John Cleese explains the brain
The brain is extremely complicated, but John Cleese sums it up in two minutes.
The brain is extremely complicated, but John Cleese sums it up in two minutes.
China has issued a detailed report that examines the human rights record of the United States for the year 2009. Plain-spoken. Unvarnished. disturbing.
Dylan Ratigan put on a "Family Fued Show" to illustrate the three major failures of the pending financial services legislation. Seems like this bill is not for any meaningful reform. It's only a dog and pony show.
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What guiding principles would you select if you wanted to establish a highly cooperative new society? In order to avoid re-creating the deep-seated cultural strife that is ripping us apart, you might be tempted to brush aside all current conflicting systems of religious-based morality and start fresh, striving to come up with a system to which most non-believers and many believers could assent. At center, it would be an evidence-based system. That's what Paul Kurtz has done with his newly released Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values. It's not for everyone, but its list of principles and values will resonate with many people. Here are the basic principles:
Neo-Humanists:
Writing in the December 2009/January 2010 issue of Free Inquiry, the magazine he founded, Kurtz declared "militant atheism is often truncated and narrow-minded...it is not concerned with the humanist values that ought to accompany the rejection of theism. The New Atheists, in my view, have made an important contribution to the contemporary cultural scene because they have opened religious claims to public examination...What I object to are the militant atheists who are narrow-minded about religious persons and will have nothing to do with agnostics, skeptics, or those who are indifferent to religion, dismissing them as cowardly."
In his interview at Huffpo, Kurtz reminds us that only 2 to 3 percent of Americans self-identify as "atheists," whereas 16 percent of Americans (50 million people) do not affiliate with any religious organization. The Statement ends with this invitation:We submit that the world needs to engage in continuing constructive dialogue emphasizing our common values. We invite other men and women representing different points of view to join with us in bringing about a better world in the new planetary civilization that is now emerging.
Neil Tyson is optimistic about society's reception to science and technology. And the children who are our future are not the problem. It's the adults.