A World Beyond Belief

Shock Revelation. Drug Trials Funded By Drug Companies Show Positive Bias! Take Pill. End Shock.

2010-08-03T19:50:00.000+01:00

Drug trials conducted by the very pharmaceutical company with an obvious vested interest in a positive result are far more likely to yield a... positive result! Perhaps not earth-shattering news to anybody with a gram of cynicism in their body but is still an orchestrated effort to undermine the credibility of science as anything higher than the distortion of data in the name of money.

All the double-blind protocols in the world cannot reveal whether raw data and published data have anything in common save for both being in base 10. Revealingly, both the drug companies' internal trials and those supposedly external trials that were actually conducted by scientists in corporate bondage yielded a positive outcome in 85% of cases. This compares with a success rate of 50-60% from trials that are seemingly free from corrupting influences.

With much of the science community ablog about how some sugar-laden carbonated fizz could corrupt your sense of healthy well-being, it is good to be reminded that your friendly, smiling, drug-peddling multinational pharmacorps are involved in a more covert and more insidious undermining of scientific integrity. But as everyone in the wheel of deceit is making money, the only real drug trials are those let loose on a public with an ever-shrinking number of alternative options.

So much for evidence-based medicine.

Source:

Drug trials funded by industry are more likely to publish favorable results

Philip Pullman on the Freedom to be Offensive

2010-04-07T02:18:00.000+01:00

At the 2010 Oxford Literature Festival, on the early afternoon of Palm Sunday, March 28th, in Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre, Philip Pullman gave a talk on his book "The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ".

The last Questioner of the session quietly asked (paraphrased) :

"To call the son of god a scoundrel is an awful & offensive thing to say"

To which, the author calmly replied :

"Yes it was a shocking thing to say, and I knew it was a shocking thing to say.
But no one has the right to live without being shocked.
No one has the right to spend their lives without being offended.
Nobody has to read this book.
Nobody has to pick it up.
Nobody has to open it.

And if they open it and read it, they don't have to like it.
And if you read it and dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it.
You can write to me.
You can complain about it.
You can write to the publishers, to the papers,
You can write your own book.
You can do all those things.

But there your rights stop.
No one has the right to stop me writing this book.
No one has the right to stop it being published, sold, or bought, or read.
And that's all I have to say on that subject."

And there was much applause.

www.philip-pullman.com/

Thanks to BRFUK blog.

Hypnotherapy cures irritable bowel syndrome symptoms

2010-04-06T17:56:00.003+01:00

Hypnotherapy seems to be very effective for easing the distressing symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and in a goodly proportion of cases, clears up symptoms altogether, reveal experts during a wide ranging discussion of the condition in a Frontline Gastroenterology podcast.

Excluding certain foodstuffs may help alleviate symptoms, but usually only for a while, says Professor Roland Valori, editor of Frontline Gastroenterology. That's because dietary measures don't tackle the root cause of the symptoms - an overly sensitised gut. One of the best ways to do that is to use hypnotherapy, he says.

His experience of using hypnotherapy in the first 100 IBS patients treated with it showed that it significantly improved symptoms in nine out of 10 of them. It stopped symptoms altogether in four out of 10, while the remainder said they felt more in control of their symptoms. "To be frank, I have never looked back," he says.

A strange brain-gut interaction that warrants some more invstigating. Even the prof was shocked, but go with it!

CIA report into propaganda techniques to gain Afghan war support in Western Europe

2010-04-06T06:45:00.003+01:00

This classified CIA analysis from March, outlines possible PR-strategies to shore up public support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan. After the dutch government fell on the issue of dutch troops in Afghanistan last month, the CIA became worried that similar events could happen in the countries that post the third and fourth largest troop contingents to the ISAF-mission. The proposed PR strategies focus on pressure points that have been identified within these countries. For France it is the sympathy of the public for Afghan refugees and women. For Germany it is the fear of the consequences of defeat (drugs, more refugees, terrorism) as well as for Germany's standing in the NATO. The memo is a recipe for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two NATO ally countries, written by the CIA. It is classified as Confidential / No Foreign Nationals.

CIA memo.

BOINC

2010-03-31T11:30:00.002+01:00

BOINC stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. For scientists it allows data intensive projects to be distributed to volunteers who allow access to their idle computing time. For you, the volunteer, it means participating in scientific research on astronomy, medicine, global warming and even searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. All you need to do is sign up, download the software and it operates behind the scenes using up spare computing capacity when you're busy doing something else.

Cool or what!!

Brain Stimulation Can Alter Our Moral Judgments, Research Suggests

2010-03-31T08:58:00.003+01:00

A team of neuroscientists claim it is possible to influence people's moral judgments by disrupting a specific brain region called the the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ).

The study offers "striking evidence" that the right TPJ, located at the brain's surface above and behind the right ear, is critical for making moral judgments, the authors say.

Previous studies have shown that the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) is highly active when we think about other people's intentions, thoughts and beliefs. In the new study, researchers disrupted activity in the right TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp. They found that the subjects' ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions — for example, a failed murder attempt — was impaired.

Brain Stimulation Can Alter Our Moral Judgments, Study Suggests

"You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior," says lead author Liane Young, a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. "To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."

Actually, I am far less surprised than the researcher. Our brain is not just a network of neurons, it is also a complex electromagnetic system. I don't know how long it will take for this idea to really sink in - I guess slowly... but surely.

Is Religion Natural? ESSSAT Conference

2010-03-28T17:53:00.000+01:00

IS RELIGION NATURAL?

The European Society for the Study of Science And Theology (ESSSAT)
& The Science Religion Forum (SRF)
present the
XIIIth European Conference on Science and Theology, Edinburgh, UK,
April 7-11, 2010

The conference is hosted by The School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh

Under the title Is Religion Natural?, this conference will explore the drives underlying the religious attitude of mind. In five invited lectures, theologians from different backgrounds, and scientific researchers at the forefront of 21st century studies of the religious mind, will jointly engage with that question. Justin Barrett (Cognitive Psychology, Oxford), author of Why would anyone believe in God?, and Ilkka Pyysiäinen (Comparative Religion, Helsinki), author of Magic, Miracles and Religion and How Religion Works, will present cutting-edge scientific viewpoints on the nature of religious thinking. Mona Siddiqui (Islamic Studies, Glasgow) (How to Read the Qur’an) and Christoph Schwöbel (Systematic Theology, Tübingen) (God: Action and Revelation and Persons, Divine and Human, together with several books in German) will consider the conference theme from their contrasting theological perspectives. And Lluis Oviedo (Theological Anthropology, Rome), whose writings in Spanish and Italian include La fe cristiana ante los nuevos desafios sociales ("Christian Faith confronting the New Social Challenges"), will ask whether - or in what way - it is appropriate to try to naturalise religion. There will also be ample opportunity during the meeting for the presentation of short papers by conference participants.

Biologist And Former Dominican Wins £1 Million Templeton Prize For Science And Religion

2010-03-28T07:48:00.003+01:00

"Francisco J. Ayala, an evolutionary geneticist and molecular biologist who has vigorously opposed the entanglement of science and religion while also calling for mutual respect between the two, has won the 2010 Templeton Prize." Yet again the prize has gone to a scientist who says nice things about religion.

In a statement prepared for the news conference, Ayala forcefully denied that science contradicts religion. “If they are properly understood,” he said, “they cannot be in contradiction because science and religion concern different matters, and each is essential to human understanding.” Referring to Picasso’s Guernica, he noted that while science can assess the painting’s massive dimensions and pigments, only a spiritual view imparts the horror of the subject matter. Together, he explained, these two separate analyses reveal the totality of the masterpiece."

This all harks back to the fragile idea of non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) as espoused by Stephen Jay Gould. If science and religion really did not overlap then we wouldn't even be discussing this topic. For religious (or even scientific) apologists to claim that the two magisteria ask different questions is merely a linguistic sleight of hand - at least Aquinas was more consistent, if doubly wrong. Alaya's work defending the teaching of evolution can be commended without agreeing with his overall vision.

Another scientist gets £1 million for saying nice things about religion. read the whole article...

Biologist And Former Dominican Wins £1 Million Templeton Prize For Science And Religion

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WikiLeaks Editorial - US must stop spying on us!

2010-03-26T09:28:00.003Z

The editorial below is on the current homepage of WikiLeaks but has no other URL so may be taken down at some point in the future. Please go to WikiLeaks for any further updates.

EDITORIAL:U.S. must stop spying on WikiLeaks

Fri Mar 26 08:44:46 UTC 2010

Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations. In the developing world, these range from the appalling assassination of two related human rights lawyers in Nairobi last March (an armed attack on my compound there in 2007 is still unattributed) to an unsuccessful mass attack by Chinese computers on our servers in Stockholm, after we published photos of murders in Tibet. In the West this has ranged from the overt, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, threatening to prosecute us unless we removed a report on CIA activity in Kosovo, to the covert, to an ambush by a "James Bond" character in a Luxembourg car park, an event that ended with a mere "we think it would be in your interest to...".

Developing world violence aside, we've become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest.

But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive. Some of the new interest is related to a film exposing a U.S. massacre we will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5.

The spying includes attempted covert following, photographng, filming and the overt detention & questioning of a WikiLeaks' volunteer in Iceland on Monday night.

I, and others were in Iceland to advise Icelandic parliamentarians on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a new package of laws designed to protect investigative journalists and internet services from spying and censorship. As such, the spying has an extra poignancy.

The possible triggers:

our ongoing work on a classified film revealing civilian casualties occurring under the command of the U.S, general, David Petraeus.
our release of a classified 32 page US intelligence report on how to fatally marginalize WikiLeaks (expose our sources, destroy our reputation for integrity, hack us).
our release of a classified cable from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik reporting on contact between the U.S. and the U.K. over billions of euros in claimed loan guarantees.
pending releases related to the collapse of the Icelandic banks and Icelandic "oligarchs".

We have discovered half a dozen attempts at covert surveillance in Reykjavik both by native English speakers and Icelanders. On the occasions where these individuals were approached, they ran away. One had marked police equipment and the license plates for another suspicious vehicle track back to the Icelandic private VIP bodyguard firm Terr. What does that mean? We don't know. But as you will see, other events are clear.

U.S. sources told Icelandic state media's deputy head of news, that the State Department was aggressively investigating a leak from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. I was seen at a private U.S Embassy party at the Ambassador's residence, late last year and it is known I had contact with Embassay staff, after.

On Thursday March 18, 2010, I took the 2.15 PM flight out of Reykjavik to Copenhagen--on the way to speak at the SKUP investigative journalism conference in Norway. After receiving a tip, we obtained airline records for the flght concerned. Two individuals, recorded as brandishing diplomatic credentials checked in for my flight at 12:03 and 12:06 under the name of "US State Department". The two are not recorded as having any luggage.

Iceland doesn't have a separate security service. It folds its intelligence function into its police forces, leading to an uneasy overlap of policing and intelligence functions and values.

On Monday 22, March, at approximately 8.30pm, a WikiLeaks volunteer, a minor, was detained by Icelandic police on a wholly insignificant matter. Police then took the opportunity to hold the youth over night, without charge--a highly unusual act in Iceland. The next day, during the course of interrogation, the volunteer was shown covert photos of me outside the Reykjavik restaurant "Icelandic Fish & Chips", where a WikiLeaks production meeting took place on Wednesday March 17--the day before individuals operating under the name of the U.S. State Department boarded my flight to Copenhagen.

Our production meeting used a discreet, closed, backroom, because we were working on the analysis of a classified U.S. military video showing civilian kills by U.S. pilots. During the interrogation, a specific reference was made by police to the video---which could not have been understood from that day's exterior surveillance alone. Another specific reference was made to "important", but unnamed Icelandic figures. References were also made to the names of two senior journalists at the production meeting.

Who are the Icelandic security services loyal to in their values? The new government of April 2009, the old pro-Iraq war government of the Independence party, or perhaps to their personal relationships with peers from another country who have them on a permanment intelligence information drip?

Only a few years ago, Icelandic airspace was used for CIA rendition flights. Why did the CIA think that this was acceptable? In a classified U.S. profile on the former Icelandic Ambassador to the United States, obtained by WikiLeaks, the Ambassador is praised for helping to quell publicity of the CIA's activities.

Often when a bold new government arises, bureaucratic institutions remain loyal to the old regime and it can take time to change the guard. Former regime loyalists must be discovered, dissuaded and removed. But for the security services, that first vital step, discovery, is awry. Congenitally scared of the light, such services hide their activities; if it is not known what security services are doing, then it is surely impossible to know who they are doing it for.

Our plans to release the video on April 5 proceed.

We have asked relevant authorities in the Unites States and Iceland to explain. If these countries are to be treated as legitmate states, they need to start obeying the rule of law. Now.

Sciencewise UK

2010-03-26T08:08:00.002Z

The Sciencewise Expert Resource Centre for Public Dialogue In Science and Innovation (ERC) is funded by the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS). It aims to help policy makers commission and use public dialogue to inform policy decisions in emerging areas of science and technology.

It consists of a comprehensive online resource of information, advice and guidance together with a wide range of support services aimed at policy makers and all the different stakeholders involved in science and technology policy making, including the public.

The Sciencewise-ERC also provides co-funding to Government departments and agencies to develop and commission public dialogue activities.

To find out in more detail about the Sciencewise-ERC and Public Dialogue please read The Government’s Approach to Public Dialogue on Science and Technology (Guiding Principles).

The GovSpeak may be less than sexy but if you're in the UK and involved in science communication then there may be some work or money or free resources available.

A Quarter of Republicans Think Obama is the Anti-Christ

2010-03-25T17:14:00.002Z

Americans have some extreme views of President Obama, with a new controversial survey suggesting that 40 percent of adults believe he is a socialist, and about a quarter of survey participants thinking the president is a racist, anti-American and even doing things Hitler did.

The whammy: 14 percent of Americans say President Barack Obama may be the Antichrist. When split by political party, 24 percent of Republicans and 6 percent of Democrats viewed the nation's leader in this way.

http://www.livescience.com/culture/obama-anti-christ-100325.html

At some point, one has to stop being astonished, but even then, are these people a different species?

How is the Date for Easter Calculated? An Amusing Look at the Science.

2010-03-24T06:21:00.004Z

Yeah, I know, it's coming round to Easter time, and Passover. This is the story of how the two are linked and how the ecclesiastical calendar is a fiction used to keep control over the biggest mystery of all: how is the date of Easter calculated?! This is mathematics in the service of obscurantist theology. Even if you don't care about Easter, enjoy this tongue-in-cheek look at the history of calendars.

How is the date for Easter calculated?

Why Men Show Off in Front of Attractive Women

2010-03-24T03:52:00.002Z

Scientists in Australia have discovered that men do foolish things in the presence of attractive women. It's truly amazing the kind of research that gets funding. Before you consign this to the "tell me the obvious" dustbin, just bear with me, there's a neat video at the end that I'm sure you'll love.

Hey, if anybody wants to get lots of papers published just go into the social sciences!

Why Men Show Off in Front of Attractive Women

Your Religion is False - BIL2009 Video

2010-03-22T14:52:00.000Z

About the Talk
In a humorous talk at BIL2009, Joel takes on the lofty goal of proving every religion false individually.

About the Presenter
According to his blog, “If you want to get technical, Joel Grus is actually an aspiring author, an aspiring speaker, and an aspiring provocateur. He is, however, an accomplished jerk. Joel lives in Seattle. He has no hobbies.”

Your Religion is False.

From BIL: like TED, but BIL.

Force Field Developed to Protect Armoured Vehicles

2010-03-22T10:20:00.000Z

A space-age "force field" capable of protecting armoured vehicles and tanks by repelling incoming fire is being developed by British military scientists. The new type of armour will use pulses of electrical energy to repel rockets, shrapnel and other ammunition that might damage a vehicle.

Researchers at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), which is the research and development arm of the Ministry of Defence, claim it is possible to incorporate material known as supercapacitors into the armour of a vehicle to turn it into a kind of giant battery.

Sophisticated tracking systems will also need to be developed to work in conjunction with the new armour so that incoming threats can be identified and the electrical discharge timed correctly to repel the rocket. But on the plus side this will mean a much lighter vehicle meaning improved speed and manoeuvrability.
[Telegraph]

Dalai Lama to Visit University of Wisconsin-Madison Neurolab 15-16 May - Free Tickets Available

2010-03-20T06:36:00.000Z

The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Waisman Center will welcome His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama to its public grand-opening celebration Saturday-Sunday, May 15-16.

The Dalai Lama will join Davidson in a public dialogue at 2:15 p.m. on Sunday, May 16, at Madison's Overture Center for the Arts. Daniel Goleman, best-selling author of "Emotional Intelligence" and "Ecological Intelligence" will moderate the conversation, "Investigating Healthy Minds." Gov. Jim Doyle will deliver opening remarks, followed by a special musical performance by Madison Youth Choirs.

Free tickets available soon.

Dalai Lama to Visit University of Wisconsin-Madison Neurolab 15-16 May.

Meditation and Healthy Minds, a Podcast with Richard Davidson

2010-03-18T13:26:00.000Z

Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior, the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This is an interview of Richard Davidson on Shrink Rap Radio with David Van Nuys, discussing his research on meditation and the brain. Davidson tells that his research shows that meditation has a beneficial effects on the mind and quantitative effects on brain functions. Even novice meditators show immediate changes, with experienced long term meditators showing more pronounced changes. One thing he has noticed is that, given each individual starts with a slightly different brain structure, different meditation techniques have varying degrees of effects. One thing he would like to see in the future is a way to establish which technique is most suitable for each individual, without having to go through a trial and error phase.

His overall conclusion is that the brain is plastic, and therefore changes according to our experiences, and it is therefore up to each of us to ensure that we change ourselves in a positive way rather than leaving it to the vagaries of external experiences.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Can The Internet Really Win The Nobel Peace Prize?

2010-03-18T06:54:00.000Z

Nominations for this year's Nobel Peace Prize have closed and, amongst a record 237 nomination, it includes "The Internet". All of it, apparently! Every computer, every server, every router that is part of the global phenomenon that is the Internet. But can it win?

Can The Internet Really Win The Nobel Peace Prize?

CERN Liquid Containment Unit Leaks on Camera

2010-03-18T06:50:00.000Z

One of CERN's liquid containment units - a coffee mug - is shown to leak profusely when an attempt is made to put it into commission. A hapless pair of PR gurus bought their mugs at CERN's gift shop and only discovered the faulty design once it was tested back home. Mercifully, CERN does not currently have an online shop so this isolated accident should not alarm the rest of the public.

Watch the video...

A Problem in the Philosophy of Neuroscience: Introspection

2010-03-18T06:46:00.000Z

Neuroscience has a problem. It may appear to be a mere philosophical problem but has practical implications for the broader philosophy of science and the scientific method.

One of the big projects is the correlation between states of the brain and states of mind. It isn't the only project but it is an important one. On one side of the equation we have a battery of biological, chemical and physical data regarding neurological activity at the level of the neuron and brain plus possibly other physiological processes. This domain poses few problems in producing data that is acceptable as employing a scientific method. On the other side of this correlation we have what can variously be called states of mind, states of consciousness, cognitive experiences or just plain experiences. And more often than not, the only access the neuroscientist has to such experiences is to ask the person. Introspection is back as a scientific method!

A Problem in the Philosophy of Neuroscience: Introspection

Welcome to the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

2010-03-17T16:55:00.000Z

Welcome to the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

I know, this sounds like a New Age flake factory... but it isn't.

Located within the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we are a research Center dedicated to creating a world in which healthy qualities of mind flourish. The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, through hard-nosed basic and translational scientific research, will help to pave the way toward more widespread incorporation of methods and practices to nourish positive qualities of mind throughout society. The work and research of this Center are at the forefront of the scientific and scholarly communities, and have led to the development of a new hybrid discipline – contemplative neuroscience. In a global era where individuals, communities and the world are reconnecting with the pursuit of happiness, well-being and contentment and seeking innovative and mindful solutions to achieve it, the Center offers facts about interventions and methods grounded both in research and the wisdom of contemplative traditions.

They even have Einstein sounding like Gautama Buddha.

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein, 1921

The director, Richard Davidson, has already done research on the brainwaves of Tibetan monks in meditation, so will be interesting to see what they do next.

How Brainwaves and Neurons Interact

2010-03-16T07:35:00.000Z

This is a controversial issue, but some light is starting to be shone in this direction. Many neuroscientists assume that the electric fields generated by neurons are too weak to have any effect on their neighbours. However, recent research (Radman et al., 2007) has shown that weak electric fields (<5 V/m) within a broad spectrum of operating brain frequencies affect the firing properties of individual neurons. The researchers show that the nonlinear properties of an individual neuron can 'amplify' the effects of such small fields, effectively 'resonating' with the extracellular field. [...]

The researchers are thus fully aware of the importance of their findings in that they provide a framework within which others can develop neuro-therapies, as well as for researchers looking at the effects of environmental electromagnetic radiation. Add to that the not insignificant contribution to how the brain really functions! So much so that an open letter is appended to the research paper by David M. Alexander, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan. "As reported by Massimini et al. (2004), slow-wave sleep EEG has been shown to take the form of a global spatio-temporal wave. Such waves are able to act as an 'external' source of electric fields to individual minicolumns in the cortex. There is now sufficient evidence to outline the case that large-scale electrical field dynamics do indeed play a causal role in brain activity, and to propose confirmatory experiments." The letter is also interesting in that it lists other papers that add weight to the Radman experiments, one paper going all the way back to 1984. Alexander sounds like a converted skeptic as he also quotes:"our [Radman et al.] results challenge the common view that extracellular slow potential oscillations represent mere epiphenomena without physiological significance per se."

Is This How Brain Waves And Neurons Create Consciousness?

God Help Me, Say 82% Of Americans

2010-03-10T18:39:00.000Z

Most Americans believe God is concerned with their personal well-being and is directly involved in their personal affairs, according to new research out of the University of Toronto.

Overall, most people believe that God is highly influential in the events and outcomes in their lives. Specifically:

82 per cent say they depend on God for help and guidance in making decisions;

71 per cent believe that when good or bad things happen, these occurrences are simply part of God's plan for them;

61 per cent believe that God has determined the direction and course of their lives;

......
Ok, that's enough depressing statistics, you can read the whole article here.

TGI Pi Day! Irrational Exuberance All Round

2010-03-10T06:59:00.001Z

March 14 is Pi Day and it's also Albert Einstein's birth day, so a double celebration for geeks around the world!

But hold on, why March 14th? Well, the people at the Exploratorium obviously figured out that written out as numbers this date becomes 3-14, which are the first three digits in the decimal expansion of pi (3.14...) However, they are lucky to be Americans because this makes no sense whatsoever to most of the rest of humanity! In America, they like to write their dates as month-day-year whereas most of the planet use the seemingly more rational "little endian" form day-month-year. So irrationality really does triumph on Pi Day!

Read the whole article: Irrational Exuberance - Thank Goodness It's Pi Day!

If you haven't already then do watch Pi the movie.

HAARP: A Case Study in Ultra-Modern Warfare

2010-03-10T06:12:00.000Z

Recent advances in geophysical research, communication, and computerization have led to substantial technological changes in military weaponry. Under the rubric of national security, the U.S, military is utilizing this technology to strengthen control over its spheres of influence. Included in this endeavor is a proposed "revolution in military affairs" driven by a belief that while conventional armed warfare is still a necessary component of military strategy, a compelling new priority is how to quell insurgencies, terrorist attacks, and social unrest overseas and at home.

One example of this new technology is the U.S. Air Force and Navy's development of HAARP, a 'High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program' under construction in Gakona, Alaska. The major component of HAARP is a radio wave transmitter utilizing powerful high frequency (HF) transmissions and a variety of associated observational instruments "...to investigate naturally occurring and artifically induced ionospheric processes that support, enhance, or degrade the propagation of radio waves." Scheduled to b e completed in approximately five years, HAARP is presently running at about ten percent of projected power levels.

In a 1993 Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] addressing possible environmental impacts of HAARP, the Air Force indicated that the study of the ionosphere was being initiated "...to better understand and use it to enhance communications and surveilla nce systems for both civil and defense purposes."

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However, this doesn't come from a conspiracy website, but is the introduction to a university course, HAARP: A Case Study in Ultra-Modern Warfare. Has some interesting links plus a way to think about the problem in a rational way that can bring in more of the public without them feeling it is all too outlandish to be true.

Science Cryptic Crosswords - First Puzzle Now Online

2010-03-09T10:55:00.000Z

The Science Cryptic Crossword site SCICX has just launched and has its first crossword online, numbered SCX1. these are cryptic crosswords, not science general knowledge quiz-type questions, rather more along the lines of The Times. This means it should appeal to both the scientifically literate as well as crossword addicts. The online version of the crosswords are there only for show, to print out a nice copy they are also available as pdf files. SCX1 is available here. There's also a prize draw for completed crosswords sent in - closing date 8 April.

The International Society of the Arts, Mathematics, and Architecture

2010-03-08T09:20:00.000Z

ISAMA was founded by Nat Friedman, in order to further interdisciplinary education relating the arts, mathematics, and architecture.

To learn the latest about Math and Art, read HYPERSEEING. Published monthly by ISAMA since fall 2006, HYPERSEEING offers a lively mix of articles, news, reviews of books and exhibits, announcements, and even cartoons.

Most summers, ISAMA runs an interdisciplinary conference on the arts, mathematics and architecture. ISAMA 2010 will be held 21–25 June; in Chicago, IL, USA.

VideoLectures.Net - Online Science Lectures

2010-03-08T04:33:00.000Z

VideoLectures.NET is a free and open access educational video lectures repository. The lectures are given by distinguished scholars and scientists at the most important and prominent events like conferences, summer schools, workshops and science promotional events from many fields of Science. The portal is aimed at promoting science, exchanging ideas and fostering knowledge sharing by providing high quality didactic contents not only to a scientific community but also to a general public. All lectures, accompanying documents, information and links are systematically selected and classified through the editorial process taking into account also users' comments.

VideoLectures.NET is being used as an educational platform for several EU funded research projects such as PASCAL NoE, ECOLEAD NoE, SEKT IP and different organizations among others MIT OpenCourseWare and CERN. The range of countries involved and languages used varies from Europe, USA, Taiwan, Australia, Ukraine, Russia and Brazil.

Science, Magic and Religion Videos

2010-03-07T06:15:00.000Z

Professor Courtenay Raia, from UCLA, lectures on science and religion as historical phenomena that have developed over time. She examines the earlier mind-set before 1700 when into science fitted elements that came eventually to be thought as magical. The course also looks at how Western cosmologies became "disenchanted." Magical tradition transformed into modern mysticisms is also analysed as well as the political implications of these movements. Includes discussion regarding science in totalitarian settings as well as "big science" during the Cold War.

Science, Magic and Religion

Life in Deep Space? Organic Molecules Found in the Orion Nebula

2010-03-06T17:07:00.000Z

ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum, obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) - one of Herschel's three innovative instruments - demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.

among the organic molecules identified in this spectrum are water, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, methanol, dimethyl ether, hydrogen cyanide, sulphur oxide, sulphur dioxide and their isotope analogues. It is expected that new molecules will also be identified. This spectrum is the first glimpse at the spectral richness of regions of star and planet formation. It harbours the promise of a deep understanding of the chemistry of space once the complete spectral surveys are available.

Life in Deep Space? Organic Molecules Found in the Orion Nebula

Citizen Scientist Discovers $300m Space Dust

2010-03-06T15:35:00.000Z

Most people think that science is done behind closed doors with expensive equipment, fiddling around with complicated technology by scientists wearing cheap lab coats. The rest of us merely stand on the outside waiting for some interesting discoveries to be made. Well, although the caricature is partly true there are many experiments where the amount of data is so huge that the research teams have enlisted the help of citizen scientists.

Bruce Hudson, from Ontario in Canada, is just such a citizen scientist and he has discovered what scientists believe is the first piece of interstellar dust that was captured by NASA's Stardust spacecraft. Stardust@home is a website where anybody in the world can help find these particles of stardust, with some 27,000 people having already joined. The prize is that you get to name the particle. Bruce Hudson named the previously boring “particle 30” as Orion. “So far this particle is unique... if we drop it on the floor, it will cost $300m to get another one.” says a nervous Dr Andrew Westphal, from the University of California, Berkeley.

Read the whole article at Xomba.

Depression Diagnosis Criteria Flawed

2010-03-06T05:52:00.000Z

A study in the March edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry senior-authored by Jerome C. Wakefield, a professor at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University with Mark Schmitz of Temple University and Judith Baer of Rutgers University, empirically challenges the effectiveness of psychiatrists' official diagnostic manual in preventing mistaken, false-positive diagnoses of depression. The findings concerning the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' (DSM) criteria for diagnosing depression rebuts recent criticism of earlier research by Wakefield. That earlier research suggested that misdiagnoses of depression are widespread, and touched off considerable controversy.

According to the DSM, the diagnosis of major depression requires the presence – for two weeks – of at least five possible symptoms out of a list of nine, which include, for example, sadness, loss of interest in usual activities, lowered appetite, fatigue, and insomnia. However, these symptoms can also occur in normal responses to loss and stress. False positive diagnoses occur when someone reacting with intense normal sadness to life's stresses is misdiagnosed as having major depressive disorder. Recent studies suggest that a very large percentage of people have such symptoms for two weeks or longer at some point in their lives; therefore, how many of these individuals really are afflicted by a mental disorder or are responding within normal limits to loss or stress has been a matter of debate. [ESN]

Sexsomnia: A Sleep Disorder With Sexual Behaviour

2010-03-05T11:28:00.000Z

Sexsomnia is a sleeping disorder in which a person indulges in sexual activity, either with themself or another person while still sleeping - it is also sometimes known as "sleep sex" or "sexual behaviour in sleep" (SBS). Like sleep-eating, the person is utterly unconscious of what they are doing. This can be startling for both the sexsomniac and their partner! Why has this been kept under the covers for so long? How would you know if you suffered from this sleep disorder? And is there a remedy?

Sexsomnia

Vaccine for mesothelioma proven safe

2010-03-04T08:08:00.000Z

Researchers have demonstrated the safety of a potential vaccine against mesothelioma, a rare cancer associated primarily with asbestos exposure. The vaccine, which infuses uses a patient's own dendritic cells (DC) with antigen from the patient's tumor, was able to induce a T-cell response against mesothelioma tumors.

"[This] is the first human study on DC-based immunotherapy in patients with mesothelioma," wrote Joachim G Aerts M.D., Ph.D., a pulmonary physician at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands.
The findings have been published online ahead of print publication in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The U.S. and other developed countries have prohibited the use of asbestos for decades, but the time between asbestos exposure and diagnosis of mesothelioma can up to 50 years. The incidence of mesothelioma, therefore, is still on the rise and expected to continue to increase until 2020. Once diagnosed, mesothelioma has a median survival time of 12 months. The standard chemotherapeutic treatment only improves survival time by about three months.
[...]
"The major problem in mesothelioma is that the immunosuppressive environment caused by the tumor will negatively influence our therapy so we are now working on a method to lower this immunosuppressive environment," said Dr. Aerts. "We hope that by further development of our method it will be possible to increase survival in patients with mesothelioma and eventually vaccinate persons who have been in contact with asbestos to prevent them from getting asbestos related diseases." [ScienceCodex]

HAARP, Earthquakes, and Hurricanes

2010-03-04T04:06:00.000Z

Can HAARP manipulate storms, hurricanes, and earthquakes? There is definitely a correlation between these and when HAARP is active. This article will give some examples of that correlation. And while that alone does not prove a direct causal relationship, the physics of HAARP and the political agenda behind the program suggest that weather and earthquake manipulation is both possible and likely.

I assume everyone reading this knows of HAARP. Less known is that HAARP is only one of several such facilities — and not the most powerful one either. There are others, here are five:

1) Mu Radar – 1 megawatt facility in Japan (34°51'14.80"N 136° 6'19.45"E).

2) Arecibo Observatory – 2 megawatt facility in Puerto Rico (18°20'38.97"N 66°45'9.77"W).

3) HIPAS – 70 megawatt facility east of Fairbanks, Alaska (64°52'21.18"N 146°50'18.78"W).

4) Sura – 190 megawatt facility in central Russia (56° 7'10.32"N 46° 2'4.41"E).

5) EISCAT – 1 gigawatt facility in Tromsø, Northern Norway (69°35'1.06"N 19°12'57.11"E).

(you can copy and paste the coordinates into google maps)

Read the whole article at Montalk.

A good article with a level-headed look at the data. Everyone has the same problem of trying to fathom events from the official data stream from the official HAARP facility. What would be really useful is some independent receiving device capable of monitoring these signals.

Evolution is a tit-for-tat game: proof

2010-03-02T13:47:00.000Z

The team observed viruses as they evolved over hundreds of generations to infect bacteria. They found that when the bacteria could evolve defences, the viruses evolved at a quicker rate and generated greater diversity, compared to situations where the bacteria were unable to adapt to the viral infection. The study shows, for the first time, that the American evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen was correct in his 'Red Queen Hypothesis'. The theory, first put forward in the 1970s, was named after a passage in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass in which the Red Queen tells Alice, 'It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place'. This suggested that species were in a constant race for survival and have to continue to evolve new ways of defending themselves throughout time. [ESN]

Evolution is a tit-for-tat game. How comforting. Obviously into their game theory, the researchers then want to look at what happens in symbiotic relationships rather than pure predator-prey.

Chile Earthquake and Tsunami - Some Science Videos

2010-03-01T07:43:00.000Z

Some interesting videos about the earthquake in Chile, just to understand a bit of science.

The first one shows how shockwaves propagate from the epicentre in Chile to the monitoring station at the University of Portland, OR.

This second animations shows the propagation of the tsunami wave across the Pacific... and why in the end the waves were not dangerous to inhabited areas.

And finally, a time-lapse video taken in Hawaii showing the attenuated tsunami. One thing everybody should know by now is that the initial warning of a tsunami arriving is that the water flows away from the beach first.

Why So Many Earthquakes This Decade?

2010-03-01T05:22:00.000Z

While Haiti is still sorting out the chaos from its January earthquake, the Earth suffers another massive quake in Chile. At a magnitude of 8.8 on the Richter scale this is one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded. Concerns about a tsunami spreading across the Pacific have abated and the Chilean authorities claim they have the resources to handle the catastrophe.

Why are we having so many earthquakes recently? Is it just that the media likes to report dramatic and tragic events, or has there been a quantitative increase? The graph from USGS tells a worrying story.

Why So Many Earthquakes This Decade?

HAARP and Chile Earthquake

2010-02-28T15:34:00.000Z

This article has clips from an MSNBC and a CNN interview with people who saw strange lights in the sky just before/during the Chile earthquake. Just as documented before the 2004 Tsunami, the 2008 China quake, and the 2010 Haiti quake, there is video evidence and many witnesses who saw aurora borealis type lights in the sky. It is NOT a natural phenomenon to see such lights before/during a natural earthquake, however, such a lighting effect IS a common side-effect of HAARP waves coming back down from the Ionosphere. This is very damning evidence.

Also a magnitude 2.5 quake was registered in Alaska at the same time as the Chile quake.

Read full article at The Atlantean Conspiracy.

Secular Revival

2010-02-28T14:06:00.000Z

Religion, conceded Freud, has performed vital functions within civilization, offering us an imaginary compensation for our helplessness in the face of nature through fantasies of a controlling intelligence and an illusion of our capacity to summon that power through rituals and prayer. Above all, Freud saw religion as a mechanism of repression, channeling instinctual drives into socially acceptable forms. Chateaubriand’s lush Catholicism does not at all fit this notion of religion as the ultimate form of renunciation, but Freud’s portrayal of the austere and sublime legalism of Mosaic Judaism certainly does.
[...]

One standard image of the nonbelieving secularist is of a hedonistic immoralist—as Fyodor Dostoevsky feared, if God is dead, everything is permitted. But to the contrary, it may be that secularism does not escape the dynamic that Freud believed is the motor of religion: the repression of instinct followed by a sublimation into other satisfactions—in other words, precisely the process that turns religion into an obsessional neurosis. Even among champions of the secular worldview, we sometimes find worries that secularism lacks magic and emotional depth, that it is a hyperrationalist creed that preserves the internal compulsions of religion without its animating beliefs or its consoling message of cosmic meaning and personal redemption. Frequently, the counsel of the secularist is to be brave, buck up, and face the world as a heroic pessimist. [...]

I would dare say that for most professional scholars, religion reclaims their attention not because faith reasserts its ancestral claim but because the secularist narrative has gotten snagged in contradictions and complexities. Among these snags must count the weakening of confidence in the oppositional terms that structured the secular worldview: irrational versus rational, faith versus knowledge, and the most basic dichotomy, religious versus secular. It is unlikely that diminishing confidence among secularist intellectuals would have occurred had it not coincided with the robust return of religion in cultures around the globe. Quite simply, the world has refused to cooperate with the expectations and divinations of the secularists. [...]

Surveying this global landscape of renewed public religion in 1999, Peter Berger, one of the greatest living sociologists of religion, concluded, “the assumption that we live in a secularized world is false. The world today, with some exceptions … is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever.” [...]

Yet, insofar as this is possible, it is only on the grounds prepared by secularism. For secularism emerged historically as the only mode humans have found to successfully and peacefully manage the tensions of diverse belief systems within a pluralistic framework. [...]

Secularism is undoubtedly suffering through a crisis of confidence. Perhaps, though, this presents an opportunity to reinvigorate the secularist vision. Outspoken atheists such as Hitchens and Dawkins may allow nonbelievers to do some cheerleading, but they are not likely to reenergize the radically secular worldview. After all, their arguments are familiar; they have been enumerated many times already. They are, as Freud’s fictive opponent feared, likely to breed intolerance. Better to recognize that both the history of religion and the secular story are not lacking in examples of intolerance, but neither is one or the other short on acts of charity and hospitality, right up to and including love across the borders. Besides, it is not clear that anyone stops believing because of the better argument. [...]

The secularizers should worry less about converting believers and more about reinvigorating secularism’s own potential for deep meaning and rich experience. [...]

We should put aside the language of a clash. The reinvigoration of secularist values need not involve an attack on religion, any more than the reassertion of religion need involve an attack on nonbelief. Indeed, in a pluralist situation, secularists can worry about the order of their own house, without concerning themselves overly much with their neighbors. But this is the important point: religion and nonreligion can coexist in this way when and only when they both already stand firmly within a relationship defined by secularization. The moment that secularized relationship ceases to be the case, we would all have cause to worry, believers and nonbelievers alike.

Read the whole lengthy essay: Secular Revival by Warren Breckman

Is Science a Belief? Is Religion a Science? Recent Research

2010-02-27T07:16:00.000Z

Two ground-breaking papers from researchers at UCLA start to shed some light on the nature of belief: “The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief” and “Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief and Uncertainty”. The “fMRI of Belief” concentrates on the initial results whereas the “Neural Correlates” paper looks more deeply at the implications for religious beliefs.

Our reactions to statements are mediated by emotional responses, so much so that such reactions happen for both religious and non-religious propositions. It is as if the mind trains itself to create a meaningful map by correlating truth and falsehood with pleasure and pain respectively. But does this then mean that both religions and the sciences are just belief systems sustained by emotional responses? Are we thereby just addicted to our prejudices?

Is Science a Belief? Is Religion a Science?

Selective brain damage modulates human spirituality

2010-02-24T14:07:00.000Z

New research provides fascinating insight into brain changes that might underlie alterations in spiritual and religious attitudes. The study, published by Cell Press in the February 11 issue of the journal Neuron, explores the neural basis of spirituality by studying patients before and after surgery to remove a brain tumor. Although it is well established that all behaviors and experiences, spiritual or otherwise, must originate in the brain, true empirical exploration of the neural underpinnings of spirituality has been challenging. However, recent advances in neuroscience have started to make the complex mental processes associated with religion and spirituality more accessible.

The group found that selective damage to the left and right posterior parietal regions induced a specific increase in self-transcendence (ST). "Our symptom-lesion mapping study is the first demonstration of a causative link between brain functioning and ST," offers Dr. Urgesi. "Damage to posterior parietal areas induced unusually fast changes of a stable personality dimension related to transcendental self-referential awareness. Thus, dysfunctional parietal neural activity may underpin altered spiritual and religious attitudes and behaviors."

AAKOM

The British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh: The Law Lords Decision Could Break The BCA

2010-02-23T18:34:00.000Z

It's about 5.30 pm in England and the Court of Appeal in the case of the British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh has closed for the day. No official news as yet but the Singh supporters from Twitter seem to have smiles on their faces.

Simon Singh has said: "I am determined to defend my article as I maintain that it is fair and touches on an issue of serious public interest, namely the health of children. My greatest desire is that journalists in future should not have to endure such an arduous and expensive libel process. Cases like mine mean that people are afraid to speak out about whether treatments are worthwhile and effective."

Looks like the BCA was given a hard time. Why did they even bother taking this case to court? Why haven't they published the evidence they claim to have? Do they have enough money to pay if they lose?

Florilegium blog

Why is 'scientists are bad communicators' trope wrong?

2010-02-23T09:32:00.000Z

Are scientists bad communicators? Emphatically not, blastsCoturnix at his science blog.

"Many scientists communicate well, but are only allowed by the mainstream media to use the "pull" model which attracts only those who are already interested in science. The examples of "pull" media for science are popular science magazines, news sections of scientific journals, science sections of newspapers, science blogs, science-related radio shows, science-related shows on cable TV, i.e., all those places where people have a choice to seek this information or bypass it.

It is the mainstream media that controls all the "push" venues - the most popular print, radio and TV venues that are seen by everyone and where science could, potentially, be mixed in with the news coverage of other areas of life, thus delivering science stories to people who otherwise would never seek them. And it is there that the scientists have no access, certainly no access on their own terms, and thus it is there where the science communication is blocked. Scientists communicate all the time, and do it well, but only to the already receptive audience which actively seeks them - in special sections, or self-made media, carefully quarantined away from the mainstream news."

However, he goes on to say that "push" media is the old media and that scientists should embrace the new media of the internet. Although true, the corporate media channels do still have a lot of influence and therefore it is worth some brave scientists trying to push those doors open. It has been done, but rarely.

Why is 'scientists are bad communicators' trope wrong

Addicted To Being Good? The Psychopathology Of Heroism

2010-02-22T09:19:00.000Z

We look at heroes and do-gooders as a special sort of breed; people who possess extraordinary traits of altruism, or self-less concern for the well-being of others, even at the expense of their own existence. On the other end, sociopaths also have an extraordinary set of traits, such as extreme selfishness, lack of impulse control, no respect for rules, and no conscience.

As crazy as it sounds, there may be a closer link than than most people would think between the extreme-altruistic personality and sociopathic personality. Would it shock you to know that two people, one with the traits of extreme-altruism (X-altruism) and the other the traits of a sociopath, could be related? Even siblings? And that their personality traits are very similar, with only a few features to distinguish them?

Addicted To Being Good? The Psychopathology Of Heroism

HAARP Weather Manipulation Over Australia

2010-02-20T13:38:00.000Z

OK- it’s time for serious answers from the authorities as the Australian government Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) have themselves been propelled into posting a notice that they are “endeavoring to find the source of interferences" into, not just one radar station the last four weeks, but many. Late last night (Feb 18th here in USA - Feb 19th in Australia), the most bizarre symbol yet appeared on the national radar emanating from the Melbourne facility. On the radar screen, a black and red-laced, counter-clockwise spiral appeared with a separate red-flared spiral overlay in its center. The last time we observed something similar to this, the first time it had ever been seen, I noticed that the lower levels of the atmosphere began to rotate in the same counter-clockwise direction. As I watched, a new low pressure system formed under the radar symbol - unprecedented physical reflection of the radar image. This was either an extreme coincidence, where a frequency interference and technical artifact took place at the same time that nature also happened to create a new low pressure system, or this was a designed effect.

http://www.colinandrews.net/HAARP-AfterOlga2.html

HAARP over Australia? Why are YouTube videos showing evidence being taken down all the time?

Eureka's Top 30 Science Blogs

2010-02-20T11:20:00.001Z

Whether you are new to blogs or a practised poster, Eureka’s Top 30 Science Blogs will not disappoint. After much heated debate, the Eureka team have picked 30 of their favourite science, environment, health and technology blogs. If you want to know more about the latest NHS catastrophe or climate change scandal, someone on our list will have it covered.

So, now we’ve shown you ours, we want you to show us yours. We know our 30 blogs are not exhaustive; they’re a subjective take on the best bloggers out there. We’d like you to help us us to compile the definitive list, the Top 100 Science Blogs. Send the name and url of your favourites to eureka@thetimes.co.uk, with “Best blogs” in the subject line.

Carbon Trade Swindle Behind Al Gore Science Hoax

2010-02-13T16:10:00.000Z

Look behind—if you dare—Al Gore and his science hoax, and you find the very same London-centered oligarchical financial crew that drove the 2003-2006 oil and commodity price increase, amidst the bubbles and hyperinflation that characterize the breakdown-phase of the financial system. The centerpiece of the U.S. emerging market for carbon emissions trading, is the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), created in 2003 as a "voluntary," or pilot agency, part of a London-based network positioned to reproduce the oil bubble on a scale orders of magnitude greater and more dangerous, while at the same time, destroying what's left of the physical economy. [EIR]

This is a great article detailling the scammers and their vehicles to create the biggest fake market in the history of human folly. We are carbon-based life; to trade carbon is to become mere economic units, mere tokens to be bought and sold. China has already claimed that its one-child policy, with its consequent abortions, has saved carbon emissions and should therefore be included in its calculations. Some western pundits seem to think this is a genius idea. The next step in this logic is to have most of the female population pregnant most of the time, record all the abortions, and then claim them as carbon credits. Monstrous... and a consequence of the unproven anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

The USA State of Emergency Continues With Absolutely No Oversight by Congress

2010-02-10T17:46:00.002Z

Here are the bare bones of it, and it's scary stuff.

We all know that the American government declared a state of emergency after 11 September 2001 - and was officially put in writing on the 14th.

On 10 September 2009 President Obama declared that such a state of emergency will continue.

Congress is supposed to review such states of emergency at least every 6 months, yet it has never done so since 2001.

Such declarations of national emergency come with the ability of the president to appropriate emergency powers and issue presidential directives. Previous presidents have used such powers to the extent that in 1976 Congress wiped the slate clean of nearly 500 directives that effectively created an autocratic presidency. Astonishingly, the Supreme Court tried to cut Congress down to size on this issue. It remains unclear whether those totalitarian directives have come back into force since the 2001 declaration.

Even without them, a large number of Bush's Presidential Directives remain unknown to the general public, Congress and even to members of Congress on the Homeland Security committee!!

OK, I need to know that I've understood this. The President of the USA, by declaring a state of emergency has the power to issue any directive, which becomes part of law, but also has the power to not tell anybody apart from the few people in the shadow government (Continuity of Government). And that's not totalitarianism?

Read the whole article at Zero Hedge and some of the links they quote from and some insightful comments.

Oh yeah, nearly forgot, the biggest financial scams, such as AIG, are being protected as part of the same national security. Very convenient.

These are not the ravings of conspiracy theorists but researched information scattered across government websites coupled with knowledge from a few brave souls close enough to smell the stench.

Who is in Charge, Governments or Bankers?

2010-02-09T11:36:00.001Z

A long and interesting article has been published by Bill Mitchell entitled "Who is in charge?" It comes in the wake of further sovereign debt problems, most imminently with the so-called PIIGS of Europe. His message is that the classical monetarist knee-jerk reaction, promoted by the corporate media, has become ingrained in people so that both the public and the experts can no longer see that it is indeed just a construct - and a false one at that. Mitchell is promoting his modern monetarist theory (MMT) in which he shows that the idea that government finances are somehow analogous to our personal finances is wholly wrong. If a government has genuine sovereignty, that is, control of its currency, then the idea that it can somehow be bankrupted by the bond markets is false.

Mitchell sees this as one of many economic 'intuitions' that the public has been led to believe. Like I said, it is a long post and I'm no economist, but I am a mathematician so those formulas don't scare me! However, the message seems clear: "Where might we start exposing faulty intuition which allows policy makers to devastate their populations via fiscal austerity packages at the height of a near-depression?"

Well, one thing is the propaganda that if governments just print more money then inflation will rise. What the public is not told is that this convenient see-saw only applies when an economy is near 100% capacity and full employment. But the conviction that printing money is bad has led governments to issue bonds instead, using the temporary income from their sale to finance their spending. But such loans have to be paid back, usually by issuing yet more debt and thereby getting governments into the cycle of indebtedness to bankers. Up to this point it does all sound very similar to our personal finances, should we choose to live a life of indebtedness. However, unlike citizens, a government can create more money. Ironically, this makes the government merely in debt to its central bank rather than to the public (or rather private) bond markets. Mitchell seems to me close here to blaming the economists and the bankers that run government central banks almost as much as those who work for private banks. The Federal Reserve looms large in this debate as having the powers of a central bank yet being a private operation - the Federal Reserve is about as 'Federal' as Federal Express.

By promoting the idea that governments have to issue bonds so that the bond markets can keep a wary eye on government spending is thus a piece of monetarist ideology and not a law of nature. "But the mainstream have such an ideological obsession against government command of resources to pursue a socio-economic program (because such programs are “wasteful”, “inefficient”, “roads to no-where”; “undermine incentives”; “enslave free people”, etc) that they realise they can pull the emotional strings and invoke this faulty intuition in the public."

And here we come to the title of the article: who is really in control here? And as important, what are governments really for? There are many reasons for people to keep an eye on the activities of their government, but for a sovereign nation to tell its people that it is effectively being controlled by private bankers with no interest in their well-being , well, nobody is going to do that. Instead they hide behind false monetarist policies.

This clash of capitalism and sovereignty was bound to happen. The aim of corporations is to grow, the aim of governments is to (supposedly) look after their people. Capitalism accumulates whereas governments redistribute. According to Mitchell, those governments that still control a sovereign currency are lying to their people when they present a false choice between hyperinflation and austerity. The problem that has surfaced in some European countries is that, having joined the Euro, they no longer control their own currency. But the other problem is that governments are being forced to support bankrupt private corporations. The money being created by the likes of the Fed seems to be largely going into filling unquantified losses of private operations. Thus money is being printed but is not going into the economy and hence not stoking up inflation. According to Mitchell's model, in this time of economic slowdown, pouring money into the economy would still not lead to the dreaded inflation but it would relieve the pain and misery of an oncoming depression.

Dangerous Talk

2010-02-09T07:05:00.000Z

Dangerous Talk is an atheist/progressive daily blog discussing the three most dangerous topics of polite conversation: Religion, Politics, and Sex. Our goal is to fight back against Religion and push for a more free and rational society.

Go to Dangerous Talk.

Operation Gladio: CIA False Flag Terrorism video

2010-02-03T13:56:00.004Z

This video was first shown on the BBC in 1992. It is the third of three videos and tells the tragic tale of Aldo Moro's kidnap and execution. At the time, it was blamed on the Red Brigade but years of investigations have revealed that it was the culmination of a black operation to destabilise Italy. Operation Gladio was a CIA and NATO operation whose aim was to stop European Communist parties from gaining any political power.

What is interesting for our time are the admissions of obvious false flag terrorist acts, where terrorist groups of both fascists and communists were already infiltrated by secret service agents who could then create situations for their own benefits. The aim was to escalate tensions rather than find civil solutions. Similar black operations occur today. They do not make headline news but can be found on the internet. With so many former Guantanamo inmates now out in the field the only logical assumption is that they are now operatives of the CIA (or whoever controls that particular false flag terrorist agenda). The stench of Operation Gladio is still with us.

This video has never been aired in the USA.

Boob Bombs Plot Exposed

2010-02-03T05:35:00.003Z

Fox News alarmists quoting WorldNetDaily's Christian propagandists that MI5 is "Hunting Breast Implants of Death." This is no satire but is being reported as a serious threat to national security. You can, however, read about this revelation at News Corpse.

Thing is, apart from the obvious sniggering this is likely to provoke, there was a satirical piece written in the most recent edition of ColdType.net. "Paying the price of freedom" by Fred Reed includes this "boob bombs" scenario as a scam for airport security contractors to make more money from a roll-out of palpitators and x-ray machines. So, shall we assume that the editor of WND reads ColdType? It sure beats reading WND!

==

OK, I have no intention of promoting either Fox Nation or WND with a link to them so have found what appears to be the source for both stories... at the Daily Mail!

And yes, it appears to be another scam to make full body scans a normal part of airport security. Nice profit for the contractors.

One thing that has puzzled (and amused) many is how these boob bombs would be detonated. Security sources said the explosive PETN (Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate) would be placed in a plastic sachet inside the bomber’s body and would then be detonated by the bomber using a hypodermic syringe to inject TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) through their skin into the explosives sachet. But... wouldn't the mere carrying of a syringe be enough to set off alarm bells at airport security? But why promote a logical solution when an expensive one can scare the public into submission.

Fingerprint Scanner Used To Verify Church Attendance

2010-02-03T04:31:00.003Z

A Polish priest has installed an electronic reader in his church for schoolchildren to leave their fingerprints in order to monitor their attendance at mass, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily said on Friday.

The pupils will mark their fingerprints every time they go to church over three years and if they attend 200 masses they will be freed from the obligation of having to pass an exam prior to their confirmation, the paper said.

The pupils in the southern town of Gryfow Slaski told the daily they liked the idea and also the priest, Grzegorz Sowa, who invented it. "This is comfortable. We don't have to stand in a line to get the priest's signature (confirming our presence at the mass) in our confirmation notebooks," said one pupil. [Reuters]

So the Father and the Son have co-opted Big Brother to monitor the sheeple. As always, surveillance systems are brought in for the very best of reasons. Let's see this one spread.

ColdType.net - writing worth reading

2010-02-02T06:02:00.003Z

ColdType: writing worth reading from around the world - and it's free!

I have added ColdType to the list of WBB websites in the right column as there appears to be no RSS feed, indeed the whole publication is in pdf so easy to save and read at one's leisure. But in a land of short blogs and single-issue rants it is good to read well-crafted essays from writers, journalists and academics.

I'm currently reading the latest issue of The Reader, with essays by John Pilger, David Michael Green and Kevin Carson and an interview with Oliver Stone. The issue is dedicated to Orwell's 1984 with thoughts on political propaganda and the reality of false flag wars as permanent states of tension. The air is somewhat lightened by a satirical piece, "Paying the price of freedom" by Fred Reed, that looks at how airport security is a money-making scam whilst passengers avoid being subjected to ever-more intrusive security measures. The exploding breast implants scenario is very funny... until we see automatic palpators next to the x-ray machines at passport control.

Fall of the Republic: The Presidency of Barack H Obama - full video

2010-02-01T08:59:00.002Z

When the New World Order has fallen out of the books of conspiracy theories and into the mouths of leading politicians, should it not be renamed conspiracy truth? As capitalism reaches its obvious conclusion, competition gives way to monopolies, choice is an illusion and individual wealth is destroyed by banksters. Welcome to corporate communism, welcome to engineered disasters, welcome to controlled slavery. What's the point? Control of the whole ecosystem - including the carbon atoms in your body. Enjoy the future.

Perhaps the most interesting section is around 90 minutes into the film. It shows how easy it is to manipulate humans through social engineering. Propaganda works, and it works by massaging the human unconscious without rational interference. This is hugely depressing and the only antidote is to be informed - to switch that rational mind back on. The difficulty with switching it on is to first be aware enough that it has been unplugged. Wake up to the future.

Wake up
Switch on
Break free

IPCC Misleads the World about Himalayan Glacier Meltdown

2010-01-21T10:49:00.003Z

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

AfterMath News and The Times

Hilarious! My own cynical view is that if there was a real threat of global warming then governments are in the position to impose some laws. Instead, what is being planned is the biggest surveillance operation the planet has ever seen, all in the name of carbon. Nothing about pollution of our air, our water, our food and our lives. Look at the proposed 'solutions' and you will see a different story.

Carnival of the Godless #133

2010-01-19T14:19:00.002Z

Welcome to the 133th edition of the Carnival of the Godless, January 17, 2010. This edition is being hosted by Null Session. Please consider adding this blog to your blogroll, and follow Nullsession on Twitter.

Let me start off by saying how excited I am to be hosting this instalment of the CotG. This is more than a self-serving attempt to drive traffic to my website, this is an opportunity to share some articles from some excellent atheist blogs!

If you wish to submit an article for the next Carnival of the Godless then just click here.

How to End the State

2010-01-18T02:28:00.001Z

The state is a complex of coercive mentalities that seeks to control your life through fear, brainwashing and ultimately violence. But what can individuals do to free themselves? If you push against the state it will flatten you like an ant. Choose your battles vary carefully.

The author of "How to End the State", Alex Ryan, seems to think that humans are evolving into more insightful and hence more benign beings. This in itself should hasten the end of terrorist states. I see little evidence for this as states employ the full arsenal of technology to control every aspect of life. Knowledge and protection are key to survival but if dropping out is tantamount to falling out then fear and despair may swamp the once pure desire for freedom.

The first enemy is the fear inside and so the first task is to purify oneself, becoming the ideal rather than just thinking it. Then one will have both the inner strength and wisdom to pick one's fights. Only then can one claim to know how to set others free.

Animals that have been kept in captivity, such as in a zoo, cannot be just liberated into the wild and expected to survive. They have learnt to live in a prison and have few resources to live in the wild. Similarly, if the state was to collapse tomorrow people would still have the same fears and desires. States that have recently collapsed descended into lawless gangsterism, not peace-loving utopias. A large gangster-state just turned into smaller gangster-states.

The various refinements of anarchism, such as agorism and voluntaryism, which the FR33 AGENTS blog discusses, all seem to suffer from age-old dilemmas. You cannot force others to be free. You cannot hate those who do not show compassion. To do so is to fall back into the same mindset as the coercive state that one is trying to destroy. If the simplest moral law is to do unto others as you would wish them to do to you, then perhaps the zeroth law is to first become what you would wish others to be. Then the path to revolution will be illuminated by wisdom.

European Parliament to Investigate WHO Swine Flu Pandemic Scam

2010-01-07T08:27:00.001Z

Yeah, and pigs will fly before the criminals at the World unHealth Organisation, their pharmaco masters and the greedy scientists will ever be injected with their own vaccines. But at least the European Parliament is making an effort and perhaps should change their protocols and demand that any hot air emanating from the WHO should first pass through a European air-conditioning system and analysed for particles of truth.

I wrote about this a long time ago and became thoroughly bored with the pandemic that never was. Unfortunately, a lot of people were vaccinated. There was a wave of vaccinations here in Thailand to babies as young as 6 months. I urged the mother not to do it, but of course they still believe in authority here, they are conditioned to do so. Luckily the baby only suffered an allergic reaction, which the doctor said was an allergy to air - air! what a moron! The baby now has a permanent allergic reaction of as yet unknown origin. Welcome to the WHO world.

What is the experience of faith?

2009-12-25T02:46:00.002Z

Have just read "What is faith?" on Digital Bits Skeptic and have to admit some disappointment. Great title but sadly a rather short article whose focus is on the pronouncements of faith rather than the experience of faith. My feeling is that looking at the ejaculations of the religious faithful under a rational microscope merely defines the linguistic boundaries between faith and reason but tells us little about what it means to have faith.

I think that what we need to look at is the experience of faith rather than the articles of faith.

from Asylum Joy, "What is the experience of faith?"

Future Shock 1972 Video

2009-12-16T01:28:00.002Z

Future Shock, the 1972 documentary based on the book by Alvin Toffler, narrated by Orson Welles.

Thanks to Plausible Futures.

Camels With Hammers

2009-09-28T02:11:00.002+01:00

The main foci of Camels With Hammers are contemporary ethical paradigms, normative theories, moral psychology, secularism, Nietzsche interpretation, general philosophical education for non-specialists, commentary on politics and other current affairs from philosophical perspectives. Additionally, the blog is concerned with being part of the project of creating a constructive atheism which can be a force philosophically, culturally, and, where appropriate, politically. The blog also occasionally reviews and promotes independent film and music. Occasionally more mainstream music and films are of interest—but usually that’s when Tom Petty, Batman, or Spider-Man are involved in said music or films.

— I encourage non-specialists in philosophy to use this blog as a place to try their hand at serious philosophical debate, to seek clarification of obscure philosophical terms or concepts that are stumbling block to their participation, and all around to use this blog as a place to learn philosophy. Please read more of how I view the educational potential of the blog in this post I wrote on the subject.

==

Good to see an unashamedly philosophical blog. Any others out there please let me know.

Egypt Bans GM Food

2009-08-15T06:33:00.000+01:00

CAIRO (Reuters) – Any agricultural imports to Egypt must have a certificate from the country of origin that the product is not genetically modified and the rule will also apply to Egyptian exports, the official news agency said on Wednesday.

The debate in Egypt over food quality has become politically heated after some Russian wheat was rejected over quality concerns. Members of parliament have been calling for stricter rules and greater agricultural self sufficiency.

from Aftermath News.

I suspect there will be a lot of lobbying against this move but I hope the Egyptians stand firm. The aim of the GM food companies is to control the world's food supply thereby holding both farmers and countries hostage to increasing prices for sterile seeds.

The Vision Thing and Brain Mapping

2009-08-15T01:30:00.000+01:00

Knowledge about brain organization and development is rapidly evolving, partly due to new tools we have for research, such as various MRI techniques. One type of question being investigated is the degree to which brain organization is pre-programmed in the genes vs a result of the process of development.

Our current models of visual organization in the brain is that there are two streams of visual information: the ventral stream relates to object recognition (and lesions of which result in visual agnosia, or the inability to recognize objects), and the dorsal stream is for planning actions. Lesions of the dorsal stream result in what is called optic ataxia.

The dorsal stream of visual information is therefore related to seeing an object heading in your direction and getting out of the way, or to the act of catching a baseball. While the ventral stream will tell you that what you are catching is a baseball and not a rock.

However, the processing does not stop there and the ventral stream also separates living and non-living objects. The distinction is obviously vitally important to our survival. One recent piece of research looking at the brain activity of sighted people compared to those blind from birth shows that such categories are hard-wired into our visual cortex. In those blind from birth the visual input data is missing but the reaction algorithm still exists. The article doesn't explore whether this ventral stream is, in such cases, receiving inputs from other senses such as sound.

In our attempts to evolve into something more than irascible simians, it is worth knowing which of our reactions are due to hardware and which to software. But our brains are somewhat plastic so that the distinction is not as clear-cut as in silicon-based computers. We can be programmed, deprogrammed and reprogrammed, but some things are harder to change than others.

Have some ancient brain structures passed their usefulness? Or is our consciousness doomed to witness a mere fraction of what is really going on inside our minds?

full article at Neurologica blog.

Our Future: Truth or Lies?

2009-08-14T05:30:00.004+01:00

Is it possible that our future will consist of less religions and theism?
Or…

* Will we evolve into a non-superstitious society or will we continue to cling to these myths to justify our preferences and prejudices?

[...]

I hope that there will be a time when the majority of our population realizes that the answers lie within our physical means? We humans can find the answers that will not only aid in our existence, but will help us progress as an ongoing race and a better world.

from Proud Atheists.

I would just add that we must also retain a mental dimension and be able to look both inwards and outwards with the same scientific outlook of detached observation. Faith is ultimately a physiological state and we can deprogram, but in our society having power over others seems more important than having power over our own mind.

Everything Happens for a Reason

2009-08-07T22:43:00.000+01:00

This is a rather lightweight op-ed piece from the Friendly Atheist which, however, has generated a fair amount of comment. If a friend starts confiding in you about some tragedy in their life and then slips into,“This is all happening for a reason.” or “It’s part of God’s plan.”, how do you react?

If you believe in a god - any god - you may be able to sympathize. The search for some consoling meaning in the randomness of the universe is often natural. But to build up one's personal problems into some grand cosmic plan seems largely unhelpful, both practically and emotionally. Sure, shit happens! Why did lightning strike here and not there? Complex system. Why has my partner lost interest in me? Complex system.

The universe is a complex system; some parts behave in good old fashioned cause and effect whilst others appear random and unpredictable. We've known this for some 100 years - in just the last 40 years we've even come to understand how simple systems can exhibit complex structures. Perhaps it's just time for human psychology to catch up with human science.

Taking a drug may relieve the pain but it won't heal the wound. Would you rather your friend kept taking the drugs, or would you rather be genuinely helpful?

Natural Born Atheists

2009-08-07T06:45:00.001+01:00

An interesting short article from the Proud Atheists blog. Not merely a rant about the lunacy of the Pentecostal church with its unwavering message of "you're going to hell!", but picks up on the idea that there are people just born unbelievers. Religious indoctrination starts at such an early age that it is very difficult to investigate how, or even whether, the average human goes through phases of religious thinking and development. From the comments, there are a few out there who do not recall lapsing from any religion but rather have always been faithless skeptics.

As some religions would dearly love to find some 'God spot' in the brain, thereby connecting us mere mortals to some alleged metaphysical eldorado, so they wish to claim that we are all 'wired for God', thereby adding yet another lame metaphysical proof of God's existence. I mean, if you find a door then it must lead somewhere - building a door on a brick wall is slightly surreal but does evolution include such aesthetic pranks? I'll come back to this door in a minute.

So are people born with a natural sense of religion or are they just indoctrinated into their parents' cult? There are some for whom belief is just not part of the program. I, for one, do not recall ever believing the stuff spoken by priests. Not only did the words not mean anything but I saw how people behaved in both church and outside it and, apart from the rampant hypocrisy, I was left bemused as to what exactly they were doing. Kneeling down in a gesture of prayer was easy to imitate but what was going on in their heads?

I suspect - or perhaps hope - that most young children go through a process of thinking through who they are as their brain goes beyond learning how to walk and starts to focus on where to walk to. I also think parents do their kids an injustice by not listening to what they try to tell them about life, the universe and their dreams. I do recall having an intense period in which it was very important for me to figure out who I was, what was it that made me conscious of being me, and so on. I had nothing that could be called 'faith' in any great gig in the sky. I was the doubting Thomas - show me! However, the revelation that eventually appeared was very interesting and best described in Buddhist terms as naked awareness - a kind of atomic consciousness. Unfortunately, I knew nothing of Buddhism at the age 6 or 7 but I did know that such experiences were not part of the Catholic canon. My natural born faithlessness grew into a conscious rejection of the whole racket. Not only was Christianity wrong (people are wrong about many things all the time, it's called learning) but it was actually a lie, which struck me as a more serious charge.

So coming back to that door. The attempt by some religions to distort neuroscience into locating some God-terminal in the brain has already started. The structure of our mind is a fascinating and important area of research, both from a scientific and personal point of view. The structure of our deepest and most basic part of the mind is normally left unconscious and yet in some individuals under some circumstances it does manifest. Such experiences are often life-changing and hence should be treated with respect. In my opinion, the delusion propagated by religions is not the delusion of such experiences but in the mind-map propagated to explain such experiences. The mental door is not a gateway to a metaphysical deity but the opening up of previously secret areas of our mind.

Are we, in the end natural born fideists or atheists? We are undoubtedly conscious. We can choose to open those doors and explore our consciousness - explore what it means to be human - or we can get faith and close all those doors, lock them up and throw away the keys. Thankfully, those keys can always be found again if one starts to wonder about those locked doors.

The Secular Thinker

2009-08-06T08:26:00.001+01:00

The Secular Thinker is a blog about many things, mainly politics, society, philosophy, and religion, written from the perspective of a secular atheist. My goal when creating the blog was for it to become a place of discussion, a source of information, and a small step in the very long journey towards truth. The internet brings many people together, and I think that though debate and argument, those people can come to a better understanding of the world. Alone, we can accomplish little, but together, the possibilities are boundless. We live in a society where so much of the world's population believe in some sort of supernatural being, and, knowingly or otherwise, these beliefs influence daily interaction. I believe the in the potential of humanity to achieve greatness, but this pursuit is so often hindered by the presence of religion. I would like The Secular Thinker to become a place of education, information, fact-finding, debate, argument, discussion, understanding, contemplation, and cooperation that will ultimately lead us in the right direction to creating a better world for ourselves and each other.

God and Science Don't Mix - My Thoughts

2009-07-31T05:18:00.002+01:00

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.
— J.B.S. Haldane, “Fact and Faith” (1934)

"Last week, I [Lawrence M. Krauss] had the opportunity to participate in several exciting panel discussions at the World Science Festival in New York City. But the most dramatic encounter took place at the panel strangely titled “Science, Faith and Religion.” I had been conscripted to join the panel after telling one of the organizers that I saw no reason to have it. After all, there was no panel on science and astrology, or science and witchcraft. So why one on science and religion?

I ended up being one of two panelists labeled “atheists.” The other was philosopher Colin McGinn. On the other side of the debate were two devoutly Catholic scientists, biologist Kenneth Miller and Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno." [Science and God Don't Mix]

Krauss has some experience in defending science, especially biology, in the face of religious fundamentalists who see science as an atheist Trojan horse that will destroy their children's faith. He accepts Haldane's view that for science to work it must do so in an atheistic mode, in the sense that supernatural beings are left out of current theories. However, the two catholic panellists prove that it is possible to have faith and reason at the same time. But what was also striking was that neither Catholic was able to rationally defend the virgin birth apart from on metaphorical or symbolic grounds. This shows to me that to restate the science versus religion argument as one of reason versus faith is overly simplistic; it becomes somewhat of a caricature of the head versus the heart. Yet this latter play of opposites is possibly close to the truth.

The problem is not that a believer cannot be a scientist - after all, much of the history of science is filled with devoutly religious individuals - but rather that the rational part of the mind does not turn its scalpel towards the fideist part of the same mind. In this sense, I think it useful to categorize faith as an emotional state, very much like being in love. Humans enjoy (or are possessed by) numerous emotional states, some of which are short term whereas others are so long term as to appear to be inextricably part of that person. It is also not possible to be entirely rational whilst in a rage or overcome with fear. Love is also far from rational. It is impossible to argue with someone that the love they feel for their partner is somehow not real, an illusion. Cataloguing a list of flaws is also unlikely to diminish their love. As for human love, so for supernatural love.

Although the emotional state of faith, as of love, can switch on and off, the balance between a fideist state and rationalism seems more a continuum with some tipping point. The rationalism of the two Catholic speakers shows how far that balance can be stretched so that faith can be maintained whilst, in their minds, keeping some semblance of intellectual honesty. Yet again, this shows to me that we are dealing with two very different functions of our mind that, however, obviously interact. Changing one's basic state of mind is a major event for an individual. Testimonies from people who have flipped from being faithful to atheist or vice versa show how closely it resembles falling in and out of love. But it often takes a major crisis to precipitate this mental tectonic shift.

Krauss ends his article with,"So while scientific rationality does not require atheism, it is by no means irrational to use it as the basis for arguing against the existence of God, and thus to conclude that claimed miracles like the virgin birth are incompatible with our scientific understanding of nature." I still think that arguments for and against a metaphysical being are largely pointless. It is like trying to use the knife of reason to do an autopsy on a ghost. It is true that rationality does not require an atheist stance, but for the sake of truth it is worth using both science and rationality on this state of being we call faith. Treating faith as an emotional state also removes any truth about the propositions supported by being in such a state. It may also serve as the key to unlock those minds who are having real turmoil in somehow keeping their childhood faith whilst trying to reconcile it with either science or just life in general. People fall in and out of love all the time without being branded as 'loveless'. It is therefore possible to fall in and out of faith - just don't claim that it says anything about the universe apart from describing your state of mind.

Unknown News

2009-06-11T11:24:00.002+01:00

Unknown News posts a once-weekly digest of news, mainly from mainstream sources, that warrant more public attention. With the wealth of daily news items churned out by the internet, it is true that some items are ignored even though they do get published. Some stories even get pulled once the ramifications become clearer, but that's another story.

Some quotes from the Unknown News owners are interesting.

"We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated." It is complicated when there are people who think they are free to impose their rule on others - just look around at the world today.

"We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite -- oppression -- leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery." True.

With a non-partisan approach Unknown News likes to skirt around the usual labels of left-wing, right-wing, libertarian and so on. "Our suggestion is: think." An oh-so-rare quality!

Creationists Freak Out Over Google Fossil Logo

2009-05-22T15:26:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, 20 May 2009, Google's homepage had a logo design based upon the discovery of Darwinius masillae, an important transitional form of early primate.

Creationists that frequent the Rapture Ready forum were foaming at the mouth. This was not just about the news but also about Google - the liberal search engine - promoting evolution. The news media didn't help matters by screaming that this was the 'missing link' and proof of evolution. The Pharyngula science blog picks up a tiring but necessary point, that public scientific knowledge is never going to get beyond slogans and cartoons if science journalists and their publications continue to wilfully misguide how science is reported.

Atheist Film Festival

2009-05-22T09:23:00.001+01:00

Atheist Film Festival

An Atheist Film Festival will be held in San Francisco on Sunday 28 June 2009.

The schedule has not been completed yet but does include "Deliver Us From Evil", a documentary exposing how the Catholic Church protected pedophile priest Oliver O'Grady. The Festival closes with something a little more light-hearted with Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life".

INFOWARdocs.org - Documentation for the war on your mind

2009-05-21T08:36:00.001+01:00

In spite of the name this website is not related to infowars.com but is a project to collate all information on the internet related to mind control, conspiracy theories, population control and pretty much anything related to covert operations and coverups by governments and their agencies.

The homepage is divided into two columns, one showing the most recent news and the other showing the latests posts, which could be old news that needs to be archived. Will be interesting to see how long INFOWARdocs can keep going and whether it does become a useful research tool in the sometimes vain quest to discover who did what and when.

Sadly there is no RSS feed hence has not been added to our aggregator.

Agora at Cannes - Hypatia, First Woman Scientist and Philosopher

2009-05-19T07:54:00.003+01:00

Set in the 4th century CE in Alexandria the epic film "Agora" tells of a story that is famous in the history of science but perhaps little known outside that field. It is the story of a world in transition, of a Mediterranean culture shifting from Hellenic to Christian ideals. The history of science has not been blessed with too many women and Hypatia stands out as scientist, philosopher and head of the Library of Alexandria as much as for her gruesome end at the hands of fundamentalist Christians. It was one of the last stands of philosophy against the tide of messianic faith. Philosophy lost.

The dating of the Christian calendar from the alleged birth of Jesus can give the illusion that Christianity was born fully formed. This is, of course, far from the truth and the 4th and 5th centuries were crucial in its development, especially the rise of the expansionist Roman Catholic Church and its triumph over Hellenic culture. There can surely be no more symbolic death than that of a female scientist inflicted by a patriarchal religion.

The film's director, Alejandro Amenabar, takes great pains to say that this is not specifically anti-Christian in its message but rather against fundamentalist religious thinking in general. In our current age, where we see certain powerful factions determined to create a synthetic clash of civilizations between Christianity and Islam, it is worth being reminded that there is a much deeper clash of cultures that runs through the whole of human history - the clash between knowledge and indoctrination. Hypatia was a champion of the former and a victim of the latter.

Agora was screened at Cannes and seems to have had mixed reviews. I don't know if this is for cinematographic reasons or because of the uncomfortable message.

Angie The Anti-Theist

2009-05-18T17:45:00.002+01:00

AngieTheAntiTheist.blogspot.com is my blog about dangerous cults in America, faith healing, medical neglect of children in the name of prayer, and my general views on religion and atheism. It's also where excerpts from my upcoming book "Exodus from Zion" appear. This book details my life growing up in a faith healing cult, Home in Zion Ministries, with it's founder, my grandmother, Carol Balizet.

=

Should be interesting! I've met people who have had close dealings with cults: one was being terrorized by one; and another was trained to abduct and deprogramme cult members (which somehow never seemed to make anybody happy!)

Rumsfeld's Top Secret Intelligence Reports Were Covered in Biblical Quotes

2009-05-18T17:10:00.003+01:00

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld routinely used militaristic passages from the Bible on the cover pages of White House intelligence documents, according to new revelations by GQ magazine.

It said Rumsfeld displayed the passages over photographs of U.S. forces in Iraq to curry favor with then president George W. Bush, despite concerns about the incendiary impact on the Islamic world if they were ever made public.

One republished on the GQ website came from March 31, 2003, showing a U.S. tank roaring through the desert about 10 days after the United States invaded Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Over the image was printed a verse from Ephesians: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."

Read full article at Alternet.

This seems fairly typical, manipulating Bush's beliefs for an agenda which, post-911, Bush was forced to follow. This meant he could do so with a vestigial conscience while Rumsfeld, Cheney and their mobsters could terrorize the whole world.

Oregon Church Allowed to Brew Hallucinogenic Tea for Religious Use

2009-05-14T09:27:00.004+01:00

According to a US District Court ruling, the Church of the Holy Light of the Queen in Ashland, Oregon, can use their "Daime" tea during their religious services.

The church, which blends Christian and indigenous religious beliefs in Brazil, uses tea brewed from the ayahuasca plant in their services. The tea contains trace amounts of the chemical dimethyltryptamine or DMT.

The judge also ruled that federal drug enforcement agencies are prevented from prosecuting the church for possessing the drug so long as the church abides by guidelines set down.

Members of the church believe that "only by taking the tea can a church member have direct experience with Jesus Christ." They could also have experiences of many other deities, depending on how the hallucination was guided. This is merely proof of how susceptible people are whilst tripping and that religious experiences can be manufactured.

"Why I Write This Blog"

2009-05-13T07:11:00.002+01:00

I write this blog because losing my religion was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I want to share that with people. When I finally got critical thinking, and really allowed myself to challenge everything I believed and loved, and hold it all to the same standards of reason and evidence - that’s when I really came alive as a person. I was finally willing to accept the universe, however it was, and live the best life I could here and now, in reality. That’s a wonderful thing, and when you encounter something wonderful you want to share it with people.

This is not me but Common Sense Atheism speaking.

I write this blog because I because I really enjoy this stuff. I enjoy the search for truth. I enjoy finding out where I’m wrong, or where I’m ignorant, or where I’m right. And I enjoy these topics, too. The questions of God and meaning and morality are some of the biggest questions one could ask, and it’s pretty epic to make some progress in finding the answers.

Read the whole post, and the comments.

Every Intelligent Man Dreams of Being a Gangster

2009-05-06T10:47:00.001+01:00

The quote is from the French existentialist author Albert Camus:"The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone."

Perhaps too many people cling on to their morals as an antidote to the news. As swine flu has infected our consciousness it has also sidelined the continuing financial crisis. But both are manifestations of the same covert quest for power and control.

Paul Farrell predicts the new film Public Enemies will be a big hit because it will tap into what many people would love to do to all those who have been ripping us off for years - be they bankers, politicians or pharmaceuticals.

Unfortunately, the truth is that it is us who are staring down the wrong end of the barrel. "Yes, this time the banks are the gangsters. They're robbing Main Street's Treasury. And it's an inside job. Hank Paulson, the "Goldman Conspiracy's" Trojan Horse, plays a "Dillinger," leading a much bigger conspiracy, the "Happy Conspiracy," that robbed America's 300 million citizens and taxpayers. They made off with trillions, while our "guards," a clueless Congress, laid down their guns and surrendered the keys to the vault."

Except that in our oh-so-civilized world we see no guns, no masks, no hold-ups - just the silent theft of our ration of freedoms. Whether it is the WHO or the SEC, the first lesson is that none of these organizations exist for your benefit; they are funded, often covertly, by people for whom your well-being is measured in how much profit you can make for them. The consequence is that your future depends on disempowering these public enemies of their trade.

Forget computer games, forget virtual reality, here is a game we can all play. The targets are shadows, behind which lurk real people with flesh and bile. But the shadows are worth chasing for without them the shadow-masters would have to step into the light of day. Remember how effective was the boycott against South African goods all those years ago? Yes, it was politically approved by the media, which made it easier, but it still shows the power of the masses when focussed.

We can all train our sights on these shadows that darken our lives. We all need to protect those dear to us. Camus was not so wide of the mark.

Qi is a Human Construct Says Feng Shui Expert

2009-04-22T07:48:00.004+01:00

Qi is a Human Construct. It’s also an assumption. That is to say, it’s just made up. Of course, we always knew that. But now we’ve had it confirmed by Howard Choy, a Feng Shui practitioner, and practising Feng Shui Architect.

"There are quantifiable qi like tianqi (weather) and qixi (breath), etc. The there are also unquantifiable qi like gua qi which is a human construct but we still use them because it is a useful tool by experience, like art, philosophy and religion."

from Skeptico.

This strikes me as one of those philosophies that has tried to expand into the external universe something that is entirely within the human body or experience - see the Body Electric by Becker. What really needs some investigation is the chakra system, which is also within the Taoist system.

Inductive Reasoning In Science

2009-04-21T10:08:00.002+01:00

I’ve been debating with a friend about the nature of science, and he brought up the following argument:

1. All inferences from experience to conclusions about the future presuppose the principle that the future will resemble the past. (Principle of the Uniformity of Nature)
a. If we suspect that the course of nature may change and that the past is no guide to the future, then all experience becomes useless and does not support any conclusion about the future.
2. Therefore, no argument from experience can support the principle that the future will resemble the past.
3. No deductive argument can establish the principle that the future will resemble the past.
4. Therefore, the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature cannot be rationally justified.
5. If the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature cannot be rationally justified, then inductive reasoning in science cannot be rationally justified.
6. Therefore, inductive reasoning in science cannot be rationally justified.

Your thoughts?

The reply is at NeuroLogica.

However, one issue not discussed, probably as does not appear as one of the questions, but which is also often aired is that induction requires a leap of faith. Therefore science is no better than religion in requiring faith. In this case it is more revealing to look at mathematical induction, in which case it is necessary to start with one statement of fact then to show that a second fact is true, after which the method of induction proves the general case. Note firstly that induction is also used to prove the general case false, for example, in the proof that there are an infinite number of prime numbers we start off with the conjecture, or hypothesis, that there are only a finite number of primes. Secondly, induction requires that established facts are used to then drive the general case. In religion there are no such empirical facts and therefore is not subject to the method of induction, save as a metaphysical device to generate more metaphysical truths from initial metaphysical premises. In such cases religion has jumped off into faith well before the inductive steps.

Celebrity Pseudo-Science Exposed... kinda!

2009-04-11T19:19:00.003+01:00

"Behold, the most serious challenge to the Royal Society in that august body's 350-year history - the medical musings of Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Stella McCartney. These women are not just singers, or actresses, or fashion designers. They are distinguished professors at the University of Celebrity, and are coating your understanding of science like a totally amazing organic body oil.

On top of this, they are best friends, so we can say their pronouncements are peer-reviewed in the best sense of that term. Can you imagine their gatherings? It must be as if Isaac Newton were taking antioxidant tea with Robert Koch and Marie Curie." Strident stuff from Marina Hyde.

OK, we've got the picture, now where's the organic meat on the bone? Madonna's Kabbalah water... yep, that's flakey! "And then there's Stella, who launched her organic skincare range with the warning that "lots of skin products use the same petrochemicals as the antifreeze in your car!", and is one of those celebrities who thinks they eat "chemical-free" food and use "chemical-free" products. I beg you not to tell her that water and trees are made of chemicals. The shock could finish her off." Here Marina Hyde is on shakier ground. Surely anybody but the purest pedant knows that "chemicals" here stands as a short-hand for synthetic and most likely toxic chemicals. Yes, everything is made up of chemicals, it's just that some of them are not very good for human beings.

So what's Gwyneth Paltrow's crime? Well, her concern is, yet again, those nasty chemicals and the inability for young children and foetuses to metabolise them. "The research is troubling; the incidence of diseases in children such as asthma, cancer and autism have shot up exponentially ..." Hyde yet again shoots down our celeb by stating that "there has been very little change in the rate of childhood cancers detected in recent years". How "recent" is that then Professor Hyde? So the impression given is that we shouldn't worry ourselves about the environment being polluted to the point that it is unfit for human habitation. After all, our scientists are doing a jolly good job looking after us, so these celebs should just get back into character and stop impersonating science writers.

Science Punk also quotes the above story but adds that Kelly Osbourne believes that microwave ovens cause cancer. How we laugh at such superstitious nonsense! Except that the Soviet Union banned the sale of domestic microwave ovens because of their carcinogenic effects. Once the FSU turned capitalist they dropped the ban as sales are more important than health.

What strikes me is that most of these celebs are unable to properly articulate any science that they may have learnt and so it comes out as opinionated ramblings. Most of their concerns have legitimate scientific research to back them up - apart from Madonna, who is just morphing into a new species. That they may not always be mainstream views shows the power of corporate science rather than that those concerns are unfounded.

also posted at TrendWagon.

Imaginary Phantom Limb and Our Delicate Grip on Reality

2009-04-10T07:42:00.002+01:00

The brain can be a freaky thing. We live in this illusion of reality created for us by our brains. This is not to say there is no objective external physical reality - there is as far as anyone can tell - but our experience of ourselves and the world is a neurologically generated illusion.

The brain processes sensory information so that it is a useful, and not necessarily accurate, depiction of the world. This sensory input is also highly selective, giving us that slice of reality that proved to be most evolutionarily adaptive. That part of our brain that pays attention then attends to a tiny slice of that highly processed selective sensory information and mostly ignores the rest.

This neurogenic cacophony of data and information processing are woven together into a seamless narrative we experience as our waking consciousness. It is a useful and adaptive approximation of reality - but it is not reality.

I think those words need rereading and digesting. We don't really know what's going on most of the time.

The bulk of the article is about one particular phenomenon that happens when this neurologically manufactured reality breaks down - supernumerary phantom limb. It is one of several types of disordered that have been described after a stroke leading to neglect of the paralysed limb - the lack of recognition the limb. These can include simple lack of recognition that the weak limb belongs to them, the belief that the limb belongs to someone else, or the false belief that the limb is normal and functional.

One striking example of how internalist is our world view comes from the claim that someone scratching an itch with their phantom limb actually relieves that itch! Great article, and worth being reminded of how tenuous our grip on reality really is. The concluding paragraph sums up how this leads to a serious problem when discussing so-called religious, or just plain weird, experiences.

Further, this means that when people have bizarre experiences that are far outside what they are used to, especially when they involve features that are now known to be neurological, it must first be considered that their experiences result from altered brain states - not external reality. However, we seem to have evolved to make the opposite assumption - that whatever we experience is real. This disconnect is one of the primary fuels for belief in the paranormal.

Complete article at Neurologica.

Atheism on the Rise Among Canadian Teens

2009-04-09T10:44:00.002+01:00

Project Teen Canada has been conducting surveys on the religious affiliations of teenagers since 1984. Its latest findings show that Canadians are becoming more polarised into believers and non-believers. The number of faithless has grown almost three-fold whereas Christians have dropped below 50% for the first time. There has also been a steep rise in believers of other faiths, although this is largely due to immigrants. One minor point is that the new data for 2008 only adds up to 93% rather than 100%.

One interesting trend is that the grey area of uncommitted believers and agnostics is emptying out leaving the two poles of practising believers on one side and atheists on the other. The article writer obviously thinks this is a "bad thing", but that just exposes her own beliefs. Indeed there is a huge statistical blunder near the end of the piece. "For instance, 95 per cent of young people who “definitely” believe in God or a higher power also think this entity “expects us to be good to each other,” while just three per cent of atheists agree. As the percentage of religious teens falls, Bibby wonders just how that will affect our ethics and behaviour."

It doesn't seem to enter the writer's mind that as atheists do not believe in God then they can hardly then agree that God "expects us to be good". Indeed, perhaps 3% of atheists didn't understand the question, or perhaps as is seen in other surveys the category of atheist hides a lot of different philosophical positions.

Sadly, the article seems to think this is a worrying trend and the road to moral corruption. A tired and boring argument that somehow a carrot-and-stick deity is the best humanity can do to live a civil life. As one commenter says, kids nowadays want to be smart, they want to know, they want to be rational and scientific - I hope the Canadian education system satisfies these desires. If at some point in the future these kids also need to look inside themselves for some esoteric knowledge, then that too can be done scientifically without recourse to a phantom in the skies.

Texas on the Road to Idiocracy

2009-04-08T16:52:00.002+01:00

"Originally in the Texas school standards was this phrase: "concept of an expanding universe that originated about 14 billion years ago." However, board member Barbara Cargill thought this wasn't good enough. It was too definite. The standards now read, "current theories of the evolution of the universe including estimates for the age of the universe." You can bet that the age of the earth is not listed in the Texas curriculum as about 4.5 billion years old -- in spite of the fact that most of the people my age and older have known (or rather, estimated) this for years."

from Physorg via Pharyngula.

As Myers says, what science classes really need to teach is methodology, logic and mathematics (on the assumption that the maths classes are also not up to speed - no joke, I've had to do this too!) Some things may well be out of date by the time the student leaves school. So what? That's the point; to equip the student with a discriminating rational faculty to understand what changes and what stays the same. Swallowing myths from religious propagandists will just lead to a nation of morons.

Obama Says U.S. Not a Christian Nation

2009-04-07T06:38:00.004+01:00

Despite whatever shortcomings Obama may have, it is nice to have a president with some knowledge of history and recognition that he is tasked with representing all Americans and not just the Christian ones.

Thanks to Atheist Revolution.

This flipping around trying to be everyman may well come to haunt Obama if he ever lays himself open to being pinned down under questioning. He is, of course, historically correct; the USA as a nation was not founded as a Christian state. This does not preclude it from being hijacked by any religion.

The Tavistock Institute

2009-03-17T06:14:00.002Z

The ideology of American foundations was created by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. In 1921, the Duke of Bedford, Marquess of Tavistock, the 11th Duke, gave a building to the Institute to study the effect of shellshock on British soldiers who survived World War I. Its purpose was to establish the "breaking point" of men under stress, under the direction of the British Army Bureau of Psychological Warfare, commanded by Sir John Rawlings-Reese.

Tavistock's pioneer work in behavioral science along Freudian lines of "controlling" humans established it as the world center of foundation ideology. Its network now extends from the University of Sussex to the U.S. through the Stanford Research Institute, Esalen, MIT, Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, Center of Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown, where State Dept. personnel are trained, US Air Force Intelligence, and the Rand and Mitre corporations. The personnel of the corporations are required to undergo indoctrination at one or more of these Tavistock controlled institutions. A network of secret groups, the Mont Pelerin Society, Trilateral Commission, Ditchley Foundation, and the Club of Rome is conduit for instructions to the Tavistock network.

Tavistock Institute developed the mass brain-washing techniques which were first used experimentally on American prisoners of war in Korea. Its experiments in crowd control methods have been widely used on the American public, a surreptitious but nevertheless outrageous assault on human freedom by modifying individual behavior through topical psychology. A German refugee, Kurt Lewin, became director of Tavistock in 1932. He came to the U.S. in 1933 as a "refugee", the first of many infiltrators, and set up the Harvard Psychology Clinic, which originated the propaganda campaign to turn the American public against Germany and involve us in World War II. In 1938, Roosevelt executed a secret agreement with Churchill which in effect ceded U.S. sovereignty to England, because it agreed to let Special Operations Executive control U.S. policies. To implement this agreement, Roosevelt sent General Donovan to London for indoctrination before setting up OSS (now the CIA) under the aegis of SOE-SIS. The entire OSS program, as well as the CIA has always worked on guidelines set up by the Tavistock Institute.

Read the full article here.

Go to The Tavistock Institute.

The Fraudulent War - free ebook on the 'War on Terror'

2009-03-17T05:13:00.004Z

The Fraudulent War - The facts about the Bush Administration's 'War on Terror' by Richard W. Behan is a quick but thorough dive through the dark waters of the scam that is America's war on terror. Well documented it shows that the wars against both Afghanistan and Iraq were purely and simply a land-grab for oil. They were planned well before the WTC attack with bin Laden serving as a convenient patsy.

Although the oil fields in Iraq are vastly richer than those in Afghanistan the story about the demonization of the Taliban is perhaps the more interesting. The Taliban repeatedly offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to the USA but stubbornly refused to renege on a contract they had signed in 1996 with Bridas Corporation of Argentina to build the Trans Afghanistan Pipeline. The USA didn't care about bin Laden; they just wanted the oil and pushed for American Unocal to steal the contract away from Bridas. In 1998 Unocal asked the House Committee on Internation Relations to remove the Taliban from power. Five weeks before 9/11 Bush informed Pakistan and India that he would be launching an attack on the Taliban. That very week after 9/11 Taliban negotiators repeated that they could hand over bin Laden. Bush refused - it was the oil, stupid! On 7 October 2001 the carpet bombing of Afghanistan started with the excuse of hitting both bin Laden and the Taliban for harbouring him!

With the Taliban removed, the first US appointed head of an Afghan interim government was Hamid Karzai, who later became elected President. Hamid Karzai was a consultant to Unocal. The first US envoy to Afghanistan was John Maresca, former Vice president of Unocal. The next Ambassador to Afghanistan is Zalmay Khalizad, a former consultant to Unocal and founder of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). You can read about PNAC in the ebook.

And all of this funded by the American taxpayers for the profits of big oil and military contractors.

In the past I have referred to it as the War on Ghosts... and so it seems.

Colin Andrews - Crop Circle Research

2009-03-12T10:40:00.002Z

Author/Researcher/Photographer. www.ColinAndrews.net Colin is best known for his research into the crop circle subject since 1983. He provides the only continuity between the past research era and the present, along with his friend and colleague, Busty Taylor. His long view of both the genuine phenomenon and the human-made phenomenon provides unique insight into the subject. His research results indicate the intelligence behind the phenomenon is interacting with both crop circle researchers and many of the people who make the hoaxes.

Go to Colin Andrews blog.

Common Sense Atheism

2009-03-11T15:58:00.001Z

What do I mean when I say atheism is “common sense?”

I do not mean that religious people are stupid. Believers can be doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, philosophers, entrepreneurs – some smart folks.

Usually when someone says, “It’s common sense!” he really means “This is the way I think about it; isn’t it obvious to everyone else?” That’s not what I mean by common sense. I’m going to argue for atheism using your common sense; the way you already think about most things in life.

See, believers have two ways of thinking. In most situations, they think with the same logic as most people do: this is our “common sense.” Tell a believer that the bank stole his money, or that an ancient book says you can heal disease by dancing around a fire, and he will ask for evidence. That is common sense.

But believers think in a different way about their religious beliefs. This is “special thinking.” A believer reads in his religion’s ancient book that a man walked on water and rose from the dead, and that is enough for him to believe.

The whole point of my book is this: If a believer applies his special thinking to any other area of life, it becomes clear how irrational that special thinking is. And if he applies common sense to his religion, it becomes clear how irrational that religion is.

Go to Common Sense Atheism.

Ad Absurdum

2009-02-27T07:14:00.003Z

The blog of Bjorn and Jeannette, a freethinking couple in Saint Paul, MN.

Much of the blog is about the activities in Minnesota with links to the Minnesota Atheists, the largest and most active atheist organization in the state.

Go to Ad Absurdum.

Aces Full of Links

2009-02-27T06:49:00.001Z

A blog written by Dr Momentum. Includes all sorts of stuff, like politics, economics, science and mathematics, some humour and random thoughts and comments from an atheist perspective.

Go to Aces Full of Links.

20 gram Soul

2009-02-26T10:13:00.001Z

Welcome to 20 gram Soul. Here we discuss issues relating to religion, science and spirituality through links, reviews, general ramblings and (with any luck) some intelligent discussion.

The name “20 gram Soul” refers to the experiments of Duncan MacDougal in 1907, where he “weighed the soul” by measuring the weight of people just before and after they died. His results determined the soul weighs approximately 21 grams. Since I’m still on a journey to further my own spiritual views, my soul is a little bit lacking, and by my powers of “guesstimation“, what I lack weighs exactly 1 gram.

Go to 20 gram Soul.

1 2 3 Religious Comics

2009-02-26T09:57:00.000Z

This is the blog companion site to http://www.religiouscartoons.net which is a photo-album site available to everybody to upload religious cartoons. This blog will display some of those cartoons and go into more detail about what they mean.

It is the authors belief that although religion can sometimes perform valuable social and psychological services, all religions are based on absurd premises.

For instance, there being an afterlife is merely human wishful thinking. And even if there were an afterlife, how arrogant is it of us to think we have any idea what it would be like or whether or not there is any criteria or prerequisite to gain admittance.

And the ultimate audacity is to ask people to give their time, money, and children to a church that preaches to put “God first” or you will burn burn burn for all eternity.

Lets break this spell religion has over us.

Go to 1 2 3 Religious Comics.

A-Deistic

2009-02-26T09:42:00.001Z

Let us be clear, we are atheists opposed not to mild-mannered deism or theism, but to the menace to logic, knowledge, and humanism that has been promoted by fundamentalists and the Religious Right.

Christian apologists repeatedly demonstrate that it is insurmountably difficult to develop a worldview free of philosophical tension when one begins and ends all thinking with an inculcated-a-priori assumption of the existence of supernatural agencies.

This blog, then, is an appeal for rational thinking.

Go to A-Deistic.

You Can't Make This Shit Up XII

2009-02-26T09:08:00.001Z

CALLER: I hope you all are not playing politics with this. People in South Carolina are hurting. You know how unemployment rates are high right now and going up higher. We are running out of money in the unemployment bank — we need money for that, the people that need help. And I’m one of them, I can’t get no help. […]

SANFORD: Well I’d say hello to Charleston because its home and I’d say hello to this fellow this morning and say that my prayers are going to be with him and his family because it sounds like he is in an awfully tough spot.

That is Sanford’s plan. Prayer.

You Can't Make This Shit Up XII from (((Billy))) the Atheist

Quotations

2009-02-19T15:01:00.003Z

A random list of quotations that I found either interesting or amusing.

"I want the general public to know that science isn’t run the way they read about it in the newspapers and magazines. I want lay people to understand that they cannot automatically accept scientists’ pronouncements at face value, for too often they’re self-serving and misleading. I want our citizens, nonscientists as well as investigators, to work to change the way research is administered. The way it's currently funded and evaluated, we're learning more and more about less and less, and science is becoming our enemy instead of our friend." - Robert O. Becker, The Body Electric

"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one." - Hitler

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead, anthropologist

Daily Atheist

2009-02-18T06:17:00.001Z

The intentions with this blog is to provide Atheists with useful content from various sources. We can all ramble about religion in a blog, but I think our ramblings become better with more facts. And also, I need to be inspired to ramble so I'd rather just present the news! (I do ramble a lot on forums though!)

Well, I decided to gather all the good and important stuff I come across here as safekeeping for myself and for everyone else. What's important and not important is not always so easy to say, although I tend to like science and the occasional good argument. I also have a fetish for statistics.

Some articles fall outside of what consider most pressing to post here, and since Google reader has a real nice "share" button and a page where my shared items go, I have decided to use it when I see stuff I like. You can of course subscribe to it.

Being Norwegian, I occasionally come across good articles in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish so I've set up a Scandinavian blog too at Dagens Ateist.

Go to Daily Atheist.

Daily Bite of Disbelief - A Guide to Christian Clichés and Phrases

2009-02-17T12:12:00.002Z

This is one of the most popular posts at Unreasonable Faith. I copy here just a small sample from A Guide to Christian Clichés and Phrases. It's worth a read and there are lots of comments too.

=

“Save sex for marriage.”

Translation: “If I can’t have consequence-free sex, neither can you.”
Acceptable Response: “I pledge myself! Give me a promise ring!”
Unacceptable Response: “So how did that work out for you?” Or, “Where exactly does the Bible say that?”

“God is in control.”

Translation: “I only believe this about overwhelming situations. The rest of the time, I believe things are up to us and I act that way.”
Acceptable Response: “Amen.” Sometimes followed by an anecdote about some unexplained or coincidental experience that you attribute to God.
Unacceptable Response: “If God’s in control, then relax and don’t do anything about it! In fact, you don’t have to do anything at all ever, right? But that’s not right, and people still have to do everything, so what does it mean for God to be in control and why does it matter?”

“Here’s my testimony…”

Translation: “I was a guilt-ridden sinner until I hit rock-bottom and then believed in Jesus and my sins were forgiven!”
Acceptable Response: “That’s a great story, how can I have my sins forgiven and go to heaven?”
Unacceptable Response: “The reason you’re telling your story is because it’s impossible for me to say you didn’t have that experience. Unfortunately, people have religious experiences all the time, and many of them have nothing to do with Jesus. Your story is nice, but it’s easier to fool yourself than you might think. You don’t know the truth about God and Jesus and the Bible through an emotional experience, but through evidence, and you’ll find that lacking.”

“Atheism is a religion.”

Translation: “Atheism is a religion because everyone believes there is a god, right?”
Acceptable Response: “They know there is a God and they reject him and hate him! They will burn in hell forever!”
Unacceptable Response: ”Calling ‘atheism’ a religion is like calling ‘bald’ a hair color.” (Don Hirschberg) Or, “If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby.” (Mystyk)

=

OK, you get the drift. Now go read the whole article at A Guide to Christian Clichés and Phrases.