My friend Brent sent me a link to a page on the web. It’s a conversation with Robert Sapolsky, a quiet, funny, apparently brilliant professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and of neurology at Stanford’s School of Medicine. Professor Sapolsky has written several books such as:
The link Brent sent me was called TOXO and he suggested it to me because our book club is reading The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture, by Daniel W Ray. Now the video on that page was Robert Sapolsky talking about a most interesting parasite called
Hey Everyone! About a week or so ago, I wrote about the Meaning of Life and also mentioned a set of videos by Richard Dawkins that my friend Rachel had told me about. I watched all 5 videos and thought they were interesting and enlightening so I am sharing them below.
I was on an evolution kick and also found a 3 part program on Nova called Becoming Human, all about the evolution of us. I can’t give you the videos here, but I’m providing the links so you can watch them on PBS’s site. They are very interesting, and were just aired on PBS in November, so they have some new ideas and research.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life just released a new survey today. I’ve given it a quick persusal and I have to say, while some of it is interesting, most of it doesn’t surprise me. Apparently large numbers of Americans engage in multiple religious practices. Stuff you’d think would cancel each other out, but they handle the cognitive dissonance without hesitation.
For example, many blend christianity with Eastern or new age philosophies such as reincarnation, astrology and the belief in spiritual energy in physical objects. Sizeable minorities in all major U.S. religious groups say they have experienced supernatural phenomena, such as being in touch with the dead or with ghosts.
A third of Americans attend different religious services. Personally I find this amazing. When I studied different religions, I lost my faith in all of them pretty quickly because they sort of canceled each [...]
I can’t remember who twittered this yesterday, but I noticed this site: The Center for Atheist Research.
Want to help researchers learn about atheists, brights and humanists and how we think? I took the atheist survey yesterday and it was quite thorough. It took about 25 minutes at the most, and I felt like I was being counted, so to speak. As a housewife activist atheist, I really don’t fit what people think “nones” are, so it’s nice to share my worldview with people interested in looking at such things.
Oh, it’s completely confidential. They don’t take any personal information so if you’re in the closet don’t worry, you’re secret is safe with them.
Here’s what they say on their home page:
Atheists and other secularists who have a naturalistic worldview (a philosophy of life that does not involve a belief [...]
I have all this information to share with you, but I haven’t had a chance to organize it properly. So I’ve decided to kind of throw it out to you with a few notes and let you process it at your leisure, instead of wait any longer. Last month the results of a survey were released. The survey was all about the godless and it was done by Professor Luke Galen.
Luke Galen does a podcast called Reasonable Doubts with two other awesome guys, Jeremy Beahan and David Fletcher. I love this podcast and have been listening to all the past episodes to try to catch up. Just recently I listened to episode 32, Profiles of the Godless where Dr. Galen addressed CFI Michigan with his results. This was recorded back in January of this year, before his paper was published. I highly [...]
The other day Mark over at Proud Atheists posted an article titled What If All Atheists Left America? What he wrote is based on the video that he had in the post. It’s very well done, in my opinion and I had to share it with you. It’s 2:18 minutes long:
What is even better is if you go to youtube’s page for it, in the description, the creator, ConversationWithA, lists all the sources used to put it together. Here is the list: (I’ve added a few notes where relevant. My notes are marked with an [...]
Water is good for you. If you’re thirsty, it’s usually the best choice. But do you need 8 glasses a day? Does it count when you drink tea or juice or coffee? Do you need to force down another glass even if you aren’t thirsty?
According to Heinz Valtin, a retired professor of physiology from Dartmouth Medical School who specialized in kidney research and spent 45 years studying the biological system that keeps the water in our bodies in balance, the answer is no. If you have kidney stones or if you get urinary tract infections easily, then drinking lots of water can be beneficial.
But there is no scientific evidence to support the notion that healthy people need to drink 64 ounces of water a day.
Valtin found that the 8 x 8 guideline may have originated from a misunderstanding. In 1945 [...]
My friend Brent sent me a link to a page on the web. It’s a conversation with Robert Sapolsky, a quiet, funny, apparently brilliant professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and of neurology at Stanford’s School of Medicine. Professor Sapolsky has written several books such as:
