Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense. Nigel Leck, a software developer by day, was tired of arguing with anti-science crackpots on Twitter. So, like any good programmer, he wrote a script to do it for him. The result is the Twitter chatbot @AI_AGW. Its operation is fairly simple: Every five minutes, it searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments about how global warming isn’t happening or humans aren’t responsible for it.
It then spits back at the twitterer who made that argument a canned response culled from a database of hundreds. The responses are matched to the argument in question – tweets about how Neptune is warming just like the earth, for example, are met with the appropriate links to scientific sources explaining why that hardly constitutes evidence that the source of global warming on earth is a warming sun. Like other chatbots, lots of people on the receiving end of its tweets have no idea they’re not conversing with a real human being. Atheist Media Blog. Press | Humanist Heritage. Ajita Kamal on the "arrogance" of Richard Dawkins.
Over at the Nirmukta site (which you really should bookmark), Ajita Kamal has a nice post about Richard Dawkins' supposed "arrogance". After putting into perspective one incident relating to Dawkins, Kamal observes: There is a very important role that anger, ridicule and passion play in any social movement. While intellectual understanding is key to a movement that is well-grounded, it is the primary emotions that provide the impetus for social organization. Without this, atheism would simply remain an idea to be discussed in academia and in private settings. That's exactly right. We are all - whatever social movement we are involved in - quite right to use language that expresses such things as our anger, disrespect, and so on. That doesn't mean it will be justified in every single case. As Kamal says, passion provides the impetus for social organisation. Actually, Kamal's post is full of good stuff ... like this: Exactly right. And see this ... Quite so.
The New York Times, Jerry Coyne and Russell Blackford on the Gnu Atheists - NY Times, Jerry Coyne, Russell Blackford - NY Times, WEIT, Metamagican and the Hellfire Club. By NY TIMES, JERRY COYNE, RUSSELL BLACKFORD - NY TIMES, WEIT, METAMAGICAN AND THE HELLFIRE CLUB Added: Sunday, 03 October 2010 at 6:49 PM [Update 04-Oct] via Russell Blackford More on CFI, with some actual information for a change Ophelia Benson - Butterflies and Wheels I’ve said more than once that I don’t have a firm opinion about who is more right (or wrong) in the dispute between the Center for Inquiry and its founder and former director Paul Kurtz.
I still don’t, but one thing I do think is that when the dispute gets into a major media outlet, the reporting is incomplete. I have an opportunity to rectify that a little, because I saw something Barry Karr said on Facebook this morning that clarified or expanded a couple of points. Here is the Facebook comment: PK can be in the building M-F 9-5 anytime he wants and for any events. ... Closer Look at Rift Between Humanists Reveals Deeper Divisions AMHERST, N.Y. — You can tell something about a man by what he names his dog. Mr. ... read on. :: Darwin Correspondence Project. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online.
Rich Pickings | OSQUALITUDE. Christian group declares jct 9 on M25 cursed. High performance access to file storage A group of Christian evangelicals has declared junction 9 of the M25 "hexed" and is staging regular prayer meetings to cleanse the benighted interchange. According to the Surrey Advertiser, Gerald Coates of the Pioneer Engage Church in Leatherhead has attributed a rash of accidents and footbridge suicides around the junction to someone "motivated by dark forces".
Coates believes the malefactor has been recording evil messages onto cassette tapes which are then unspooled to enclose and hence curse their target areas. The abundance of unspooled tapes in the area were proof of the malevolent plan, he told the paper. The Advertiser reports that a prayer vigil on the Kingston Road bridge organised by Coates had attracted up to 30 people. "I do believe we will see far fewer incidents, but if the trend is not reversed then we will return for another vigil in mid-December," said Coates.
Atheists Outdo Some Believers in Survey on Religion. U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. Executive Summary Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions. On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.
These are among the key findings of the U.S. In addition, fewer than half of Americans (47%) know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. Factors in Religious Knowledge Footnotes. The Moral Landscape: Q & A with Sam Harris : From the Free Press: Sam Harris’s first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion.
In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people—from religious fundamentalists to non-believing scientists—agree on one point: Science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the most common justification for religious faith. It is also the primary reason why so many secularists and religious moderates feel obligated to “respect” the hardened superstitions of their more devout neighbors. In this explosive new book, Sam Harris tears down the wall between scientific facts and human values, arguing that most people are simply mistaken about the relationship between morality and the rest of human knowledge.
Sam Harris breathes intellectual fire into an ancient debate. Reading Sam Harris is like drinking water from a cool stream on a hot day. Don’t Be a Dick, Part 1: the video. Don’t Be a Dick, Part 3: the aftermath. [Note: This is the third of three posts on my "Don't Be a Dick" speech. Please first watch the video of my TAM 8 talk, and you can also read Part 2 which has links to others' thoughts on this topic.] Before I gave my TAM 8 talk — now known as the "Don’t Be a Dick" speech — I was more nervous than I had been before a public speaking engagement since high school. Watching the video, I’m surprised that I appeared so composed. I was sweating bullets up there, and had an emotional catch in my throat several times that wasn’t so obvious in the video. After the video, my friend Pamela Gay was waiting off stage for me. As we left the auditorium and went out into the hall, someone beckoned to me.
She was crying because what I said was something she had longed to hear from someone, anyone, in the skeptic community for years: that we need to be less antagonistic, and more inclusive. She was not alone, either. I also heard from hundreds — hundreds — of people thanking me for what I said. Christopher Hitchens on Billy Graham, $cientology and religious hypocrisy. Welcome - The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Video: George Carlin on religion and God | GrrlScientist | Science. Preachy Twits: Please Go Away! And I fell into a rant...
Please pardon this off-topic diversion. I'm almost certainly going to get myself into trouble with this, but I don't care. I'm sick of being harassed by twits of all stripes. (Do go listen to the song at that link; it's a very fun bit of silly modern Klezmer by a really brilliant performer.) I've mentioned around here that I'm Jewish.
I don't actually talk about what I believe - but I've mentioned the fact that I am a religious, theistic, reconstructionist Jew. Every time I mention my Judaism, I get two related clumps of email. It's really fascinating to realize just how similar those two groups are. For both the fundie christians and the pushy atheists, it's not enough to know what they believe. There's another major common thing between the fundies and the pushy atheists: it's how they approach the non-believers/believers. That's exactly the attitude that I get from the pushy preachy atheists who pepper my email. And the atheists? Equality Now speech. Joss Whedon on Humanism. Phil Plait: Don’t Be A Dick | This Scientific Life. Tags: Phil Plait: Don't Be A Dick, faith, religion, scepticism, magic, afterlife, fantasy, reality, science, atheism, believers, Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, streaming video In late July 2010, Bad Astronomer and skeptic, Phil Plait, gave a thoughtful public presentation called "Don't Be A Dick.
" This presentation discusses how one presents their skepticism to the public and how they discuss it publicly. There was a lot of positive reaction to the talk, but also some criticism. Phil Plait - Don't Be A Dick. I agree with Phil, partially because this is the method I use to engage with those who believe in some form of magic, and also because I agree with the arguments he uses to support his position. Divided Minds, Specious Souls. Credit: Flickr user jeffreymongrain There is a common idea: because the mind seems unified, it really is.
Many go only a bit further and call that unified mind a “soul.” This step, from self to soul, is an ancient assumption which now forms a bedrock in many religions: a basis for life after death, for religious morality, and a little god within us, a support for a bigger God outside us. For the believers in the soul, let’s call them soulists, the soul assumption appears to be only the smallest of steps from the existence of a unified mind. Yet the soul is a claim for which there isn’t any evidence. Today, there isn’t even evidence for that place soulists step off from, the unified mind. There are historical parallels. The evidence supports another view: Our brains create an illusion of unity and control where there really isn’t any. After eating dinner with her husband, Mrs. An interesting thing happened when I brought her left arm up across her face so she could see it. For Mrs. Birmingham Skeptics. HumanistHeritage's Channel.