Athée Canadien
Critical Thinking
Is God Just Another Human?
May 9th
Scientists have often wondered if the brain has a specific area for dealing with the spiritual or with “god”. Well, a Danish neurologist, Uffe Schjodt, and his team have found that talking to god (or praying), as far as our brain activity is concerned, is no different than talking to our friends and family.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Schjodt found that the areas of the brain that activate during prayer were the same ones that activate while talking to other humans.
A couple things from Schjodt’s article stood out to me:
The brain did not evolve to communicate with invisible supernatural beings.
and
Praying, it seems, is subserved by the basic processing of our biologically evolved dispositions like other complex cultural phenomena, in this case the evolved human capacity for social cognition.
Schjodt’s article is a good read and written in a way that even us with no brain for science can understand. I find the idea that our brain processes talking to God as it does talking to other humans pretty logical and I believe it supports the belief that God is a human creation.
CBC journalist Richard Handler has a good article on Schjodt’s findings.
Atheist profiles
May 7th
Update: More PZ and More Harris
–
Ok, so I refrained from commenting on Sam Harris’ apologetic for profiling, largely because I’ve been critical of Harris in the past, so I might not seem very objective, and because I was annoyed by his position, which isn’t always good for rational argument.
Harris has since added an ‘addendum‘ to his post. And PZ has responded.
I should note, I am in agreement with PZ. His argument about numbers is bang on. Muslim is simply not a useful ‘terrorist filter’ when you have over a billion Muslims on the planet, and thousands of un-highjacked planes carrying Muslims flying around. (Unfortunately human beings are crap when it comes to thinking in big numbers).
So, if both of these guys are rational atheists, why are they so far apart on this issue. PZ seems to think that it is just that Harris’ logic is off, but I don’t think that is really the issue.
Now, I hate to beat a dead horse… More >
The Ten (Liberal) Commandments – from NYT circa 1951
May 6th
My buddy sent me this. I thank him, for it is truly inspired. I need not add anything; but felt absolutely compelled to share. Take from it what you will:
It originally appeared in the December 16, 1951, issue of The New York Times Magazine, at the end of the article “The best answer to fanaticism: Liberalism.”
Know who else was an atheist??? Hitler! (and other arguments of this type)
May 4th
Irrespective of whether you accept that the earth is getting hotter, you will hopefully find this attempt to argue against it embarrassingly tragic. It’s amazing to see such a blatant and epic ad hominem fallacy in billboard format. I can only hope that, as the Guardian article says, supporters of heartland.org will pull their funding and distance themselves from such idiocy.
End of Nothing
Apr 29th
Ok, this is my last post on this issue, I found this to be good reading on the Krauss “kerfuffle”.
And it makes sense, and I’m still not a physicist, so I’ll let you decide what to make of it.
Nothing about modern physics explains why we have these laws rather than some totally different laws, although physicists sometimes talk that way — a mistake they might be able to avoid if they took philosophers more seriously. Then the discussion quickly degrades into name-calling and point-missing, which is unfortunate because these are smart people who agree about 95% of the interesting issues, and the chance for productive engagement diminishes considerably with each installment.
Anas Platyrhynchos Platyrhynchos
Apr 24th
The picture below passes the duck test:
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
Male and female ducks, spotted in Peterborough, ON and captured by my camera.
Debating from ignorance
Apr 10th
I have in the past criticized some atheists for arguing against religion on superficial grounds without knowing enough about the subject to do it effectively. Of course, this is the very same thing that religious people are so often guilty of, when they mouth off ignorantly about science.
Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic and Sydney’s archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, spent an hour with evolutionary biologist and celebrity atheist, Professor Richard Dawkins taking questions covering everything from evolution, resurrection and eternal damnation.
In this case, if the little bit here is representative of the debate as a whole, I give the win to Dawkins, hands down.
Cardinal Pell, you haven’t the slightest clue about evolution, please read a book.
Five Reasons Prayer is Bad
Apr 6th
If you aren’t familiar with Matt Dillahunty and The Atheist Experience, I highly recommend looking them up. They do a weekly show on public access television in Austin, TX. They also have podcasts of their shows, videos on their website, and many other ways to interact with them.
On January 15th of this year, the hosts were Russell Glasser and Dan Baker. The show was entitled “The Failure of Prayer”. Around twelve and a half minutes in, Dan begins to speak about his “five reasons prayer is bad”, as well as a follow-up example for each. Here are the Coles Notes of what he said: More >
Morality, revisited.
Apr 4th
My friend recently posted a blog on morality. He decided he’d go with the argument that objective morality necessitates the existence of god. Objective morality exists, therefore god must exist.
Here is my answer to his blog posting. Let me know what you think. Am I way off base? Feel free to comment on his blog, too; he’d love the traffic, even if you disagree! More >
A Personal Story…
Mar 25th
It seems to be the quickest way to polarize a relationship, bring something like personal beliefs into the conversation. To be honest, I thought I was the kind of person that could be fine with others believing whatever they wanted. That is partly still true – but if I’m being honest with myself, it bothers me when I think about some of my friends subscribing to such ridiculous beliefs – even if they don’t see them as ridiculous. So, I’m forced to put it aside and forget it exists when we are together. I choose to do this because, religious differences aside, I truly value my friends and the time we spend together.
One such friend is someone I have been close to for a long time. We went to university together, met within the first week of school, and graduated 4 years later with the same degree. In third and fourth year we were roommates. Honestly, the guy is a brother to me. More than that, whenever I needed help with any subject, I could ask him. Before knowing me for four months, he spent a total of about 20 hours helping me study for a final exam that I had no chance of passing. He did this even though he also had this exam (as well as five others) to study for. What I’m saying is, he’s a great guy and he’s very smart. More >
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