Being Ready to Believe

Mike2
Hi folks. It's been a while since I've written on these topics. I'll explain why in a future post. For now, I'll only apologize for the hiatus, and offer you another dose of my rambling pseudo-thinkery.

In certain circumstances, is faith the best answer?

I just discovered the brilliant voice of Michael Kiwanuka a few weeks back, and ever since I did, his songs have seen regular rotation on the Goodspeed family playlist. I'm in no way a musical person, in that I can neither play an instrument nor carry a tune, but I've always been a great appreciator of those who can. Kiwanuka's singing reminds me of one of my absolute favourites, the incomparable Otis Redding, so naturally I've fast become a fan. I don't know, there's this ease in his voice that to me, somehow, seems... reassuring.

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Tagged Atheism Faith Music Religion Skepticism

Why did God make rainbows?

Rainbowbanner3

Mysteries can be solved. Just ask questions that begin with "How" instead of "Why". 

John Hobby is a reader of the blog and a Facebook pal, and the other night he told me a little story about rainbows. I'd like to share it with you today.

"As a young man I was taught that rainbows were God's promise never to flood the Earth again, and it stifled my curiosity about it. I was like "Oh okay, that's nice of God to remind us during rain storms, nothing else to know there.""

"But I do remember thinking that it was a contradiction, because I had seen rain storms cause flooding; especially in the desert where I grew up."

So after hearing that tale I did some poking around, and wouldn't you know it, the rainbow/flood myth goes all the way back to the bible. The reason that rainbows were the topic of our discussion was because John had already shared a recording of an MIT lecture earlier that evening; a lecture about the real physics of rainbows. While the video was an exciting lesson on the geometry within a common phenomenon, somehow John's personal story of divine promises gone unfulfilled, captured my imagination the most.

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Tagged Atheism Faith Rationalism Reason Science Skepticism Superstition

The Blog Turns Two!

  
Birthday
Nobody has suggested that March 26th become a national holiday as a result, but it is the birthday of this blog. The following is a brief history of how this site came to be, and what's happened since; along with a few thoughts on where it's going. I apologize if it all seems a little masturbatory, but I wanted to mark the event with at least a smidgen of reflection. You'll notice a number of links throughout, most of which point to articles I've written in the past. Sort of like a sit-com clip show, get it?

On finding your voice

So I've been at this blogging business for a couple of years now, and while I can't be sure what sensation the experience has left in your mouths, at least personally, I think I've acquired a taste for it.

This blog began on March 26th, 2010 with a completely innocuous post, (image below) and no particular agenda in mind. At the time Posterous was a brand-new service, designed more for sharing pictures and video rather than blogging, so I thought I'd give it a test run. There was no custom URL, no title, and no theme. Yet hiding somewhere were the seeds of what the site would eventually become.

Blurb

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Tagged Animation Art Atheism Pseudoscience Religion Science Skepticism

Saving Science in America's Schools

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Listen, I'm a Canadian. I love my country, and unlike many of my compatriots, I don't follow the news of our big neighbour to the south very closely. Of course, it's hard not to at least keep an eye on some aspects of American politics, say Novemeber's coming death-match for the oval office for example, but I'd never describe my knowledge of the affairs in Washington as intimate.

Now, I'm also a skeptic, and I love science. Science gives people a set of tools to apply to new problems, and it is intimately tied to, among other things, the economic prosperity of a nation. Therefore there's one aspect of the American political climate that routinely draws my interest; that being science education. 

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Tagged Education Science Skepticism United States

On this Leap Day, Don't be a Dummy Dad

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Hello world! It's leap day! A day of profound celestial significance. A day of righting mathematical wrongs. A day so magical, so mind blowingly awesome, that it remains hidden during just 'ordinary' years. We couldn't handle a leap day every time around the Sun, so it banks up it's amazingness for a quadrennial visit. Leap day is sort of like the 12 Grimmauld Place* of the Gregorian calendar, and at this very special moment in time, it is revealed to us.

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Tagged Astronomy Children History Science Skepticism

Rejecting Religion Openly, and Being Polite About It

Moses4
It's the million dollar question. You live in a world where almost everybody believes in a story that you do not. Besides the fact that societies are built around these stories, so are people's most intimate hopes and fears. You don't want to be silent about the way that you see the world, but at the same time you hate being rude.

So why challenge religion openly? I may take a round-about route, but in the following article I'll try to at least give my own answer.


I don't like getting shit upon.

In this way I am not unique. People generally prefer not to be oppressed, harassed, diminished, or abused; especially when it's because of some aspect of their person that cannot be controlled. We all know that it's wrong to revile an individual for their skin colour or handicap, precisely because those descriptives have been with them since birth.

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Tagged Atheism Discrimination Religion Skepticism

Look at this spacey poster. Then go look for yourself.

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Keep Looking Up
poster at bottom

Some of you remember the skeptical posters that I've done in the past, and that I plan to continue doing as time goes on. What you see here today isn't really one of that series, because there's no skeptical quote attached to it, but I had a hankering to do another poster all the same. Most of what this poster conveys is just the following: "Isn't space cool!" 

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Tagged Astronomy Atheism Poster Skepticism

Losing Hitchens

Hitch
Christopher Hitchens is gone. A man so well spoken, so outspoken, speaks no more.

I had been following Mr. Hitchens' illness for the last few months, terrible as it was to watch a man's body decay before your eyes. Yet I was encouraged by the retention of his character and intellect, by his undiminished desire to speak clearly to the world. I did not always agree with Hitchens, but stood in awe of his ability to slice through fuzzy thinking and bad argument with the sharpest of scalpels. He was sort of a school-yard scrapping version of Dawkins, willing to take debate to the most directly confrontational, and sometimes uncomfortable places, just so long as they made his point most accurately.

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Tagged Atheism Christopher Hitchens Death Debate Hitchens Secularism Skepticism

Why study science? Ask someone from the 50s.

Science

Recently I've been pouring through old news footage for a project I'm working on, mostly from the first half of the 20th century. A good deal of that footage was found in the awesome collection of materials at The Internet Archive. The footage I needed was kind of specific, so discovering the site's Prelinger subcategory was a God send.*

In my search I came across the following clip from 1955. It's an educational film designed to promote science and science education, and gee-golly if it isn't quaint. I mean, teenage kids begging their parents to extend a family camping trip? Lines like "women need to know as much about science as some men do, to help them keep house"?

Obviously we're dealing with sentiments from another time, long past.

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Tagged History Pseudoscience Science Skepticism
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