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Charles Darwin: 203
Feb 12th
Larry Moran and Jerry Coyne have posted reminders that today is Charles Darwin’s birthday. The comments under Coyne’s post are a treasure trove of information and links. I contributed a comment, but even better is Leslie Brunetta’s comment and link to her article, “The Darwin connection: Anti-evolution bills put my health at risk.”
For those of you in states or who have friends or relatives in states where legislators still think they can score points by attacking Darwin and his ideas, maybe the following short essay I wrote about how much we owe him in practical medical terms will be of some use:
When I was a child in the 1960s, cancer was usually a death sentence. Today, most of us know cancer survivors. The treatment breakthroughs we patients now turn to for help are products of the scientific method. And the most recent treatment breakthroughs rely on knowledge of the DNA of cancer cells. What most non-biologists don’t realize is this: If the theory of evolution hadn’t predicted the existence of genes, we might never have understood the importance of DNA. Benefiting from such gene-based cancer treatments as Herceptin or Gleevec but rejecting Darwin’s theory of evolution is like jetting from Iowa to New Hampshire but rejecting Newton’s theory of gravity.
While Brunetta’s message is directed to Americans, Canadians also need to be reminded of the monumental importance of Charles Darwin’s contribution to science.
My contribution to the celebration of Darwin’s birthday is this site
Darwin Correspondence Project: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/charles-darwin-and-john-murray
Enjoy!
Canadian Blog Awards results!
Jan 23rd
This year Canadian Atheist was a finalist in two categories for the Canadian Blog Awards and thanks to your help, we brought home some medals. Last year we won the Best Religion and Philosophy Blog, but we slipped behind an evangelical Christian mother this year.
Best Religion and Philosophy Blog
Taste and see… – momjeans80.blogspot.com – 49 Votes (26.92%)
Canadian Athiest – www.canadianathiest.com – 44 Votes (24.18%)
Whatever He Says – WhateverHeSays.blogspot.com – 43 Votes (23.63%)
Bene Diction Blogs on – www.BenedictionBlogsOn.com – 37 Votes (20.33%)
Feminist Christian Socialist – feministchristian.blogspot.com – 9 Votes (4.95%)
But to make up for that shaming, we did win the Best Collaborative/Multi-Author Blog
Best Collaborative/Multi-Author Blog
Canadian Atheist – CanadianAtheist.com 31 60.78%
DAMMIT JANET! – scathinglywrongrightwingnutz.blogspot.com 16 31.37%
Sister Sage’s Musings – sistersagesmusings.ca 3 5.88%
Now, anyone looking at these results is probably going to recognize fairly quickly that this wasn’t that great of turnout for any of the winners. The category with the most votes (Best Overall Blog) collected 883 ballots, while our winning category collected a mere 50 ballots. A well-pharyngulated poll will pull in a few thousand votes.
These straw-poll contests are a little bit of fun but need better exposure in the blogosphere to have any real meaning.
Your last chance to help us win the internets
Jan 19th
Just a quick reminder that you only have one more day to vote for Canadian Atheist as the 2011 Best Religion and Philosophy Blog and Best Collaborative/Multi-Author Blog in the Canadian Blog Awards.
We won the Religion and Philosophy contest last year, let’s hold our title!
Coincidence or Physics?
Jan 18th
This morning, before settling down to write this post on Jerry Coyne’s article, “Why you don’t really have free will,” I logged on to Why Evolution Is True and found Coyne’s follow up post on his article. I don’t know whether there is any connection between physics and coincidence, but I like the title, so I used it.
However, my initial reason for writing this post is to call your attention to the article, provide my comments and ask for yours.
In his USA Today article, Coyne clearly states his thesis:
The debate about free will, long the purview of philosophers alone, has been given new life by scientists, especially neuroscientists studying how the brain works. And what they’re finding supports the idea that free will is a complete illusion. (emphasis added)
Coyne goes on to define what he means by free will, and he supports his position with analogy:
Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. . . . The ineluctable scientific conclusion is that although we feel that we’re characters in the play of our lives, rewriting our parts as we go along, in reality we’re puppets performing scripted parts written by the laws of physics.
The second sentence is familiar and makes me suspect that Shakespeare preempted Coyne:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players (AYL 2.7.1-2)
Coyne presents a convincing argument for the absence of free will, and in his last paragraph, he assures us,
There’s not much downside to abandoning the notion of free will; . . . And there are two upsides.
The only sentence in the whole article that I question is the very last sentence:
With that under our belts, we can go about building a kinder world.
If we don’t have free will, how can we build a “kinder world”?
“Why you don’t really have free will,” deserves a close reading. After you read it, let’s discuss it.
Vote for Canadian Atheist in the Final Round of the 2011 Canadian Blog Awards
Jan 8th
Voting is open now for the Final Round of the 2011 awards; you can vote for Canadian Atheist in two categories:
You can vote only once in each category.
Voting ends January 20, 2012.
Observing Reddit and Embracing Uranus
Jan 4th
Just thought I’d do a recap of the recent “fun” on reddit, for those who may have missed out on the festivities. The atheist blogosphere has had another feminist apocalypse. (Oh come on, lighten up, those two words are fun together)
So what happened? Going to try and make this newsy, staying away from editorializing. (Ok… I’ll try, anyway) People seem to have done that to death already anyway.
Reddit.com, for those who don’t know is a social media site, where people can post links to pictures, and news items, and then other users can comment on them, much in the same way you might comment on a blog. They also have a voting system so commenters can vote the stuff they like ‘up’ so that it is more prominent on the site.
There is a section of the site devoted to atheism and recently a 15 year old girl posted a picture of herself holding a book she recieved from her religious mother. The book in question was Carl Sagan’s: ‘Demon haunted World’ (sounds like reddit, actually).
It was intended as feel-good story, but things took a turn for the worse, quickly.
One of the commenters posted this:
“Brace yourself, the compliments are coming.”
Its fairly common on reddit for women posting photos to get awkward compliments, as one might expect on a somewhat nerd dominated forum. The girl’s response was equally congenial… but still, reading it made me cringe…
“bracin’ mah anus”
Now, its somewhat clear from the context, she was making an ‘asskissing’ comment, but as happens elsewhere on the internet, things tend to reduce to the lowest common denominator, and so the seedier members of the group(I guess in line with the less than impressive online-gamer mentality of using rape jokes like: owning your ass, when they win against an opponent) translated this into a rape joke. What followed wasn’t pretty.
To be fair to atheist group, the way reddit works, posts are not limited to the atheist group. If they get enough ‘up votes’ they can end up on the main page of reddit, which means a much wider audience, and of course there are plenty of trolls, as in any unmoderated online forum. But still… ugh.
Bad enough? But wait, it gets worse.
Rebecca Watson, from Skepchick, waded into the fray and posted this on the skepchick blog: Reddit makes me hate atheists. If you read it, she backpedals a bit on the ‘hating atheists’ part, but with a title like that… well, many people were less than pleased with her.
Basically it was like pouring gasoline on a fire, and resulted in things like this.
As to the original girl in question, she appears to have handled it all fairly well, rising above the nastiness, and with the exception of her ‘anus’ comment seems more mature than many older people, who should really know better.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize I should have to wear a burka on r/atheism.”
Excellent.
Angels
Dec 25th
A recent post by Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True discusses the results of an Associated Press-GfK poll that reveals “77% of Americans believe in angels.” What a coincidence! Yesterday I was directed to a blog owned by a “Canadian Catholic Writer” who calls herself “Seraphic.” A quick check with Oxford Dictionaries Online confirmed my suspicion that seraphic is an adjective which means, “characteristic of or resembling a seraph or seraphim; angelic” and provides a link to the word seraph:
an angelic being, regarded in traditional Christian angelology as belonging to the highest order of the ninefold celestial hierarchy, associated with light, ardour, and purity.
However, there is nothing angelic about Seraphic’s post on Christopher Hitchens or her coining a new word for atheists. voidist:
Update 2: By the way, I don’t know why atheists (or voidists, since so many supposed atheists nevertheless seem to believe in continued identity after death) think “facing the void” is so much braver than facing the choice between an eternity of love and of damnation.
I am trying to get my head around the word voidist and create an appropriate response to Seraphic. Please help; send your response to the word voidist to Seraphic or post it below.
PS My initial response to Seraphic is
May the bird of the paradise you believe in fly up your nose.*
*My apologies to Dickens Little Jimmy for distorting his song: “May the Bird of Paradise Fly up Your Nose.”
Vote for Canadian Atheist in the 2011 Canadian Blog Awards
Nov 13th
Last year we were honoured to take the top prize in Religion and Philosophy Canadian Blog Awards.
Voting has opened now for the 2011 awards and you can vote for this site in the following categories:
My own blog Terahertz is also nominated for Best Political Blog.
Voting closes at midnight on December 24th. I think you only get to vote once per IP address (I could be wrong, if so post in the comments).
Get out there and vote!
Get a job!
Oct 31st
Are you a blogger? Do you have a unique or non-redundant insight into issues related to atheism and freethought (hint: most of you are Canadian, so that’s something)? Can you produce interesting and compelling content on a regular basis? Then Hemant Mehta (the Friendly Atheist) might have an offer for you:
Me: Been writing here for a while and would love to introduce another voice or two to the interwebs…
You: A reader of this site who has a lot to say about religion/atheism/babies/etc, knows how to say it effectively, and would like to become a contributor on this site.
What’s in it for you?
The change to write for a large readership of awesome people.
Plenty of flexibility in what you talk about.
Money. Nothing crazy, but you would get paid. (Trust me, you don’t want to do this for the money. It won’t be worth it. But if you have a lot to say and think getting paid would just be a cool bonus, fantastic. In fact if you ask me about the money at all, I’m going to delete your email automatically.)
Who am I looking for?
Honestly, it’d be great to have a female voice on the site… or a student… or an expert in the law, or politics, or medicine, or the “atheist community at large”… or voices we don’t normally hear from in the blogosphere. But I’m more interested in how you write and what interests you than trying to fill a particular demographic. (Maybe that means I ask more than one of you to join.) So don’t let the beginning of this paragraph scare you away.
Speaking from experience, getting an offer like this takes your game up several notches and gets you exposed to perspectives and ideas that you might not have considered before. It’s also a giddy little thrill when your traffic increases.
Follow the link for what the application process looks like!
Our little Crommunist joins the big leagues
Oct 1st
One of our writers, Crommunist, has packed up his personal blog and joined the PZ Myers-led Freethought Blogs.
You can find his new site at freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/. He’s sure to entertain.
With all the big FTB money coming in now, I take it the next round’s on him.
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