Religion

My Summer Reading List

October 12th, 2011  |  Published in Evolution, My Life, Religion, Science Fiction, Society

Some may not call this a “Summer Reading List,” but as it is my reading list that I compiled over the summer. A few I’ve read before, but I figured they’d be good to go through again. I’ve marked through the ones I’ve already finished reading this summer.


Social Interactions / Management Skills:

How To Win Friends and Influence People

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

The One Minute Manager

The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey


Science:

The Pluto Files

Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

The Selfish Gene

The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution


Psychology of Belief:

How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God

50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith


Skepticism:

Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions

Pirates, Pyramids, and Papyrus

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson


Atheism:

God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Hitch-22: A Memoir

Frank Turner – “Glory Hallelujah”

August 20th, 2011  |  Published in My Life, Religion, Society

A friend sent me this song last night. I have listened to it at least 40 times so far! I could not find a good place online that had the lyrics correct, so here they are as best as I could hear in the song.

Brothers and sisters, have you heard the news?
The storm has lifted and there’s nothing to lose.
So swap your confirmation for your dancing shoes,
Because there never was no God.
Step out of the darkness and onto the streets.
Forget about the fast, let’s have a carnival feast.
Raise up your lowered head and hear the liberation beat,
Because there never was no God.

There is no God,
So clap your hands together.
There is no God.
No heaven and no hell.
There is no God,
We’re all in this together,
There is no God,
So ring that victory bell.

No cowering in the dark before some overbearing priest,
Not waiting until we die until we restitute the meek,
No blaming all our failings on imaginary beasts,
Because there never was no God.
No fighting over land your distant fathers told you of,
Not spilling blood for those who have never spread a drop of blood,
No finger pointing justified by phantoms up above,
Because there never was no God.

There is no God,
So clap your hands together,
There is no God,
No heaven and no hell.
There is no God,
We’re all in this together,
There is no God,
So ring that victory bell.

And I know you’re scared of dieing man and I am too,
But just pretending it’s not happening isn’t gonna see us through.
If we just accept that there’s an end game and we haven’t got much time,
Then in the here and now we can try and do things right.
We’d be our own salvation army and together we’d believe
In all the wondrous things that mere mortals can achieve,
Well I’ve known beauty in the stillness of cathedrals in the day,
I sang “Glory Hallelujah! Won’t you wash my sins away?”
But now I’m singing my refrain and this is what I say,
I say there never was no God.

There is no God,
So clap your hands together,
There is no God,
No heaven and no hell.
There is no God,
We’re all in this together,
There is no God,
So ring that victory bell.

ZJemptv: Are atheists “angry at God”?

February 20th, 2011  |  Published in Religion, Society, YouTube

I’ve had a number of religious debates with friends online lately. This video pretty well sums up a lot of my thoughts from those debates. Here is a transcript of the video.

A Real Solution

February 5th, 2011  |  Published in My Life, Religion, Society

“Does the God of Christianity Exist and What Difference Does it Make?”

September 2nd, 2010  |  Published in Religion, YouTube

This is a panel discussion from the 2009 Christian Book Expo. The panelist are William Lane Craig, Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Wilson, Lee Strobel, and Jim Denison. Some good discussion. Compiled for you here on my blog simply to save you the effort of finding all 12 videos on YouTube. Enjoy.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

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The Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World: A Debate

July 7th, 2010  |  Published in Religion, Society, YouTube

This was a pain to find the correct links on YouTube when I watched it, so I figured I would put all of the videos together in a blog post so that you could more easily access them. This is a debate between the Archbishop of Abuja, John Onaiyekan; British MP, Ann Widdecombe; Christopher Hitchens; and Stephen Fry.

Science and Reason on Youtube

April 3rd, 2010  |  Published in Evolution, My Life, Religion, Society, YouTube

I was compiling an email for a good friend and decided that the list was worthy of a blog post so that all of you could benefit from these YouTube channels.

First, I want to introduce you to cdk007. This YouTuber has created some of the best animations I have seen showing evolutionary ideas and refuting arguments against them.

This video from cdk007 refutes the often-used “blind watchmaker” argument. I have played around with and modified the MATLAB code cdk007 created and it has been the source of entertainment for hours on end. I am in the process of porting the code to C++. I still need to get permission to release the resulting code though.

Now we have another great video from cdk007 refuting, through analogy, the claim that “micro-evolution exists but that can’t possibly be proof of macro-evolution.”

As a final example of cdk007‘s work I give you one of his arguments against “irreducible Complexity.”

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