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Theology 101
Michael Wong
A brief, non-apologetic description & synopsis of each book of both the old and new testaments, and the bible's several important parts. Like Cliff Notes for the bible from a more modern, secular point of view than you might be used to.
Biblical Errors
Dave E Matson
"The truth is that the Bible, rather than being remarkably consistent and harmonious in its themes, is a book riddled with discrepancies and divergent theological views. Although unity of theme . . . was undoubtedly a criterion considered by the councils and conferences of rabbis and clerics who arbitrarily made canonical decisions, the selection processes were nevertheless imperfect in that they failed to produce a Bible free of discrepancies."
About The Holy Bible
Robert G Ingersoll c1894
"...They forget [the Bible's] ignorance and savagery, its hatred of liberty, its religious persecution; they remember heaven, but they forget the dungeon of eternal pain. They forget that it imprisons the brain and corrupts the heart. They forget that it is the enemy of intellectual freedom. Liberty is my religion. Liberty of hand and brain -- of thought and labor, liberty is a word hated by kings -- loathed by popes. It is a word that shatters thrones and altars -- that leaves the crowned without subjects, and the outstretched hand of superstition without alms. Liberty is the blossom and fruit of justice -- the perfume of mercy. Liberty is the seed and soil, the air and light, the dew and rain of progress, love and joy."
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A Few Reasons for Doubting the Inspiration of the Bible
Robert G Ingersoll
Fifty-fourth: Notwithstanding all I have heard of Katie King, I cannot believe that a witch at Endor materialized the ghost of Samuel and caused it to appear with a cloak on. [1 Sam. xxviii.] I cannot believe that God tempted David to take the census, and then gave him his choice of three punishments: First, Seven years of famine; Second, Flying three months before their enemies; Third, A pestilence of three days; that David chose the pestilence, and that God destroyed seventy thousand men. [2 Sam. xxiv.] Why should God kill the people for what David did? Is it a sin to be counted? Can anything more brutally hellish be conceived? Why should man waste prayers upon such a God?
Cruelty and Violence in the Bible
Sceptic's Annotated Bible
"After God killed Er, Judah tells Onan to "go in unto they brother's wife." But "Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and ... when he went in unto his brother's wife ... he spilled it on the ground.... And the thing which he did displeased the Lord; wherefore he slew him also." This lovely Bible story is seldom read in Sunday School, but it is the basis of many Christian doctrines, including the condemnation of both masturbation and birth control. Genesis 38:8-10"
Bible Vs. Quran - Which is more violent?
Skeptic's Annotated Bible
"A good argument could be made that either book is the most violent and cruel book ever written. The award would go to one or the other, for neither has any close competitors. It is frightening to think that more than half of the world's population believes in one or the other."
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Michael Wong, the author of "Theology 101" above has written a series of compelling essays on biblical theology. He makes many good points in all of them, and many more can all be read freely from his webiste. He demonstrates an intellectually stimulating writing style while also making some very provocative, well thought-out points. Here are just a few -
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Terrorism in the Bible
The next time someone rhetorically asks about the source of Osama Bin Laden's evil, point him to the Bible. If fundamentalists believe in a God who is capable of terrorism, we should hardly be surprised when they deal with their problems by resorting to terrorism themselves! Indeed, we should count ourselves lucky that Christian fundamentalists have few real problems to complain about (hence their whining about non-issues such as their desire to turn public schools into Sunday schools), or we could be facing a lot more domestic terrorism, even worse than the usual abortion clinic bombings and shootings.
Biblical Morality - Racism
"By modern, humanistic values, we would regard such prioritization of humanitarian aid based on religious affiliation as utterly unconscionable, just as we would be appalled by Jesus' attempt to withhold aid pending religious conversion, his encouragement of religious enmity, or his racist characterization of Canaanites as "dogs". Did Jesus believe in helping those outside of his own race? Only if they converted, and even then, they would still be treated as "dogs": second-class citizens at best."
Biblical Morality - Family Values
"The Biblical stance on family values is clear: family loyalty is of little or no importance compared to your duty to obey God and worship him. Abraham and Job had no problem with God murdering their children, so they were praised, while Job's wife was anguished and angry over the death of her babies and she was a "foolish woman" (note that the Hebrew word which is translated as "foolish" actually denotes moral deficiency)."
Biblical Morality - The Status of Women
The subject of Bible misogyny is one upon which voluminous texts have been written, and any contribution I could make here would be a mere drop in the ocean. However, I would like to point out that the Bible's negative messages on women go beyond the obvious, such as Paul's famous "wives, submit to your husbands.
Biblical Morality - The 10 Commandments
As a scheme of "universal morality" for secular nations to aspire to, the Ten Commandments are a joke. They are inherently bigoted, because they declare that anyone who doesn't worship God and observe his holidays is breaking the first four commandments (nine, if you're using the second set) and is therefore immoral! In fact, if you use the second set, you're immoral unless you actively attack other religions!
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Imagine There's No Heaven - An Athiest Manifesto
Sam Harris
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this? No.
The Gods
Robert G Ingersoll
"The church still faithfully guards the dangerous tree of knowledge, and has exerted in all ages her utmost power to keep mankind from eating the fruit thereof. The priests have never ceased repeating the old falsehood and the old threat: "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." From every pulpit comes the same cry, born of the same fear: "Lest they eat and become as gods, knowing good and evil." For this reason, religion hates science, faith detests reason, theology is the sworn enemy of philosophy, and the church with its flaming sword still guards the hated tree, and like its supposed founder, curses to the lowest depths the brave thinkers who eat and become as gods."
Something Evil Comes This Way
Michael Shermer
"Good and evil are human constructs. A shift between two tectonic plates that causes the earth to make a sudden movement is not inherently evil. It is the effects of the earthquake that we judge to be evil. Likewise, bacterial diseases are not intrinsically evil. By causing humans to sneeze, cough, vomit, and have diarrhea, bacteria are simply doing what evolution designed them to do to survive and propagate. As their human hosts, we may label the effects of a disease as evil, but the disease itself has no moral existence."
Who’s Truth?
Vic Stenger
“Religion is not the benign, positive influence in the world that we have been led to think. Religion causes people's minds to lock shut, trapping inside a set of superstitious beliefs that quickly melt when exposed to the light of rational analysis.”
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God the Father
Kenneth W Krause
"Some have characterized the child’s separation from the parental caregiver as a life-long mourning process that triggers an endless search for replacement.”
God's Silly Laws
Dave E Matson
A sure reason for rejecting the Bible as "God's inerrant word" is on account of the silly laws it contains, laws that God supposedly made for his people. Silly laws are one of the clearest signs of a manmade work.
Freedom and Spiritual Life
Vic Stenger
“With its many deficiencies, democracy has proved the most successful form of government applied so far. This conclusion is based on data, not the assertions of self-proclaimed authorities. And despite attempts by many religious figures to tie democracy to their spiritual teachings, no form of government ever proposed is less consistent with the instructions of religion. Democracy arose from the rejection of religious authority, intolerance, and corruption. Far from being a Christian nation, the U.S. was founded on the notion of separation of church and state.”
20 Reasons to abandon Christianity
Chaz Bufe
"This article briefly looks at many of the reasons that Christianity is undesirable from both a personal and social point of view."
Survival of the Fittest... Religion
Los Angeles Times Book Review by Michael Shermer
"Episcopalians and Southern Baptists were not nearly as liberal as Unitarians and Jews, so the feminist movement for the former and Vietnam War protestors for the latter were not so easily incorporated. Yet in these case studies one can find in religion a certain controlled tolerance, even if it is implemented for the purpose of preserving power and control (in the former) and gaining additional members (in the latter)."
Victims of the Christian Faith
"Here’s a list of wonderful events that testify to God’s divine glory, starting with the slaughter of ancient pagans."
Sex and the Catholic Church
Vic Stenger
"The Church has changed, but glacially, as the rest of the world has moved with the speed of an Alpine landslide. It continues to insist that it, and it alone, possesses absolute truth. However, in order to maintain at least the appearance of eternal constancy, it has painted itself into a corner. Since absolute truth is eternal, Catholic leaders, with the unique exception of Pope John XXIII, have resisted all but the slightest change. What change they allow must be so slow as to go unnoticed by the great majority of the faithful. The Catholic Church continues to fight against all forms of birth control except the rhythm method. Modifying this teaching would hardly go unnoticed."
The Sado-Masochistic Passion of the Christ
Review by Earl Lee
"The trial and crucifixion are clearly the center of this overly-long, bloody extravaganza. Although the Hayes code prohibits violence to the extent that "Brutal killings are not to be presented in detail," this film ignores this quaint, old-fashioned notion."
Common Arguments against Atheism
Atheists are not Satan worshippers. Atheists don't believe in any kind of supernatural divine being. They view Satan as being every bit as mythological and nonexistent as God.
Are You a Hawk or a Dove on Religion?
Vic Stenger
“Well, let me say where I stand. I believe that religion has been a yoke on the neck of humanity for all ages, and that Christianity, in particular, delayed the progress of humankind by a thousand years or more. And just when people were finally beginning to learn to think rationally, to accept heretical ideas such as evolution, superstition has made a comeback. Ironically, this has been made possible by modern communications, the product of the very science so abhorred by the forces of unreason. Fundamentalist preachers use TV and computer mailings to hard sell their message to a gullible public.”
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The Incoherence of Original Sin and Substitutive Sacrifice
Phillip Kuchar
"Christianity can be summarized as the worship of a saviour-God who washes away our worries and deadly sins in the blood he shed on our behalf. But it’s clear that some people’s particular sins far outnumber those of other people. The genius of Paul was in conceiving universal sin, giving everyone without exception a necessary reason to pay special attention to Jesus’ death."
The Theory of Original Sin
Ayn Rand/John Galt
"Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives. They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man."
The Ghosts
Robert G Ingersoll
"In the history of our poor world, no horror has been omitted, no infamy has been left undone by the believers in ghosts,--by the worshipers of these fleshless phantoms. And yet these shadows were born of cowardice and malignity. They were painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of ignorance by that artist called superstition."
Flew's Flawed Science
Vic Stenger
"The late-in-life “conversion” of philosopher Antony Flew from atheism to belief in God has been widely reported in the media. In a recent interview with Gary Habermas, misleadingly titled “My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism,” Flew explains his new position, which he identifies as deism rather than theism. Richard Carrier has also conducted a correspondence with Flew, which clarifies some of the issues."
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Who was Jesus Christ?
Charles Bradlaugh
"Jesus being hungry went to a fig-tree to gather figs, though the season of figs was not yet come. Of course there were no figs upon the tree, and Jesus then caused the tree to wither away. This is specially interesting as a problem for a true orthodox Trinitarian who will believe, first, that Jesus was God, who made the tree, and prevented it from bearing figs; second, that God the all-wise, who is not subject to human passions, being hungry, went to the fig-tree, on which he knew there could be no figs, expecting to find some there; third, that God, the all-just, then punished the tree because it did not bear figs in opposition to God's eternal ordination."
Problems with Heaven
Michael Martin
It may be suggested that an explanation for the lack of moral evil in Heaven is a change in physical ability, not in moral character. Presumably in a disembodied existence we would not have the physically abilities to, e.g., murder, rape, and torture. Moreover, even if Heaven contains embodied denizens, their bodies may not be subject to the same physical laws as the bodies in our earthly existence. However, these suggestions create a new problem. For if human beings with free will can exist in a form (either disembodied or embodied) such that less moral evil results, then why are they not created in this form in their earthly existence?
The Brain and the Bible
Robert G Ingersoll
“If we should find a locomotive off the track, and the engineer using the proper appliances to put it back, we would say that the machine is out of order, but the engineer is not. But, if we found the locomotive upside down, with wheels in air, and the engineer insisting that it was on the track, and never running better, we would then conclude that something was wrong, not only with the locomotive, but with the engineer.”
What would you substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide?
Robert G. Ingersoll
"And all "inspired books," teaching that only those who obey the commands of the supernatural are, or can be, truly virtuous, and that unquestioning faith will be rewarded with eternal joy, are grossly immoral."
Humanism - A Rational and Moral Alternative to Religion
Vic Stenger
"Humanism accepts the evidence from history that the moral codes adopted over the centuries were not handed down from above, but resulted from human beings themselves freely choosing the way they want to live. We have chosen to live in communities, and communities require their individual members to make certain sacrifices for the benefit of the whole. And that's all moral rules are. They are unwritten rules of behavior that we freely decide to follow. Most of us do so because we want to belong to the community, to reap the benefits. Sociopaths convince themselves that they can reap the benefits without applying the rules to themselves."
The Narcissism of Christianity
Vic Stenger
“According to Christian belief, God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son to serve as a human sacrifice to atone for the sins of humanity. In return, Christians are expected to return that love. Not only are they to love God and his son, but their neighbors and even their enemies. What form is that reciprocal love of humans for God to take? Judging by God's own actions, sacrificing one's children would seem to be the only adequate response.”
There Is No God
Vic Stenger
"Even if a God can be devised who is consistent with logic and observations, natural explanations for phenomena are better than supernatural ones. They better explain why nonbelievers, evil, and gratuitous suffering exist. They better explain the origin and structure of the universe, life, and mind. They are based on objective observations and theories that are testable."
Why Do Right? A Secularist’s Answer
Charles Watts.
“Secularism is opposed to the orthodox idea that we should do right through fear of hell. This is the lowest and most selfish reason for doing good that can be given. According to the Secular idea, the desire to do right should not be prompted by merely personal considerations, but with the object of enhancing the best interests of others, as well as our own.”
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Reference Materials
Logic and Fallacies
|Short list|
"There are many kinds of logic, such as fuzzy logic and constructive logic; they have different rules, and different strengths and weaknesses. This document discusses simple Boolean logic, because it's commonplace and relatively easy to understand. When people talk about something being 'logical', they usually mean the type of logic described here."
Logical Fallacies Index
|Long list|
Very extensive categorized index of many logical fallacies, their definitions and simple examples of how they are often used to persuade, convince and propagandize.
The Care and Feeding of Analogies
Michael Wong
The analogy is one of the most popular rhetorical instruments of debate. But unfortunately, misuse, abuse, and unfair dismissal of analogies is so common and so easy (particularly in contentious political or religious debates) that they often lose much of their utility. Remember the rules for how to properly use and refute analogies, remind others of those rules when necessary, and be careful. After all, the line between logical debate and alpha-male jockeying for supremacy can sometimes be thinner than you think.
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Why I am Agnostic
Robert G Ingersoll
"I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his disciples believe in the existence of devils -- talked and made bargains with them. expelled them from people and animals. This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that devils do not exist -- that Christ never cast them out, and that if he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane."
My Search For God
Tony Sharp
"Some claim that the prophecies found in many religious writings is proof that there is a divine power. Nevertheless, the prophecies that describe current events are too vague to accept as hard truth, and the early ones that claim to have had eyewitnesses are without rational merits. Again, if there is no realistic evidence for the supernatural, like the divine experience claim, biblical prophecy lacks credibility. Without credibility, you have nothing."
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What America's Founding Fathers Said about Christianity
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, & James Madison
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved--the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson
Becoming a free thinker and a scientist
Albert Einstein
"As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came - though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents - to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true."
Why I am not an Agnostic
Vic Stenger
"Throughout the ages, many attempts have been made to provide a rational foundation for supernatural belief. All have failed. Preachers can still attract customers among the unsophisticated by logical-sounding arguments, such as: "How could all this - the universe, life, and mind - just have happened from nothing?" They then assure their listeners that God made it all. But consider the absurdity of the argument: Something can't come from nothing, and so it must come from God - who came from nothing."
Why I am not a Christian
Christopher Baba
Let’s examine what faith is. The definition of faith is hope for a circumstance or thing that is not proven to be true. There is no virtue in accepting something on faith, since it may very well be false, and it is clearly not virtuous to believe the false. Faith has also been proven through out history, time and again, that it is equivalent to massive hysteria; IE: Crusades, Burning Times, Inquisitions, Holy Wars, etc. On a grand scale faith, thus far, has only proven to be an intellectual weakness, and a significant barrier to scientific and moral progress. With all of this in mind, how can God possibly expect us to view faith as the greatest way to glorify him, let alone demand this of us?
Being-in-itself
Vic Stenger
"Changes in the physical characteristics of the body while undergoing so-called mystical experience can be measured with ordinary scientific apparatus. This fact strongly implies that the phenomenon is physical in nature, like all other forms of mental activity. Brain scans can locate the specific areas of the brain where certain thoughts and emotions are centered. If mystical experiences and other thinking processes were immaterial, why would they have any effect on scientific instruments?"
Why I Left the Ministry and Became an Atheist
G Vincent Runyon.
"This is the true story of a Methodist minister in good standing who, of his own free will and accord, renounced Christianity and became an atheist."
Battling Demons of the Mind
Carl Sagan
Again and again in his last book, Carl Sagan said wonders revealed by science are more awesome than any claims by mystics. He said children are "natural scientists'' because they incessantly ask "Why is the moon round?'' or "Why do we have toes?'' or the like. He urged that youngsters be inculcated with the scientific spirit of searching for trustworthy evidence, to guide them through "the demon-haunted world.'' That's a noble wish for the young.
What Infidels have Done
Robert G Ingersoll
“Orthodox religion has opposed liberty. It has opposed investigation and free thought. If all the churches in Europe had been observatories, if the cathedrals had been universities where facts were taught and where nature was studied, if all the priests had been real teachers, this world would have been far, far beyond what it is today. There is an idea that Christianity is positive, and Infidelity is negative. If this be so, then falsehood is positive and truth is negative.”
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Creationism/Intelligent Design
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Noah's Ark - A Feasibility Study
Robert Moore
Yet even with the miracle of hibernation, the task facing Noah and his crew was absolutely insuperable, barring yet another titanic intervention by Jehovah. A random sampling of over one hundred zoos from the 1980 International Zoo Yearbook showed a ratio of 25.4 animals per zoo staffer—experienced workers supervised by highly trained experts in conditions infinitely superior to the ark's. At this ratio, the great boat would have needed a staff of 151,926 to care for every creature aboard! Noah had eight.
Creationist "Flood Geology" Vs Common Sense
Edward Babinski
The god of the Hebrews was so wise he couldn't think of anything better than flooding the whole earth to kill the people He was after? That's like burning down the barn to kill some rats, or using a sledgehammer to debug a rosebush. Even the world's dumbest surgeon doesn't use a guillotine to remove a mole on someone's neck.
And Then A Miracle Occurs
Michael Shermer
At 7:00 pm on a balmy Southern California evening, April 29, 2004, I entered the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall on the campus of the University of California, Irvine, to a jammed house of over 500 people chock-a-block jammed into a 400-seat venue. I was there at the behest of one Pastor Jason, of the OMC Youth, a campus Christian organization, to debate Kent Hovind, Young Earth Creationist and Defender of the Faith, on Creation Vs. Evolution
PhD's Debate ID vs. Science in essay form
"Three proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) present their views of design in the natural world. Each view is immediately followed by a response from a proponent of evolution (EVO). The report, printed in its entirety, opens with an introduction by Natural History magazine and concludes with an overview of the ID movement."
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Debate between E. Haledman-Julius and Rev. Burris Jenkins
"Only a few centuries ago man knew little of the world in which he lived, so it was his habit to have his God right around the corner. As knowledge grew, God was sent farther and farther into space. Now it seems, with God driven from pillar to post until a new hiding place is desperately required, a few believers have resorted to invisible electrons. They have tucked their God away -- temporarily -- in that still uncharted world. But it is safe to predict that in another generation or two man will understand the electrons, and perhaps the ether beyond the electrons, and these will also show the operation of natural, mechanical processes that do not admit any agency outside and above matter. It is typical of the theological mind to claim as its sphere the outermost, receding points of darkness and ignorance. As knowledge grows, such centers of theism disappear."
Does God Have Back Problems Too?
David P Barash, Ph.D
"There's much that the supposed designer botched: ill-constructed knee joints that wear out, a lower back that's prone to pain, an inverted exit of the optic nerve via the retina, resulting in a blind spot. [...] If God is the designer, and we are created in his image, does that mean he has back problems too?"
I.D. Is a Concession of the Inferiority of Faith
Wayne Adkins
"Now the intelligent design movement is claiming that science leads them to the conclusion that there must have been an intelligent agent who designed life on earth. Why? It is because they have conceded that science is a more credible way to discover truths about our world than religion. Given a scientific explanation for origins and a religious explanation for origins, they know that an increasingly science-savvy population will choose the scientific explanation. They are attempting to remove faith from the equation by proving scientifically the existence of God."
Creationism Debunked
"It should not be surprising, therefore, that creationists do almost nothing at all that even imitates scientific research. Almost all their "research" is done in libraries, not laboratories, and all their "evidence" for creation is really nothing more than intentionally or unintentionally garbled evidence against evolution - as if they could prove the Genesis mythology by disproving Darwin!"
Is the Passover proof of Exodus?
David Voron, M.D.
"...Archaeological excavations do not support the Biblical Exodus story. Modern archaeological techniques are able to detect evidence of not only permanent settlements, but also of habitations of hunter-gatherers and pastoral nomads all over the world as far back as the third millennium B.C. However, there are no finds of a unique religious community living in a distinct area of the eastern delta of the Nile River (“Land of Goshen”) as described in Genesis. In addition, repeated excavations of areas corresponding to Kadesh-Barnea, where the Biblical Israelites lived for thirty-eight of their forty-eight years of wanderings, have revealed no evidence of any encampments."
A Failed Attempt to Dialog with "Young Earth" "Creation Scientists"
Many creationists and scientists disagree about the age of the Earth. The most vocal creationists believe in a young earth -- one that has been in existence fewer than 10,000 years. All of the scientists that we have heard of, who are not young earth creationists, believe that the earth is much older -- over four billion years.
More Creationist Deception Exposed
Barry Williams
"In June this year, Professor Dawkins contacted the Skeptic office, seeking assistance in locating an Australian TV production company. His story will demonstrate the depths to which the creationist movement will stoop in order to try to discredit its critics."
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The Theory of Evolution
National Geographic Society
"Evolution is both a beautiful concept and an important one, more crucial nowadays to human welfare, to medical science, and to our understanding of the world than ever before. It's also deeply persuasive—a theory you can take to the bank. The essential points are slightly more complicated than most people assume, but not so complicated that they can't be comprehended by any attentive person. Furthermore, the supporting evidence is abundant, various, ever increasing, solidly interconnected, and easily available in museums, popular books, textbooks, and a mountainous accumulation of peer-reviewed scientific studies. No one needs to, and no one should, accept evolution merely as a matter of faith."
ON TRIAL: Evolution
Infidels.org
Nearly half of Americans believe in strict Biblical literalist Creationism (i.e.- magical instant transmutation from dust to Man), with 37% in the "gray area" somewhere between evolution and creation. Other results from the poll indicated that only one third of Americans believe that Darwin's Theory of Evolution is supported by evidence. And this poll is hardly an anomaly; numerous polls conducted by various organizations have consistently indicated that nearly half of Americans believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.
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Evolution in Action
National Geographic Society
"There are other developments in the evolution watch, too many to mention in this small space. Some of the fastest action is microscopic. Richard Lenski, a biologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, watches the evolution of Escherichia coli. Because one generation takes only twenty minutes, and billions of E. coli can fit in a petri dish, the bacteria make ideal subjects for experimental evolution. Throw some E. coli into a new dish, for instance, with food they haven't encountered before, and they will evolve and adapt--quickly at first and then more slowly, as they refine their fit with their new environment."
A Defender's Guide to Science and Creationism
Mark I Vuletic
|Definitive Guide|
The Defender's Guide to Science and Creationism is a small contribution to the war of information: it tries to help counter the media threat by providing to the general public a free source of comparatively brief and comprehensible analyses of creationist assertions that either attack or exploit aspects of modern science.
Big Bang Ripples: No Message From God
Vic Stenger
"The new observations are crucial, but not in the sense of being revolutionary. On the contrary, had ripples in the microwave background not been found, then we would have had a real scientific revolution on our hands. The sound you heard emanating from the cosmology community was a collective sigh of relief. Their only viable theory to explain the wealth of observations had passed yet another test with flying colors. It wasn't the first test, and won't be the last."
The Evolutionary Future of Man
Richard Dawkins
"If we could assume that something like our advanced scientific civilization was going to last for 1m, or even 100,000, years, it might be worth thinking about the undercurrents of natural-selection pressure in these civilized conditions. However, the likelihood is that, in 100,000 years time, we shall either have reverted to wild barbarism, or else civilization will have advanced beyond all recognition--into colonies in outer space, for instance. In either case, evolutionary extrapolations from present conditions are likely to be highly misleading."
Return of the Puppet Masters
Carl Zimmer
Some scientists believe that Toxoplasma changes the personality of its human hosts, bringing different shifts to men and women. Parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague administered psychological questionnaires to people infected with Toxoplasma and controls. Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious.
Test your Scientific Literacy
Richard Carrier
This is a good way to test your own scientific knowledge, not about the world around you, but about science itself. Just for the record, I got an A!
OP-ED - Selling Out Science
Sam Harris
"Like science, every religion makes claims about the way the world is. Faith consists in accepting these claims on insufficient evidence. If Jesus ever returns to earth trailing clouds of glory, Christianity will stand revealed as a science, and every scientist in his right mind will bow down before the savior of the world in awe. If there is a God who created the cosmos so that at the end of an eon he can punish homosexuals and other miscreants with fire, then this is a fact like any other fact. If true, it would be a truth well worth knowing. If there were good reasons to believe in such a God, belief in him would be perfectly reasonable—and would, perforce, be part of the magisterium of scientific rationality. As every religious dogmatist knows, there is only one magisterium. Religion and science are in perfect agreement on this core point of epistemology: there is nothing more sacred than the facts."
The Surrender of Science to Religion
Vic Stenger
"Except for calling out the troops to defend against an occasional noisy foray by religionists, such as the periodic attempts of fundamentalists to undermine the position of evolution as the foundation of modern biology, scientists have been content in recent years to remain confined within a particular sphere of influence. This sphere is not one selected by scientists themselves, but assigned to them by the powers of society who far more often look for their counsel among church leaders than among professors of physics or neurochemistry. Politicians regularly attend prayer breakfasts and lunches - never a scientific seminar."
Do you fear what might happen if the world believed in evolution?
Seamus Ma' Cleriec and Edward T. Babinski
Some conservative religious believers fear that teaching evolution breeds immorality and also invites "God's judgment" to fall upon society as a whole. But what were the morals of society like in the "good old days" before Darwin? And did the Creator refrain from smiting believers in creationism with horrific diseases? The answer in both cases is, "No." Simply rent the DVD, The Gangs of New York, or read the books, Moll Flanders, Tom Jones, Les Miserables, Candide, or just about anything by Charles Dickens to get a taste of the immorality and diseases that ran amuck in the "good old days."
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