Subscribe to and Contact HDC
|
By Neece, on February 2, 2010, at 12:59 pm
 The other day, I watched a 3 part special about what makes us uniquely human from the rest of the animals on the planet, namely chimps. It was very interesting and I wanted to share it with you. I’m linking to each full length video and then below I will link to Science Talk’s interviews with Alda about the show and other interesting things.
Here’s some information from PBS:
After some three and a half billion years of life’s evolution on this planet – and after almost two million years since people recognizable as human first walked its surface – a new human burst upon the scene, apparently unannounced.
It was us.
Until then our ancestors had shared the planet with other human species. But soon there was only us, possessors of something that gave us unprecedented power over our environment and everything else alive. That something was – [...]
By Neece, on December 29, 2009, at 8:50 am
 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.
By Neece, on September 19, 2009, at 12:16 am
The other day I was pondering how our bodies have features that are poorly designed. Not to get too personal, but I have a hard time with coughing over the least little thing. Sometimes if I inhale wrong, my uvula freaks out and I start to cough like crazy. It’s horrible.
So I wanted to write down some goofy examples to share with you, as if there were a god, he’s pretty bad at designing. Then my mind kind of fizzled out, so I thought, hell, I’m not the first person to come up with this brilliant idea. I’ll Google it. That’s when I found the following video, which sums it up in about 6 minutes rather perfectly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson did a talk back in late 2006 where he ended with the following: (I have reproduced most of his slides below for your [...]
By Neece, on August 30, 2009, at 5:08 am
I saw this comparison of Aldous Huxley to George Orwell the other day. I thought it was extremely well done and thought you might find it insightful:
Amusing ourselves to death by Stuart McMillen – Aldous Huxley, author of “Brave New World vs. George Orwell, author of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”
By Neece, on August 23, 2009, at 4:00 am
 Butch and I had Brent and Tim (my fellow Morgantown Atheists cohorts) over for dinner the other night. (oh, and Tim brought his standard poodle Lucy, who was highly interesting to my crazy mutts. They were in love with her sexy Frenchness!) Anyway, over pizza, Tim challenged me to come up with my own personal list of 10 Commandments. The New 10 Commandments.
First let’s look at the old fashioned set that so many people want festooned on government property to hopefully force everyone to be good, obedient, god-fearing christians.
According to the bible, there are 3 sets of commandments by Moses’ god. (see Wikipedia’s page here)
Most of these commandments are the words of an angry, jealous, childish god. They aren’t helpful, moral or ethical. They don’t advance us as a species. In fact [...]
By Neece, on June 6, 2009, at 6:40 pm
 Wiley Drake, a southern baptist preacher in California went on Fox News Radio’s Alan Colmes show on June 2nd and said he’s praying for god to kill President Obama. Drake used to be the 2nd vice president of the southern baptist convention.
Apparently there’s a special kind of prayer from psalms where you ask god to kill people for you, to vindicate your innocence and relieve you of your oppressors. It’s called imprecatory prayer.
Imprecate: To call down by prayer, as something hurtful or calamitous. To invoke evil upon; curse.
Drake prayed to his god for the death of Dr. George Tiller, who was murdered in his church on May 31st. Drake called his death an answer to prayer.
(emphasis of the following quotes are mine, with my comments interspersed)
“Imprecatory prayer is agreeing with God, and if people don’t like that, they need to talk [...]
By Neece, on April 11, 2009, at 7:00 pm
Unlike most atheists I know, I don’t really consider myself a humanist, but maybe that’s because I really don’t know the full definition. Let’s look it up.
Humanism affirms the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality, without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts. Humanism can be considered as a process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation; as such, views on morals can change when new knowledge and information is discovered. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on faith, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.
While I agree [...]
|
Neece & Butch’s Zazzle Designs – Sir Lee Tees
Neece & Jenny’s Zazzle Designs
|
The other day, I watched a 3 part special about what makes us uniquely human from the rest of the animals on the planet, namely chimps. It was very interesting and I wanted to share it with you. I’m linking to each full length video and then below I will link to Science Talk’s interviews with Alda about the show and other interesting things.
Recent Comments