Archive for September, 2007

Crystal Clear Atheism – this weekend!

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

We’re heading for Washington, DC this weekend for the “Crystal Clear Atheism” conference, organized by the Atheist Alliance International. They have a fantastic guest line-up, including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Julia Sweeney, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Matthew Chapman (great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin!). 

We’ve been planning this trip for months and are looking forward to meeting several of our personal heroes. It’ll be a great networking opportunity as well. I’ll post photos as soon as I can after we get back.

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Book Review: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Review by John C. Snider © 2007

[This review originally appeared in February 2007 in the online magazine scifidimensions.com.]

It’s hard to believe, 82 years after the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, that there are still Americans who really do believe that the earth is 6,600 years old (give or take a century) and that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is just a bunch of atheistic balderdash. Especially over the last 25 years or so, the American “Culture Wars” have become something of a farce. Not a year goes by that some local school board kowtows to the Religious Right by insisting that Creationism, or Intelligent Design (so-called theories that are utterly devoid of any scientific validity), be taught side-by-side with evolution, as if these competing worldviews were actually viable alternatives. Scientists and concerned proponents of good education who bother to oppose these fundamentalist eruptions are engaged in a perpetual game of “whack the gopher” – no sooner than, say, Dover, Pennsylvania has been set right, than mischief-makers pop up in Cobb County, Georgia, or elsewhere. (more…)

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Book Review: The Moral Animal by Robert Wright

Monday, September 24th, 2007

Review by John C. Snider © 2007

[This review was originally published in March 2004 in the online magazine scifidimensions.com.]

What is “human nature”? How much of what we do is really “free will”, and how much of it is driven by deep genetic programming laid down even before there was such a thing as a human being?

For centuries religion (and to a lesser extent, philosophy) were the only players at the table when it came to answering questions about human nature. Then an unassuming naturalist named Charles Darwin came along, and suddenly science was pulling up a chair and demanding to be dealt-in. (more…)

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