Posts tagged: Science
I’m Afraid Of Never Having Lived
PZ pointed me to an interesting essay about the craziness that was ‘World Youth Day’ in Sydney, Australia. One particular passage stuck out at me while I read.
It’s been a revelation to me a year since my “epiphany”. I feel as if I’m walking through life with the blinkers off. Suddenly all the religious mumbo-jumbo jumps out as so bonkers. Wearing certain things, eating certain things, mumbling certain things at certain times so some imaginary friend will let you into a club in the sky when you die. I want to do my living now, thanks. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of never having lived.
A somewhat simple but acurate description of what it feels like to view the world anew without the blindfold of religion over your eyes or as Julia Sweeney put it in her show ‘Letting Go of God’, “Taking off the God glasses.” When you believe in religion, you have to live a double life. One where all your judgments are based on evidence and rational thought and another where you allow supernatural explanations to creep into existence and faith trumps evidence. Since faith is basically a lack of evidence - if you have ample evidence, you don’t need faith - this presents two conflicting world views coexisting within the same mind. It’s no wonder why religious people are always having to reaffirm their beliefs and attend prepared revivals. When every other aspect of your life is driven by evidence, reason and critical thinking, the challenge in reconciling irrational beliefs becomes that much harder.
Via: Pharyngula
And This Is You Brain On Love
Helen Fisher and her team have spent the last few years studying the brain mechanisms responsible for love by putting various groups of people in various states of love into an MRI machine.
Though not very heavy on the science, this little talk does a nice job of opening up a lot of questions about the nature and evolutionary history of love and other complimentary emotions.
D’Sousa Is Being Honest For A Change
In his new Townhall.com article, Dinesh D’Souza has done something very unusual… He’s told the truth for a change.
In my debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens in New York last October he raised a point that I did not know how to answer. So I employed an old debating strategy: I ignored it and answered other issues.
Now, to be truthful, Dinesh D’Souza is a very intelligent individual. His rhetoric is fantastic and the intensity he applies to his arguments bring a breath of life into the Creationist fold. However, at the core, his actual arguments generally fall short.
As noted above from his own mouth, Dinesh likes to employ the “redefine the subject” tactic to debating. This tactic is to simply redefine and shift the point of the argument into something that he can argue against. Indeed, D’Souza does this on the larger scale as well, employing this method to generate new reincarnations of old arguments. Lately, D’Souza has taken a fancy to the classic “fine-tuned universe” argument which is nothing but the “Argument from Design” shifted from the biological to the cosmic scale. Basically, Since creationists can’t show that life forms on Earth are intelligently designed (indeed, they appear to be more un-intelligently than intelligently designed), they step back and say that it’s the universe itself that is intelligently designed. This makes one ask in exactly what other kind of universe would we be around to pose that question in the first place? We, as humans, apply numeric values to the ‘fine tuning’ variables of the universe. Who’s to say that these values aren’t the only way there is? Is it not possible that, like the speed of light, these values simply don’t have the luxury of fluctuating?
Back to the linked article above, D’Souza simply runs and hides behind the semantics of linguistics and redefinitions of the core argument yet again.
Via: Townhall.com
The Moon Transits The Earth
EPOXI, the repurposed and renamed Deep Impact spacecraft, turned back towards Earth last May and captured images of the Moon passing by. Don Lindler put together an animation (below) of the entire transit.
Wow… Just, wow.
Via: Bad Astronomy
Going Skeptical
For the 91st time in a row, someone with much more wit and style than myself has collected all the wonderfully skeptical news from around the internet and combined them all into a fun and informative article with linkage galore. It’s your 91st Skeptic’s Circle hosted at Sorting Out Science.
But That’s Not What I Believe
I’m listening to the radio discussion between PZ Myers and Father Loya on Catholic Radio International’s “Heart of the Matter” radio show and was really hoping for an enlightening discussion but am being treated to the same old religious apologies I’ve grown quite weary of.
The largest offender of these apologies is amazingly intellectual sounding, “but that’s not what I believe,” defense. Anytime someone paints an honest image of the rediculous nature of many religious beliefs the religious debater replies that there are probably people who believe the presented claims but that it’s not an acurate depiction of “their” belief or that people who believe so aren’t “true” Christians, Muslims, etc. Then they typically go into rantings of metaphysical word-salad of ill-defined words, theological “ways of knowing” and attempts to redefine the scientific method.
Father Loya’s “knowledge of the existence of love” argument was beautifully shot down by PZ as well as his attempts to redefine the “empircal” and “nature” during his opening argument. I’m trying to make it through the rest of the discussion about the cracker debacle but Father Loya just keeps avoiding the nature of the issues at hand.
The IYA Is Coming
The Periodic Table of Videos
The University of Nottingham has started a wonderful online video project, The Periodic Table of Videos.
You can subscribe via YouTube or view them at the official website, The Periodic Table of Videos.
The Young And The Restless Talk Science
The supa-hottie Beauty (Abbie Smith) and the supa-atheist Beast (PZ Myers) have recorded an excellent discussion for everyone over at Bloggingheads where they successfully break down epigenetics, creationism, and crackers.
Via: Pharyngula & ERV
P.S. Sorry about the “Beast” part PZ. But honestly, in comparison…
Worth Mentioning This Week
Incredibly busy this week and loads of surprise complications, so blogging will continue to be slow for a bit. However, I’m leaving you with a few stories I’ve found interesting ove the last week.
- The LA times have an interesting article on the Jefferson Bible and our founding father’s views on religion.
- LOST executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have created the Lost Book Club to share books that have inspired, tie in with, or appear on the TV show.
- Richard Dawkins and John Lennox discuss the scientific evidence for God in an informal sit down.
- The British Board of Film Censors have approved Passio, a pornographic film featuring a homosexual Jesus.
- Some atheists want to battle the religious majority by raising money to buy bus ads.
And when you’re done reading those, watch this…
Free Astronomy Lectures Online
The Astronomy Society of the Pacific has made many of the talks from their annual Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures available for free on their website in the form of The Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures Podcasts. There are lectures from the likes of David Grinspoon, Alex Filippenko, and Frank Drake.
There are videos of some of the lectures available for you iTunes users. Not sure why you need iTunes to watch free videos. Embrace the torrent.
Via: Bad Astronomy
Genesis Is Coming!
Quite literally. Earlier today, Thoughts From Kansas pointed out The National Academies Press is holding a massive book sale and suggested getting Robert Hazen’s “Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origins” for super cheap. So that’s just what I did.
I was extremely impressed with both of Hazen’s Teaching Company series, “Joy of Science” and “Origins of Life” so I’m sure this book with be both easy to understand and extremely informative at the same time. One thing I love about Hazen is his strong advocacy for a reformed, more integrated approach to science education, exemplified in his co-authoring of the highly acclaimed textbook “The Sciences: An Integrated Approach” with James Trefil that fully integrates physics, chemistry, astronomy, earth sciences, and biology for students with little or no science background.
I highly recommend both of Hazen’s Teaching Company series and I’m quite sure that in a few weeks time, I’ll be able to recommend this book as well.
Is Heavy Marijuana Use Harmful?
A new study by Australian researchers into the effects of heavy Marijuana use have returned some interesting results. Heavy users showed reduced size in specific areas of the brain as well as earned lower scores than the nonusers in a verbal memorization test.
Brain scans showed the hippocampus and amygdala were smaller in men who were heavy marijuana users compared to nonusers, the researchers said. The men had smoked at least five marijuana cigarettes daily for on average 20 years.
Now, I’m a bit biased in this debate, but isn’t that a bit too heavy? 5 joints daily for 20 years? Marijuana Policy Project spokesman Bruce Mirken seems to agree with me saying, “These were people who were essentially stoned all day every day for 20 years … This study says nothing about moderate or occasional users, who are the vast majority — and the (study) even acknowledges this.” Mirken follows with, “The documented damage caused by comparably heavy use of alcohol or tobacco is just off-the-charts more serious, and you don’t need high-tech scans to find it.”
It is a bit excessive a study group. Even most ‘daily’ users I’ve met never hit the 5 joint mark every day. I think a more moderate-use study would be more informative overall as well as a more controlled experiment to weed out other possible causes. In the end though, the researchers had and have the best of intentions saying, “With nearly 15 million Americans using cannabis in a given month, 3.4 million using cannabis daily for 12 months or more and 2.1 million commencing use every year, there is a clear need to conduct robust investigations.” With that, I whole heartedly agree. More research is definitely needed. And I, for one, will be doing my part.
Via: Reuters
Religion Vs. Science In My Local Bookstore
Recently the Pharyngula blog posted about a small prank involving moving all the books from the single religion bookshelf in their local bookstore to other areas in the store. In the comments, many of the southern readers couldn’t believe there was only one bookshelf in the store dedicated to religion. So I decided to snap some photos of what my local Hastings store (the only local store that could be called a bookstore) looks like. Here in Tullahoma, Tennessee, we obviously have a greater demand for Christian and Christian study books than science. I apologize in advance for the crummy photography. The staff started looking at me strangely.
Women Have No Emotions During Orgasm
Somehow I knew this. I never had the evidence to back up my claim, until now.
To better understand the science of sex, researchers are using PET scanners to map the areas in the brain that are excited during sexual encounters and orgasm. When comparing the results of men to those of women, the researchers uncovered somewhat counter-intuitive data. The scans for men showed an increase in emotional activity as well as a decline in vigilance and fear whereas the women’s scans showed no emotional activity at all during orgasm.
[In men] scientists also saw heightened activity in brain regions involved in memory-related imagery and in vision itself, perhaps because the volunteers used visual imagery to hasten orgasm. The anterior part of the cerebellum also switched into high gear. The cerebellum has long been labeled the coordinator of motor behaviors but has more recently revealed its role in emotional processing. Thus, the cerebellum could be the seat of the emotional components of orgasm in men, perhaps helping to coordinate those emotions with planned behaviors. The amygdala, the brain’s center of vigilance and sometimes fear, showed a decline in activity at ejaculation, a probable sign of decreasing vigilance during sexual performance.
To find out whether orgasm looks similar in the female brain, Holstege’s team asked the male partners of 12 women to stimulate their partner’s clitoris—the site whose excitation most easily leads to orgasm—until she climaxed, again inside a PET scanner. Not surprisingly, the team reported in 2006, clitoral stimulation by itself led to activation in areas of the brain involved in receiving and perceiving sensory signals from that part of the body and in describing a body sensation—for instance, labeling it “sexual.”
But when a woman reached orgasm, something unexpected happened: much of her brain went silent. Some of the most muted neurons sat in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex, which may govern self-control over basic desires such as sex. Decreased activity there, the researchers suggest, might correspond to a release of tension and inhibition. The scientists also saw a dip in excitation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which has an apparent role in moral reasoning and social judgment—a change that may be tied to a suspension of judgment and reflection.
Brain activity fell in the amygdala, too, suggesting a depression of vigilance similar to that seen in men, who generally showed far less deactivation in their brain during orgasm than their female counterparts did. “Fear and anxiety need to be avoided at all costs if a woman wishes to have an orgasm; we knew that, but now we can see it happening in the depths of the brain,” Holstege says. He went so far as to declare at the 2005 meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development: “At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings.”
In all honesty, I’m a bit skeptical. I’m sure the act of being studied played a part in the results and I wonder if this was taken into consideration. That kind of ’stage fright’ or ‘performance pressure’ can play havoc on a person’s emotional state. Maybe their concentration on the job at hand shifted the balance of emotion and logic in favor of the latter.
Via: Scientific American
