Faith no more - Andrew Zak Williams - New Statesman

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Faith no more - Andrew Zak Williams - New Statesman

Earlier this year, Andrew Zak Williams asked public figures why they believe in God. Now it's the turn of the atheists – from A C Grayling to P Z Myers – to explain why they don't

Maryam Namazie Human rights activist

I don't remember exactly when I stopped believing in God. Having been raised in a fairly open-minded family in Iran, I had no encounter with Islam that mattered until the Islamic movement took power on the back of a defeated revolution in Iran. I was 12 at the time.

I suppose people can go through an entire lifetime without questioning God and a religion that they were born into (out of no choice of their own), especially if it doesn't have much of a say in their lives. If you live in France or Britain, there may never be a need to renounce God actively or come out as an atheist.

But when the state sends a "Hezbollah" (the generic term for Islamist) to your school to ensure that you don't mix with your friends who are boys, stops you from swimming, forces you to be veiled, deems males and females separate and unequal, prescribes different books for you and your girlfriends from those read by boys, denies certain fields of study to you because you are female, and starts killing in discriminately, then you have no choice but to question, discredit and confront it - all of it. And that is what I did.

Philip Pullman Author

The main reason I don't believe in God is the missing evidence. There could logically be no evidence that he doesn't exist, so I can only go by the fact that, so far, I've discovered no evidence that he does: I have had no personal experience of being spoken to by God and I see nothing in the world around me, wherever I look in history or science or art or anywhere else, to persuade me that it was the work of God rather than
of nature.

To that extent, I'm an atheist. I would have to agree, though, that God might exist but be in hiding (and I can understand why - with his record, so would I be). If I knew more, I'd be able to make an informed guess about that. But the amount of things I do know is the merest tiny flicker of a solitary spark in the vast encircling darkness that represents all the things I don't know, so he might well be out there in the dark. As I can't say for certain that he isn't, I'd have to say I am an agnostic.

Kenan Malik Neurobiologist, writer and broadcaster

I am an atheist because I see no need for God. Without God, it is said, we cannot explain the creation of the cosmos, anchor our moral values or infuse our lives with meaning and purpose. I disagree.

Invoking God at best highlights what we cannot yet explain about the physical universe, and at worst exploits that ignorance to mystify. Moral values do not come prepackaged from God, but have to be worked out by human beings through a combination of empathy, ...

B Herr

A rational response to horror

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Norwegian PM refuses to let terrorist attacks drive his country to intolerance and paranoid "security"

Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg has vowed not to let the terrorist attacks on his country be used as an excuse for taking away fundamental freedoms. He's treating the attacks as a policing matter (a crime), not as a military matter (that is, something requiring a "war on terror" with concomitant war-footing). He acknowledges that his country will be changed by the attacks, but he's hopes it will be "more open, a more tolerant society than what we had before." My goodness, what I would have given to hear those words sometime in the autumn of 2001.

Norway's Premier Vows to Keep an Open Society

(via Reddit)

B Herr

Badass Quote of the Day

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Badass Quote of the Day

From Ronald Lindsay of the Center for Inquiry, talking about Gov. Rick Perry's prayer declaration:

"Perry's proclamation could have been as easily issued in 1011 instead of 2011. It suggests there is a god controlling our destiny who can be moved only by people begging for help and punishing themselves by going without food. At the next rally, expect self-flagellation to be followed by the sacrifice of a Texas Longhorn."

I'd prefer just skipping to the sacrifice. And I'll take a ribeye, please.

Read the comments on this post...

B Herr

The Space Shuttle gets a reasonable eulogy at last

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The Space Shuttle gets a reasonable eulogy at last

It's so good to see someone take off the rose-colored glasses and tell it like it is: the space shuttle was a flop.

The most important thing to realize about the space shuttle program is that it is objectively a failure. The shuttle was billed as a reusable craft that could frequently, safely, and cheaply bring people and payloads to low Earth orbit. NASA originally said the shuttles could handle 65 launches per year; the most launches it actually did in a year was nine; over the life of the program, it averaged five per year. NASA predicted each shuttle launch would cost $50 million; they actually averaged $450 million. NASA administrators said the risk of catastrophic failure was around one in 100,000; NASA engineers put the number closer to one in a hundred; a more recent report from NASA said the risk on early flights was one in nine. The failure rate was two out of 135 in the tests that matter most.

I first had my doubts after Challenger blew up; it wasn't the failure of the mission that bothered me — I understood that it was risky — but NASA's responses in the hearings afterwards. I watched those; it was where Richard Feynman really caught the public eye.

According to reports after the Challenger disaster, the ship exploded because of a faulty joint that included an O-ring hardened by especially cold conditions before launch. More importantly, this was far from an isolated problem, as illustrated by a report by Richard Feynman. Feynman slammed not only the O-ring error but the entire process of building and testing the shuttle, plus the management style and decision-making of NASA, for good measure. When he wrote, "Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality," and, "They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space," he meant they were at the time not living in reality, which is generally the place engineers ought to live. NASA's recent report on shuttle safety found that the chance of making it through first 25 flights (#25 being Challenger's last flight) was only 6%, and the chance of 88 safe flights between the Challenger and Columbia disasters was just 7%. If the study is accurate, then Challenger and Columbia weren't freak accidents—the flights before them were freak successes.

I got the impression from those hearings that NASA had become an engineering bureaucracy, dedicated to dogmatic, almost ritualistic redundancy and caution, where following procedure, no matter how flawed, was always the answer. Feynman was fabulous cut through all the nonsense and just asked what worked and what didn't.

Goodbye, old le...

B Herr

Win a Copy of The Christian Delusion by John W. Loftus

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Win a Copy of The Christian Delusion by John W. Loftus

John W. Loftus recently edited a book called The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (Prometheus Books, 2011). It includes a number of essays, written by scholars, all debunking Christianity as we know it.

Loftus has offered to give away a copy of the book to one lucky reader. Details on that below. First, a couple excerpts from the book:

There are many religions in the world we don't take seriously enough to pay attention to them. There are many dead religions of the past that we ignore in today's world, including several dead Christianities. They do not merit our thought or discussion. They are dead. They have no relevance for our lives. Unless we're interested in the history of these religions we simply ignore them. We ignore their scriptures, their prophets, their religious duties, their rituals, and their threats of punishment in the afterlife. They no longer matter to us.

When it comes to Christianity two thousand years is enough. It's time this ancient myth was put to rest. This present book calls for the same end of Christianity as the other religions we reject that are dead to us. Just as we ignore other faiths our hope is that someday we can ignore the Christian faith, because the future adherents will live in the cultural backwaters like the Amish people who pose no threat to the peace of the world.

…

In fact, as far as I'm concerned Christian theism has no more credibility than Scientology, Mormonism, Haitian Voodoo, or the southwest Pacific Ocean cargo cults… And it has no more credibility than the many different dead ancient religions of the past, including the faith of ancient Israel, several other early Christianities, or the many other resurrected savior cults (such as the cults of Zalmoxis, Romulus, and Osiris).

Skeptics reject all of these religious faiths because none of them offers satisfactory answers to basic questions nor do they present sufficient evidence to believe. So it is not the case that we single Christianity out for rejection, and therefore it's not the case we do so because we have hardened, sinful, selfish, prideful, rebellious hearts, or that we had poor father figures, or any such nonsense. All such attempts to dismiss our rejection of Christianit...

B Herr

All Non-Africans Part Neanderthal, Genetics Confirm - Jennifer Viegas - Discovery News

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All Non-Africans Part Neanderthal, Genetics Confirm - Jennifer Viegas - Discovery News

(A museum reconstruction of a Neanderthal/credit: iStockPhoto)

If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings.

Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal's Department of Pediatrics and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center conducted the study with his colleagues. They determined some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals, but only in people of non-African heritage.

"This confirms recent findings suggesting that the two populations interbred," Labuda was quoted as saying in a press release. His team believes most, if not all, of the interbreeding took place in the Middle East, while modern humans were migrating out of Africa and spreading to other regions.

The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. They evolved over the millennia mostly in what are now France, Spain, Germany and Russia. They went extinct, or were simply absorbed into the modern human population, about 30,000 years ago.

Neanderthals possessed the gene for language and had sophisticated music, art and tool craftsmanship skills, so they must have not been all that unattractive to modern humans at the time.

"In addition, because our methods were totally independent of Neanderthal material, we can also conclude that previous results were not influenced by contaminating artifacts," Labuda said.

Read more

B Herr

Go read Jennifer Ouellette right now

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Go read Jennifer Ouellette right now

You heard me. Now. She summarizes the state of sexism in the skeptical movement, with suggestions for change. It's freakin' excellent. And she uses this comic:

Read her four-point manifesto for change. If you can't see the value of it, you are the problem.

Read the comments on this post...

B Herr

Researchers identify seventh and eighth bases of DNA

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Researchers identify seventh and eighth bases of DNA

For decades, scientists have known that DNA consists of four basic units -- adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine. Those four bases have been taught in science textbooks and have formed the basis of the growing knowledge regarding how genes code for life. Yet in recent history, scientists have expanded that list from four to six. Now, researchers have discovered the seventh and eighth bases of DNA.

B Herr

Public special ed employee has $0 paycheck after health insurance deductions

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Public special ed employee has $0 paycheck after health insurance deductions

Kevin sez, "At a time when some critics are trying to paint public employee benefits as lavish, special education paraprofessional Kathy Meltsakos provides a much-needed wakeup call. By the time she's done paying for health insurance, Kathy doesn't take home a dime -- and she hasn't since February. This is no way to treat people who work with our children."

Education support professionals like Meltsakos and the rest of America's workers are doing their best to weather today's economy. But consider the numbers.

Initially earning $13.74 for a 35-hour week with the Pentucket schools, Meltsakos paid 20 percent of her insurance, which was manageable, and she did that for 10 years until laid off in June 2010. While looking for work she received unemployment benefits.

"I was placed at the bottom of the scale at $10.74 an hour for a 30-hour week. After taxes, I paid 60 percent of my medical insurance. My pay stubs from February to June 24 (the end of the school year) show no net take home pay since February. Oh - and the insurance rates went up in May."

A Special Education Worker Talks About Empty Paychecks, Organizing

(Thanks, Kevin!)

B Herr

BBC E-mail: Austria embraces pasta headgear

Brent saw this story on the BBC News website and thought you
should see it.

** Austria embraces pasta headgear **
The Austrian transport authorities issue a driving licence showing a man wearing a pasta strainer on his head, after accepting his claim that the sieve is confessional headgear in the religion of pastafarianism.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/world-europe-14135523 >

** BBC Daily E-mail **
Choose the news and sport headlines you want - when you want them, all
in one daily e-mail
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/email >

** Disclaimer **
The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have been verified.

If you do not wish to receive such e-mails in the future or want to know more about the BBC's Email a Friend service, please read our frequently asked questions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/4162471.stm

I love super awesome immunology.

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Super Awesome influenza antibodies: Slightly more helpful than Super Awesome HIV antibodies

*heavy-sigh*

HIV Research World is infecting other fields:

A Highly Conserved Neutralizing Epitope on Group 2 Influenza A Viruses

Media coverage of referenced paper:

Discovery of Natural Antibody Brings a Universal Flu Vaccine a Step Closer

No, it doesnt. Unless if by 'universal flu vaccine' you actually mean 'gene therapy for everyone instead of flu shots'.

Look, heres what happens-- Scientists sift through thousands and thousands and thousands of B-cells, the cells that make antibodies, and ID ones that make antibodies that are really good at neutralizing lots of different kinds of influenza or HIV.

What you have out the end is a neat laboratory reagent.

You do not have a potential vaccine.

That is because everyones immune system is random, at its core. Random mutation and natural selection in response to a pathogen. Now, you will make antibodies to protect you against chickenpox, and I will make antibodies to protect me against chickenpox, but our antibodies will be totally different. You cannot make two different people generate identical antibodies to an identical pathogen or vaccine, even identical twins. You certainly cannot make people generate a specific antibody unless you are doing it via gene therapy.

I will say that at least with a Super Awesome influenza antibody, that could at least be helpful as a therapy in emergency situations. For instance, someone who is bitten by a rabid bat gets passive immunotherapy in the form of 'medical' antibodies against the rabies virus. These arent antibodies that the infected person made, they are antibodies made in a lab or in a horse injected with a viral protein. The same principle might work in people infected with a severe form of influenza, or a drug resistant influenza, or maybe someone who is just very old or young and cant deal with the virus on their own. A passively administered Super Awesome antibody...

B Herr

No, no, no! There must be something wrong with the numbers?!@incredulous.milkyway

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Portugal Shows Success of Decriminalization

It's been ten years since Portugal decriminalized drugs and began to treat addiction as a health problem rather than a criminal one. The results so far have been great.

"There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.

The number of addicts considered "problematic" -- those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users -- had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

B Herr

Seattle cops forget semi-automatic rifle sitting on patrol-car's trunk

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Seattle cops forget semi-automatic rifle sitting on patrol-car's trunk

A Seattle resident named Nick snapped the photo above in late June, passing it on to The Stranger, a weekly newspaper. It shows an empty police patrol car with an unattended semi-automatic rifle sitting on the trunk. A SPD spokesperson professes to being "very embarrassed" on behalf of the force.

"The department is very embarrassed that this happened," says Seattle Police Department Sergeant Sean Whitcomb. "We're incredibly grateful to the person that flagged down the bike officers and the woman who followed the patrol car driver around to let them know there was a rifle on the back of the car."

But were SPD officers driving around with an AR-15 rifle on the back of their squad car???? "I'm not going to comment," says Whitcomb, adding that the West Precinct has launched "an investigation into the circumstances that allowed this to happen."

Crime / City The Seattle Police Department Is "Very Embarrassed" After Leaving Unattended Semi-Automatic Rifle on Trunk of Patrol Car

(Thanks, Marilyn!)

B Herr

Mexican Immigration Virtually Nil

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Mexican Immigration Virtually Nil

The New York Times reports that, despite all the hysteria from right wing nativists, illegal immigration from Mexico has slowed to a dribble at most.

The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive.

A growing body of evidence suggests that a mix of developments -- expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families -- are suppressing illegal traffic as much as economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the United States.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

B Herr

Michelle Bachmann is running for president on a pro-slavery, anti-porn platform?

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Michelle Bachmann is running for president on a pro-slavery, anti-porn platform?

I saw this headline about Bachmann signing some pledge calling for the ban of pornography. I thought, "Well, she just lost half her base." Then I read the complete pledge and found that it is full of far more disturbing amazing language than just the porn reference.

For example, it binds the signer to oppose Sharia Law, because you know, that's a huge threat in America right now. I recalled that I stopped buying hot dogs from the halal food cart outside my office because it always came with a side of Sharia Law, and don't you just hate when Sharia Law spills all over your shoes? It's so irritating!

The pledge also refers to something it calls "the intimate innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy." This is the pledge-writers' way of saying "children." The "intimate fruit of conjugal intimacy" sounds like something an alien race studying humanity might say because where they come from, there is no such thing as sex. Here on planet Earth, we do have sex, and lots of it. Sometimes sex results in "children," which is a word we have, also here on Earth. 

The pledge was drafted by a group calling itself, "THE FAMiLY LEADER." Yes, they purposefully do not capitalize the "i" in the name, which is infuriating on a whole different level.  

For the moment, let's set aside the absurdity of having presidential candidates sign any pledge other than upholding the Constitution and get to my favorite part.

This pledge (PDF

B Herr