uberkuh

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

God and Science Don’t Mix

A scientist can be a believer. But professionally, at least, he can’t act like one.

I love this introductory quote from J.B.S. Haldane.

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.

Light sensors cause religious row

A couple have taken legal action after claiming motion sensors installed at their holiday flat in Dorset breached their rights as Orthodox Jews.

(via Dan Dascalescu’s Wiki)

No matter what a Christian, Jew, or Muslim argues with regard to any topic that is even remotely related to his or her religious beliefs, that argument is always based on a core belief that the creator of our incomprehensibly enormous universe wrote a book, compiled piecemeal over many years by many different grossly imperfect people with flawed memories and irrational desires, to communicate universal truth to our species. I often remember this and laugh.

Being an atheist in the US is a bit like being a gay vampire. It’s a bit like being gay in that it’s hard to tell people that you’re not religious. And it’s a bit like being a vampire in that other people see atheists as the walking dead.

It’s getting better, though, and I hope to live long enough to feel pride in being one of the first atheists to come out and sink my teeth into the debate.

From The Selfish Gene:

The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The ‘everlasting arms’ hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies, which, like a doctor’s placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

I highly recommend watching Dawkins’ documentary, The Genius of Charles Darwin.

I also highly recommend reading The Selfish Gene for more detail and insight into the nature (pardon the pun) of evolution.

So atheists are gay? Somehow I think I misread this NY Times article.

I want to make a chocolate cross.