside the car saved Mr Magill’s life.” Nevermind that many Christians believe that suicide is murder and therefore a sin, and if you’re sinning, and in the act of sinning, why would God spare your life? But the idea that a couple pieces of plastic (or wood. We weren’t told) could save someone’s life from a 300+ foot fall, but that same piece of plastic can’t prevent the rape and sexual assault of thousands of young boys and girls is ridiculous.
I agree that it’s a miracle, but it’s a miracle of the universe and the way gravity interacts with other forces. Now that’s amazing. Also, the terminal velocity of a falling body is only 125 mph; that’s not that fast. Anyway chances are he was only going about 75 mph anyway (based on my calculations, which are subject to being wrong). That’s math and math is involved with physics and physics is science!
There’s a time and place for God to be involved in the events of earth and the unlikely survival of a human being falling through the air for 4ish seconds before landing on the Duke boys’ car, and that place is church and that time is when you’re in church. Leave miracles of the universe to scientists and mathematicians, please.
If you are unfamiliar with either of these men (or even if you are familiar), please avail yourself of the following new video from the Richard Dawkins Foundation:
The topic is the ‘poetry of science’.
Last night, Sam Harris made an appearance on The Daily Show. He was mainly there to pitch his new book The Moral Landscape. Harris describes his new book as a way for science to look at moral questions, ultimately asserting that it is a myth that science and morality are distinct, separate, and incapable of unification. Harris is well known for his other works, perhaps most famously, Letter to a Christian Nation.
It is good to see more atheists on his show because Jon Stewart has been notoriously over sympathetic to religious claims in the past. One example of this is when Marilynne Robinson appeared on his show and he made the statement: “I’ve always been fascinated that the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith.”
The scientific community typically refutes the idea that morality comes from science. This is especially because religious people often (especially Creationists) say that morality does come from science, and that it is evil. The claim is that, for example, Darwinism leads to social Darwinism, which leads to eugenics, which leads to an elite mutant class that eats Christians. Instead, Harris takes the view that science should stop claiming that we do not or cannot receive morals from science, but rather that science can provide a more objective standard for morality. Harris, in his interview, and certainly in his book, elaborates further on some of the ways science could go about determining a common morality. You can watch the entire interview here.
I picked this story up from PZ Meyers’ blog.
US government website www.healthfinder.gov posted a story entitled “Can Hands-On Prayer Help Heal?” If you read the article you will see that the implied answer is “yes.” The article mentioned that the study was “peer reviewed” in the Southern Medical Journal. What it failed to mention is that there were NO CONTROLS. That’s right, the people participating in the study were self-selected individuals and came in believing that the faith healing would work. Great “scientific” study, right? Double-blind? Pshaw! Who needs double-blind studies when you have blind faith? So I guess if you have vision problems you should probably RUN to your nearest Benny Hinn crusade and get in line for your healing. Or you could seek treatment by medical professionals who practice scientific medicine-the choice is up to you.
Bonus video clip: enjoy Benny slaying people “in the spirit” to some of the worlds finest rap-rock.
Often I hear atheists say things like “How can you be a scientist and a theist?” or “Most scientists are atheists.”
Being a good skeptic, I always want my beliefs to line up with the facts about the real world. So what are the facts about the general question “How many professional scientists are atheists?” Also, because I love philosophy, I have decided to include the data for philosophers as well.
A recent study by Elaine Howard Ecklund tries to answer the question. Her methods seem very good. She surveyed almost 1,700 professional scientists and asked them about their “spiritual” beliefs. Over half seemed to be completely non-religious, and only about 14% were part of a conservative religious tradition. However, this number is still smaller than the different, earlier study of National Academy of sciences scientists found that only about 7% of NAS scientists expressed a belief in a “personal” (what does that mean?!?) god. Obviously, these two studies measure different things. Ecklund studied a broad range of scientists (anyone who taught at one of 21 universities), while the NAS studied only top-flight “honorific” scientists-members of the NAS. (I am in no way saying that earning a PhD and landing a teaching job at a university is not a great accomplishment-far from it. However election into the NAS is an “above-and-beyond” type of accomplishment).
For philosophers, there seem to be even more explicit atheists. Of the top 99 philosophy departments in the world, about 75% are “atheists, agnostics, or lean toward atheism,” while only 15% are “theists or lean towards theism.”
What do these numbers mean? They are simply measurements of the beliefs of professional scientists and philosophers, so I do not accept them alone as a reason why atheism is right. However, I believe that a justified true belief about the world, is that no religion has presented us with a coherent conception of a god. I got here by the use of human reason. Science certainly informs this view, but the philosophical process of reasoning helped me get here, too. I think that the numbers seem to communicate that we are on the right track, being atheists.
On this interview, Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden said his foremost duty from President Obama was to “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world.” The message was also to include an encouragement of the Islamic world’s past scientific achievements. For a period of time, while the rest of the world was stagnant or declining in the fields of intellectual curiosity, Islam bloomed. The White House eventually denied the assertion that they instructed NASA to reach out to Islam. Some think that it is unwarranted to encourage Islam to engage in science and space-flight, in particular.
We’ve reported before on the show the low rate of scientific papers and discoveries that come out of Islamic countries, but it seems like encouraging science at times is subversive to religion — or at the very least religious extremism. There is at least a correlation between scientists (and things like accepting evolution), western culture, etc. and decline in religious belief, and at least extremism in the United States. The spread of scientific ideas in these regions might reduce hostility, and especially the hostility towards the West. Many Islamic countries are skeptical of even things such as soccer/football, and Iran recently offered hair cut restrictions for men. The list is almost endless of Islamic resistance to seemingly harmless activities that seem to be ‘tainted’ by the West.
Islam might indeed find the spread of science a threat, and perhaps it is corrosive to Islam — especially strict Sharia law. Islam might see the West drawing a knife and pointing it towards them, only shortly afterward can they realize that the knife we direct towards them is to cut their binds and set them free.
Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20010324-503544.html
