In "The Death of Conscience (Part One)," (Free Inquiry, April/May 2008 --not available online) Shadia B. Drury makes it clear that not all religion is bad. She recognizes the religious backdrop to the successful efforts to repeal slavery, to promote civil rights and to create the Red Cross. "As these…
I have just finished reading Neil Shubin’s new book: Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body (2008). Shubin is one of those writers who writes to you as though he is speaking to you. He manages to keep his sentences short yet friendly while he takes you on a mind-blowing journey from single-celled organisms up to his detailed explorations of human animals. Shubin is Provost of the Field Museum in Chicago, as well as a professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago.
The audience that really needs to read Shubin’s book will actively avoid reading it, of course. Just think of the frustration that creationists already have with their idea that evolution teaches that “humans descended from monkeys.” I hear this wrongheaded claim repeatedly and it gets quite tedious explaining to the creationist ignoramuses that no modern believer in evolution believes that humans descended from “monkeys.” The irony of correcting creationists, however, is that the story of how the Earth’s creatures evolved is actually incredibly more interesting and challenging than the creationist’s simplistic version of evolution. For instance, human ancestors include not only primates; they include fish too, and reptiles and worms. Neil Shubin takes us on this awesome journey and there is much to share along the way.
I previously wrote about one of the incredible transitional forms discussed by Shubin, tiktaalik, an ancient fish that crawled out of the water. Tiktaalik, however, is only one of numerous transitional …
Imagine that a neighbor walks up today and tells you that he really cares about you. In fact, he loves you like a daughter/son and he wants to show his love. You might be delighted to hear such an expression of affection.
Then imagine that he tells you that he wants to prove to you that he cares for you. He wants to prove it in a way that you will never doubt the depth of his caring.
You would probably be thinking that he’s going to do something nice. Maybe he will give a big donation to charity in your name. Or maybe he will go buy you something nice, or take you to dinner at a good restaurant. But then he surprises you.
He reminds you that he has an adult son named Bill (which you knew, because you know Bill). He then tells you that he is going to let a mob of goons torture and murder Bill in a bloody spectacle, for you!
You are aghast, but he continues on.
He tells you that he is going to let that mob drive large nails through Bill’s hands and feet, for you, to prove that he cares about you. For a grand finale, he is going to allow this sadistic crowd to jab a spear through Bill’s side, to make sure that every drop of blood has been drained from Bill’s body.
It would be patently obvious to you that decent people don’t “show their love” by …
At Daylight Atheism, Ebonmuse puts Rand's theory of objectivism under a bright analytical light and finds it wanting: Since Objectivists reject all notions of a social safety net, it's natural to ask what would happen to the poor and needy in an Objectivist society. This is Ayn Rand's answer: "If…
As usual my head is abuzz with the social media explosion and the impact technology has on my world. While communication has always been a part of the technology, folks that barely own computers are becoming familiar with Linkedin, Facebook, myspace, and twitter. iPhones are being advertised so deliciously on…