In my reply to the “Atheism Abandoned” piece in the IDS, I mentioned that new media like podcasts and blogs are the place to go for the real discussions on science and atheism. So in case anyone finds themselves directed here, I’ve prepared a few links to some of my favorites.

These resources are also a great way to keep in touch with other atheists and like-minded people while visiting family over break.

If you have suggestions of your own, please do make use of the comments!

Podcasts
When I bought my mp3 player, I figured I would use it primarily for music, but it turns out that nine times out of ten it’s full of science and audio-magazine style podcasts from NPR affiliates, the BBC, and independent podcast producers. Below are a few of my favorites that you might relate to.

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe: From the New England Skeptical Society, this popular podcast presents an often humorous look at pseudoscience and the paranormal in addition to legitimate science news. If that sounds at all interesting to you, I recommend you try it even if you’ve never listened to a single podcast in your life. The group also produces the shorter, family-friendly Skeptic’s Guide 5×5.

Point of Inquiry: A product of Center for Inquiry, with which SAIU is affiliated. Hosted by D. J. Grothe, the program features interviews with scientists, philosophers, and others on current issues where science, religion, and politics overlap. D. J. brings in guests of all different positions and, I think, does a great job interviewing even people he disagrees with. Search the archives for one of your favorite skeptics/atheists to get started.

Here are three weekly science podcasts that try to make things fun and entertaining as well as educational. This Week in Science, out of UC Davis, hosted by Kirsten Sanford and Justin Jackson. The Naked Scientists, brought to you by the BBC and Cambridge. Talk of the Nation: Science Friday, Ira Flatow’s classic radio show in podcast form. I highly recommend all three for anyone who can’t get enough science.

Two more skeptic pocasts: Skepticality, the official podcast of Skeptic Magazine hosted by Derek Colanduno and Swoopy. The “Where do we go from here?”, “What’s the Harm?”, and “This One Time at Skepticamp” episodes are great places to start. Skeptoid is a skeptical podcast designed to be used in the classroom for critical thinking.

On the religion front there’s Apologia, where theists of various stripes and atheists come together to discuss issues without all the shouting or name-calling. The themes and panels vary from show to show, keeping it fresh each time. Choose a topic that interests you and take a listen. Reasonable Doubts is a slightly more one-sided and humorous podcast hosted by Jeremy Beahan, Luke Galen, and David Fletcher. And don’t forget The Infidel Guy Show, a podcast from before there were pods, when Real Audio represented the height of human achievement, and mislabeled Weird Al mp3s took two hours each to download.

Or just search iTunes for your favorite keywords. You might be surprised.

Blogs
You’ll probably want a good RSS reader to keep up with these. If you use Firefox, I recommend the latest version of Sage. (Mileage may vary.) If you use IE, I have no idea. If you use anything else, you’re probably thinking about wonderful Iceweasel, Lynx or Opera are right now and not actually reading this anyway.

If there’s one thing every member of SAIU should regularly read it’s xkcd. If there are two things, Pharyngula is the other one. You might recognize the author, PZ Myers, as one of the evil atheist masterminds interviewed in Expelled. PZ also writes for The Panda’s Thumb, a group blog on evolutionary biology that frequently debunks creationism.

PZ’s blog is hosted by ScienceBlogs, which is owned by Seed Magazine. Both are great sources for up-to-date science and technology discussions. ScienceBlogs has a number of subject-area feeds for you to subscribe to. Two of my favorite individual blogs are Adventures in Ethics and Science and Good Math, Bad Math.

Daylight Atheism, at its best, can be absolutely inspiring and a great example of positive atheism. Greta Christina’s Blog, on the other hand, is more about sex-positive atheism but is somehow nearly as popular.

I’d also point atheists toward The Secular Outpost, Rationally Speaking, or Atheist Ethicist.

People who were Christian in a past life might enjoy Debunking Christianity, a blog of counter-apologetics featuring our former guest John W Loftus. Or your thing might be ExChristian.Net, a blog of personal experiences in deconversion.

Language Log follows linguistic issues like the grammar police, language in politics, and startling developments in English language usage. The occasional posts on the horrors of pop psychology are particularly great.

Skepchick: A group blog about science, skepticism, feminism, and drinking games. The blog also has a brand spankin’ new spin-off podcast. If you want more feminism (with an occasional rant on religion) try: Pandagon, Feministing, Feministe, or Broadsheet.

Skeptic’s Guide host Steven Novella also writes the blog Neurologica about skepticism and science with a particular interest in medicine and the brain sciences. Bad Astronomy is a popular skepticism and astronomy blog by Phil Plait, author of Death from the Skies and current president of the James Randi Educational Foundation.

FemaleScienceProfessor is a great look at academic life from the point of view of, well, a female science professor. Expect gruesome details on dissertation nightmares, working with sexist faculty, and physics department fashion.

And that’s enough from me. If you feel like emptying your feed folder onto my screen in return, feel free to do so below!

See it in HD on Vimeo

Keiara Carr from the Indiana Daily Student’s written a nice page 2 piece on SAIU; it was published in today’s issue.

If you weren’t aware, the Secular Alliance of IU went to the Creation Museum in Petersberg, Kentucky, on Saturday November 15. (Hats off to Eoban for jumping in and organizing it!) It was a chilly rainy day with not nearly enough coffee in supply, but at least the company was enjoyable. The museum, on the other hand was not nearly as educational or entertaining as one would hope.

Many of us were expecting the museum to house exhibits detailing various arguments for intelligent design and young earth creationism. The museum is actually set up as if it were an essay made physical. Rather than a set of self-contained exhibits which one can walk freely between, the museum is one long series of rooms through which visitors shuffle along in sequence. This had the annoying affect at creating congestion around movie-screening bottlenecks, but also underlaid the literalist themes of the museum. Here’s a quick sketch of the points made by the major rooms:

1. You can begin with either God’s word or human reason.
2. The Bible contains many fulfilled prophecies and accurate portrayals of history.
3. In the last century, reliance on human reason has led to moral bankruptcy.
4. The Biblical stories of six-day creation, Noah’s flood, and Babel match the available historical, biological, and geological evidence.
5. The Biblical story of the Fall predicts that human reason will be unreliable.
6. A literal interpretation of creation and the Fall is assumed in the story of salvation through Christ.
7. Thus, one cannot be a Christian and accept either human reason or a non-literal reading of Bible.

For all the talk of equal time in the classroom, the museum acknowledges very few rebuttals, and none of these are presented felicitously. It’s easy to be too strong because the museum was clearly targeting children, but I’ve seen much more detail presented in a far more engaging way elsewhere to audiences of all ages.

The first rooms set out to establish intellectual equality between mainstream scientific and creationist views. Text explained how the questions one asks and the results one reaches are determined by whether one begins with “God’s word” or “human reason.” This was tied into the “I bet you didn’t learn that in school!” theme that creationists have used over the years. Human reason was shown to change over time, but these changes were presented out of context in a manner that suggested that these thinkers started with the assumption that Christianity was false and proceeded to change the story only as they gained power. Acknowledgment that some of the thinkers were theists attempting to salvage some shred of religious belief from then-controversial contrary evidence was completely absent. (If you don’t even want Descartes on your side…) The only non-Biblical individuals presented with any degree of sympathy were creationists and Martin Luther (despite the fact that Luther questioned some Biblical books much beloved to American evangelicals).

I recognized no honest portrayal of scientific thinking or the philosophy thereof in the museum. Science proceeds from the assumption that active principles of the natural world can be discovered through careful observation and experimentation. Human reason certainly plays a part, but is not held to be infallible. If it were, there would be little need for continued experimentation and thus no need for science at all. What scientists have historically begun with is an assumption that the natural world is consistent, and as 20th century physics has shown, scientists are free to question even this widely accepted assumption without being censured by their peers. Like the cries of punishment for creationist beliefs detailed in Expelled, the museum portrayal of intellectual life revealed a lack of understanding of not only science but academia as a whole.

Human reason was shown to lead to such horrible things as the ACLU, graf writing, and a sensationalist journalism. This seems to make a very clear prediction that the more fundamentalist a community is the less crime, abortion, narcotic use, and homosexuality it should have. I can’t wait to see the results of the Answers in Genesis’ well designed and adequately controlled studies on these topics. But if like many of their peers they don’t believe Christians are necessarily less sinful, this entire section was useless and, worse, intentionally misleading. Most of the museum’s case rested on shared values in verifiability, consistency, and Gricean maxims of communication. This section was a let down in that department either by providing inadequate evidence or misrepresenting the views of its own creators for emotional impact.

I assume people are mostly familiar with young earth creationism. If not a few well formed Google searches will help you. The only things the museum mentioned that I had never heard before were explanations for post-flood marsupial distribution (they can walk while nursing) and cross-continental distributions (the animals crossed the ocean on rafts). There was no mention of other serious flaws in young earth creationism (population control and carbon and nitrogen cycles in a universally herbivorous world, atomic decay, light from stars further than 6,000 light years away, biological effects of population bottlenecks). As I said, many of us came expecting this to be the highlight, but it was mostly a let-down in that regard. The Fall-and-redemption narrative took center stage.

The museum creators seemed to have two goals: 1) normalizing the creation story for children growing up in literalist households and 2) persuading non-literalist Christians that their views are inconsistent and that a literal reading can be reconciled with empirical evidence. I’m in no real position to comment on the effectiveness of the museum at reaching Christians who are not Biblical literalists. I doubt many would be persuaded, but for those who draw a firm New vs Old Testament line, it might make them rethink their cherry-picking of Biblical stories by pointing out Paul’s argumentative reliance on a literal reading of Genesis.

In terms of the Biblical account presented outside of creation and the Flood, the accounts of fulfilled prophecies didn’t include any controversial modern day events, to my memory. In conversation I’ve learned that many non-literalists accept the Bible as evidence of its own prophetic status and either accept the Biblical account of the founding of Israel as real history or think it can be read metaphorically without decreasing the importance of the original covenant. The museum didn’t commit to specific arguments or evidence. Some might question its interpretation of a few prophecies, but I expect most Christians would accept the majority of those detailed.

Because it does not prepare literalists with effective counter-arguments, I think the net effect of the museum will be counter-productive toward its own goals in the long term. By borrowing the “science is awesome!” and “omg dinosaurs” themes of elementary science education, the museum can only encourage more children to have an interest in science. If that interest grows into a serious course of study, those children will eventually be convinced that Biblical literalism has serious faults. One cannot do top-notch science and begin with God’s word; science (and modern scholarship as a whole) works by questioning everything from the smallest point of data to the most cherished assumptions.

Scientific theories don’t spread because they minimize or distort opposing views; they spread because they survive intense scrutiny and observation and because they allow scientists to make novel predictions that solve problems large and small. Science has achieved its high place in contemporary intellectual life because it works. “God’s word” offers no functional solutions to world hunger, disease, or any of the other social issues that literalists believe the Fall introduced to the world. Science and human reason do. When we couple science with the compassion that underlies secular humanism, there’s no telling what we’ll be able to do. Heck, maybe we can even eliminate graf writing and sensationalist journalism.

Do I recommend the museum to other secularists? No, not really. I feel like I’ve learned little about creationism. Besides, studying real science is a much better use of our collective time. The SAIU has begun discussing future field trips to actual science museums in the area. If you have suggestions, please visit our forum.

Having actually visited the Creation Museum now, I feel like I can finally really say something about it.  Then again, it’s not just me who has something to say; I think the 21 members who went felt a mixture of emotions during and afterward, ranging from amusement, anger, and disappointment.

I think I’ve rarely encountered a more bizarre, elaborate display of pseudoscience than the Creation Museum.  The worst part about it is not its patently absurd claims that dinosaurs and humans lived together, nor that the Earth is 6,000 years old.  The most disturbing part is not that it ignores the achievements of science over the last several centuries, nor the overwhelming evidence for evolution.  It’s that the museum does all these under the guise of science, and the supposition that the museum’s creators and sponsors arrived at these notions using the scientific method.

If only children weren’t so vulnerable and susceptible to being lied to—and there were many children there, brought by their own parents, it seemed, as often as they were there through their Sunday school.

On the way out, a staff member directing traffic in the car park asked me what I thought.  I told him it was ‘interesting,’ a phrase I would also use when asked the same question by a patron at a nearby Waffle House.  He said, ‘it’s quite a unique place.’

‘Yes,’ I said.  ’Fortunately.’

Thursday, November 7th, members of SAIU stood out on the street corner in front of Ballantine to answer peoples’ questions about atheism and to advertise the group.  We successfully got 30 people to sign up on our listserv, another 50-100 interested with business cards and brochures, and a handful of heated discussions. 

It seems as though a lot of people were interested in the group, and many may and hopefully will show up at our next meeting this Sunday.  It’s an event we should do again in the future.

At our October 19 meeting, the Secular Alliance elected four new group officers.  They are:

Jordan Masopust—Activism Director

Ashley Carroll—Program Director

Aaron Rincon—Assistant PR Director

Amy Conrad—Service Director

They are charged with planning, organizing, publicizing, and running events for the group.  If you have event ideas, you can email them, or me (SECULAR at indiana), or post them on the forum,

You knew this was coming.

You’ve seen students walking around campus with clipboards, tables in well-trafficked areas, signs in shop windows, emails from campaigns, phone calls from public interest groups. Have you registered to vote?

We’re asking because the deadline to register to vote in Indiana is on Monday. After that, you cannot vote in the state. If you’re voting absentee, that’s another matter; check your home state’s own laws about registration deadlines. If you want help, check out govoteabsentee.org, which can walk you through the process.

After countless administrations and campaigns ignoring the importance of keeping faith out of politics, it’s important that secular Americans let their voices be heard.

DSC07255.JPG by Eoban Binder on Zooomr

DSC07324.JPG by Eoban Binder on Zooomr

DSC07327.JPG by Eoban Binder on Zooomr

DSC07328.JPG by Eoban Binder on Zooomr

DSC07330.JPG by Eoban Binder on Zooomr

We didn’t win, but we will next year!

I came across this interesting interview today with Will Wright, the creator of the new computer game Spore, along with classics like SimCity, SimAnt, and the Sims.

From the interview:

WILL WRIGHT: It’s funny because in the game you’re kind of in the role of an intelligent designer. Yet the kind of meta message of the game is life becomes what it is through the process of evolution. In fact the other creatures around you are evolving while you’re exhibiting intelligent design. Personally, I’m very much a strong evolutionist—basically atheist, agnostic-ish. For the game design, though, we really wanted the player to be emotionally involved with what they were doing. Throughout any kind of game, especially a game like Spore, you have to be always cognizant of keeping the player’s emotional engagement with what they’re doing. It’s very much a game design kind of decision to have the player do this. We did have prototypes, actually, where creatures were evolving out of your control and you were picking from a selected set of mutations of your creature. And it was so much less engaging than if you’d actually gone and designed the creature itself. But we kind of liked the idea that the game is fairly ambiguous in that space. It doesn’t really feel like it has a strong agenda. Because we’re actually reading on our forums on the website, a lot of religious people talking to atheist people and basically discussing these concepts and debating them, fairly intelligently, without a lot of malice towards each other.

Congrats on the successful release on Spore (copy-protection issues aside); I, for one, hope it will get kids more interested in science and evolutionary biology.