- Barbara Forrest has an excellent analysis and background story on the introduction of the creationist bill in Louisiana, and the organisations supporting it, here at Talk2Reason.
- There's a new phylogeny of birds out. See GrrllScientist's post, and a full size tree here. Late edit See Bird Evolution - Problems with Science for more.
- Jesse Prinz has an essay on atheism and morality, which I think jumps the shark at the end (how can there be atheist charities? Atheism is the lack of some belief, so any charity that doesn't make theism part of its core mission already is atheist), here at Psychology Today.
- Michael Ruse has an interesting and entertaining review of, among other things, Bill Wimsatt's book, at American Scientist.
- It turns out we can know what it is like to be a bat...
- Science After Sunclipse has a discussion on what education can be achieved by science blogs. Laelaps' Brian Switek responds.
- Sciguy reports that Spain is about to give basic human rights to apes, something I have previously supported elsewhere.
- Stephen Hale had already argued one can prove a negative, before I did. Hat tip: Abnormal Interests.
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A friend pointed to this massive collation of statistics on atheism across the world. I myself keep track of this literature and most of the values are pretty plausible, or I've seen them before (you can find The World Values Survey publications in any college library). This section caught my…
Sensible people understand that there is little connection between belief in God and moral conduct. As has wisely been noted, with or without religion good people will do good, and evil people will do evil.
On the other hand, we could survey the nations of the world and note a strong inverse…
SB 733, a creationist bill in the Louisiana legislature, was approved on a lopsided vote in the Louisiana House of Representatives today. It now moves back to the Senate, where small differences between this bill and the Senate version must be reconciled before it can go to Governor Jindal.…
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According to Reuters the Spanish Congress is set to extend legal rights to apes in captivity, ending cruel experiments, isolation in circuses, and other forms of mistreatment. (Zoos will still be allowed to keep…
Thanks for the link!
Sciguy reports that Spain is about to give basic human rights to apes, something I have previously supported elsewhere.
That is excellent news; I certainly hope the legislation goes through. If you haven't seen it already you should definitely check out the Nature special "Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History," too.
The comments on that SciGuy link are mostly so deeply stupid I'm left wondering how they mustered the basic literacy to post them. How does an intelligent poster attract a rabble like that?
I learned about Wimsatt's book through your blog and the title made me take a look at it in Amazon. The description there made me think it might be interesting to read it, but if it's being reviewed in American Scientist (and by Ruse), I'll have the best reference possible.