By Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow Perhaps you are one of the lucky few who is naturally gifted with mathematical genius or at least has advanced training in the field. No? Me either. I think I understand that our reliance on energies such as light to observe the universe around us places limits on what we can know about the sub-atomic realm, yet it often seems to me that physicists take a little too much pleasure in emphasizing the mysteriousness…
This article is too important not to pass on to anyone and everyone who can read above a 3rd grade level. And because the original link to the article is botched, I wanted to make sure that everything came through with ease. If I find a llink that works, I’ll repost it. Because death with dignity is a hallmark of most secular creeds that I’m familiar with, we are constantly fighting the interference of religious people who feel they have the answer about death…
Below is the American Family Association’s Statement of Faith, which was mentioned in an article on Rick Perry’s prayer rally a few months back. My friend, Will, made some changes to it which are worth passing along. AFA STATEMENT OF FAITH 1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God. 2. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 3. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus…
By Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins’ 2009 book The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution is an excellent explanation of what Evolution is, how it works, and why it must be true. It is written with clarity for the non-specialist, and should be accessible to any college-educated reader. In a few places Dawkins relies a little too much on references to his other, copious writings, but he has mostly managed to find a good balance between length and readability….
Some movies are never meant to go very far or make much of a splash, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t make you think about their message long after you leave the theatre. I have a soft spot for films that can do that in spite of any lack of critical support. I must admit I felt some trepidation about seeing The Ledge because I didn’t want it to be a movie that I regretted seeing and sharing with friends….
Rusty, a friend of mine from our secular humanist group, wrote an interesting piece that several people think is a pretty good challenge to non-believers: “Are you a Freethinker? A Freethinker is a person who thinks free from delusion, deception, misperception, fantasy, fiction and religious, political, cultural and even familial bias. For the sake of this discussion we will simplify it to freedom from religious philosophy. There are two primary Christian philosophical concepts: 1. The obsessive and debilitating fear of Yahweh and Hell. 2….
By Sharan Newman The Real History of the End of the World is a light-hearted look at a heavy subject. Historian and author Sharan Newman chooses examples from different cultures, religions, and time-periods to show that messiahs, millenarians and other doom-criers are a universal fixture of human societies. The approach is journalistic rather than academic, emphasizing breadth rather than depth. Each of the 43 very short chapters discusses one particular example of apocalyptic madness. A skeptical eye is turned on…
By Sam Harris Having enjoyed The End of Faith (2004) and Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), I eagerly awaited the 2010 publication of Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. I’ve finally been able to give this book the time and attention it deserves, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in secular ethics, even though I find it somewhat incomplete. In The Moral Landscape, Harris attacks the willingness of the scientific establishment to accept…
That was the essay question posed by NOSHA at our “Left Behind” party in May. You know the day the world was supposed to end? We even awarded prizes for some of the best submissions written that wacky evening. Here’s the winning entry submitted by Betty of New Orleans: 1ST PLACE How will I cope? What will I do? In a word: very dry martinis. Wait! That’s three words. How irrelevant. But then, when it’s all over – everything is irrelevant. So…
Right? We do a pretty good job here at NOSHA pushing for observation and rational discourse, but goodness knows, we coud do with a touch more. And we’ll have it after all of the hinting and hoping we’ve been doing since Katrina to get a meeting in town “put on” by one of our national organizations. The end of October 2011, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in collaboration with Skeptical Inquiry Magazine and the Center for Inquiry will host CSICon 2011 in…