Archive for Admin
The Atheism factor
“We don’t want a godless Prime Minister!” called the pastor on a rumbling truck atop of Canberra’s Mount Ainslie to his congregation. There they were, Catch the Fire ministry, massed on a cold Saturday morning to engage in “spiritual warfare” to see “ungodly forces” removed from parliament. Unlike the last “exorcism” [...]
17Aug2010 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Einstein Quotes on Ethics & Morality: Humans, not Gods, Define Morality
An important principle of most theistic religions is that morality originates with their god: there is no morality apart from their god and, in particular, apart from obedience to their god. This leads many to say non-believers cannot behave morally and/or cannot be moral. Albert Einstein denied that morality required or [...]
17Aug2010 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Family, Faith, and Unconditional Love
Third, all parents should respect the developing autonomy of their children. If parents attempt to force their faith, agnosticism, or atheism on their children, they are failing to respect the developing personhood of those children. Children have an interest in becoming autonomous and rational, and the manner in which parents raise [...]
17Aug2010 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
What do we know about the science of team success?
The role of teams in organizations has been growing, spurred by globalization and aided by communications technology. Teamwork has become a standard structure and process in most organizations today. Leaders and management consultants often assume that a team approach to work produces superior results. Yet, only recently has research identified both [...]
17Aug2010 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
Even the most pious believer has to admit that there is no scientific evidence for God or anything else supernatural. If there were, it would be in the textbooks along with the evidence for electricity, gravity, neutrinos, and DNA. This doesn’t bother most believers because they have heard many times that [...]
17Aug2010 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Music fails to chime with Islamic values, says Iran’s supreme leader | World news | The Guardian
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said today that music is “not compatible” with the values of the Islamic republic, and should not be practised or taught in the country.
In some of the most extreme comments by a senior regime figure since the 1979 revolution, Khamenei said: “Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it [...]
Logical fallacies and the concept of a soul
When attempting to form a logical argument, it’s vital to be aware of the various logical fallacies people often use. These fallacies are essentially arguments that may sound good and reasonable, but are, in fact, very flawed ways of thinking and arguing. Christian apologetics are often full of many different fallacies, including an article recently [...]
23Jun2010 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
BBC News - ‘Artificial life’ breakthrough announced by scientists
Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA.
The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell.
The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA.
The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a [...]
Praying away the oil leak | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
Praying away the oil leak | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
A man in Boulder — yes, my home town — is trying to meditate the oil leak away. His idea?
“The basic concept is to try and get as many people to visualize that the valve is actually functioning and is working and closing.”
This is part [...]
Spiders at the nanoscale: Molecules that behave like robots
Spiders at the nanoscale: Molecules that behave like robots
ScienceDaily May 12, 2010 — A team of scientists from Columbia University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and the California Institute of Technology Caltech have programmed an autonomous molecular “robot” made out of DNA to start, move, turn, and stop while following a DNA track.
Muhammad Cartoonist Lars Vilks Attacked During College Lecture - AOL News
Muhammad Cartoonist Lars Vilks Attacked During College Lecture - AOL News
May 11 — A Swedish artist who depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog was attacked today while delivering a university lecture on artistic freedom.
Lars Vilks was speaking at Uppsala University in Sweden when a man jumped onstage and head-butted him. [...]
Vatican Justice | Project Reason
by
Sam Harris
I confess that, as a critic of religion, I have paid too little attention to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Frankly, it always felt unsportsmanlike to shoot so large and languorous a fish in so tiny a barrel. This scandal was one of the most spectacular “own goals” in the history [...]
Foppery
Eric MacDonald says:
What a disturbing piece of intellectual foppery! For someone who criticises the quality of argument in the writings of the New Atheists, this diatribe - for that is what it is - contains incredibly little, if any, argument at all - an astonishing display of rude confidence in the [...]
French attempts to outlaw the burqa strike a blow for the rights of women. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
French attempts to outlaw the burqa strike a blow for the rights of women. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
The French legislators who seek to repudiate the wearing of the veil or the burqa—whether the garment covers “only” the face or the entire female body—are often described as seeking to impose a “ban.” To [...]
Liberals and atheists smarter? Intelligent people have values novel in human evolutionary history, study finds
ScienceDaily Feb. 24, 2010 — More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men but not women, preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.
Read [...]
Church leaders unite against ‘idolatry’ of atheism | The Australian
The Atheist Foundation of Australia said yesterday that Dr Jensen’s claims were “preposterous” and condemned Christianity for a spate of child sex abuse scandals. “He seeks out a scapegoat and attacks atheism without any understanding of what he is saying,” foundation president David Nicholls said.
“To state we hate his god or are attacking his god [...]
Myth: Abstract Concepts are Immaterial, Depend on God & Theism - Are Atheists, Materialists Unable to Account for Abstract Concepts?
Myth:
Atheists must borrow from the theistic worldview to account for the existence of anything non-material. In denying the Creator, the atheist ought to throw out everything that is contingent on a theistic worldview. In effect, by using abstract concepts, they have thrown out the baby, kept the bath water, and now try to explain why [...]
Intimacy and Vulnerability: Can You Have One Without the Other? | Psychology Today
Intimacy and Vulnerability: Can You Have One Without the Other?
Couples with truly intimate relationships want to connect deeply.
Published on April 2, 2010
Intimacy, by its very nature, requires us to be vulnerable. Our partner, lover, or mate can know us to our very core, sometimes better than we know ourselves, and that can make any of [...]
Can Atheists Have a Code of Sexual Morality? | Psychology Today
With the publication of recent books about atheism, the simultaneous attempts to blur the separation of church and state promised in our Constitution, and Americans’ unending obsession with matters sexual, the question arises:
Can atheists have a code of sexual morality?
This question is at once hilarious, insulting, pathetic, and revealing. It only makes sense if you [...]
On Faith Panelists Blog: Ratzinger is the perfect pope - Richard Dawkins
Ratzinger is the perfect pope
“Should Pope Benedict XVI be held responsible for the escalating scandals over clerical sexual abuse in Europe?”
Yes he should, and it’s going to escalate a lot further, as more and more victims break through the guilt of their childhood indoctrination and come forward.
“Should he be investigated for how cases of abuse [...]
Mysterious whale die-off is largest on record - LiveScience- msnbc.com
Mass death among baby right whales has experts scrambling to figure out the puzzle behind the largest great whale die-off on record.
Observers have found 308 dead whales in the waters around Peninsula Valdes along Argentina’s Patagonian Coast since 2005. Almost 90 percent of those deaths represent whale calves less than 3 months old, and the [...]
Joseph and Mary in bed – obscene or illuminating? – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs
A billboard showing a somber Mary and Joseph laying in bed together with the caption “Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow,” is controversial, but not obscene, according to a decision by New Zealand’s Advertising Standards Authorities.
The billboard, posted outside St. Matthew-in-the-city Anglican Church in Auckland, New Zealand, sparked outrage and vandalism by [...]
Atheists question spirituality award at National Academy of Sciences - Science Fair: Science and Space News - USATODAY.com
The award of a prize celebrating spiritual scientists at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences headquarters this week has irritated some atheist science-bloggers .
The 2010 Templeton Prize Laureate will be announced Thursday at the NAS headquarters in Washington D.C. at 11 a.m. ET. The $1.5 million prize is given by the John Templeton Foundation. [...]
What is Freedom From Religion? Freedom of Religion Requires Freedom From Religion
Conservatives insist that the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, and argue against strict separation of church and state. Too often, though, conservatives seem to have a flawed understanding of what freedom from religion really entails and fail to realize that freedom from religion is crucial to religious liberty in general.
It is [...]
BBC News - US ‘Christian militants’ charged after FBI raids
Eight suspects were detained in a series of FBI raids across the Mid-West, while one remains at large.
Prosecutors say the eight men and one woman belonged to the Hutaree group.
It is alleged they planned to kill a police officer in Michigan and then stage a second attack on the funeral, using [...]
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A Chameleon Sky
The sands of time are running out for the central star of this the Hourglass Nebula. With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a sun-like star's life occurs as its outer layers are ejected and its core becomes a cooling, fading white dwarf. In 1995, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to make a series of images of planetary nebulae, including the one above. Here, delicate rings of colorful glowing gas (nitrogen-red, hydrogen-green, and oxygen-blue) outline the tenuous walls of the 'hourglass.' The unprecedented sharpness of Hubble's images revealed surprising details of the nebula ejection process and may resolve the outstanding mystery of the variety of complex shapes and symmetries of planetary nebulae. Image Credit: NASA, WFPC2, HST, R. Sahai and J. Trauger (JPL)
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