richard dawkins

I’m sure that most of you watched the Presidential debate on Monday night, just as I did. Over the years, these debates have always always painful for me to watch, given the candidates’ tendency to answer the question they want to answer rather than the question actually answered; to find ways to spew prepackaged talking points into answers, whether they’re related to the question or not; and, above all, to see how much spin they can get away with. Particularly annoying is when they pander to their base with particularly brain dead bon mots. Candidates from both parties do it, of course, but…

Orac note: Congratulations on California and everyone who reads this blog who helped pass SB 277 to protect California's children. Here's hoping Governor Jerry Brown signs the bill! I had a big talk to give this morning that required a massive rewrite of my slide set last night; so there wasn't time for the usual Insolence. Some of you might have seen a different version of this post elsewhere. Some of you might not. Either way, I hope you can enjoy! Two weeks ago, I attended the Center For Inquiry Reason for Change Conference, where I participated in a panel on—what else?—alternative…

Of all the quacks and cranks and purveyors of woo whom I’ve encountered over the years, Deepak Chopra is, without a doubt, one of the most arrogantly obstinate, if not the most arrogantly obstinate. Sure, a quack like Mike Adams wins on sheer obnoxiousness and for the sheer breadth of crankery to which he ascribes, which includes everything from quackery, to New World Order conspiracy theories, to Scientology-like anti-psychiatry rants, to survivalist and gun nut tendencies, but he's so obviously unhinged, as well as intermittently entertaining, that he doesn't quite get under the skin the…

Deepak Chopra isn't very happy right now. In fact, he appears downright pissed off right now, particularly at skeptics, so much so that he's issued a hilariously fatuous "challenge" to James Randi (a.k.a.) The Amazing Randi on You Tube entitled Deepak Chopra's One Million Dollar Challenge to Skeptics: Yes, apparently with The Amazing Meeting (a.k.a. TAM) less than four weeks away, Chopra is looking to stir the pot a little bit with his usual blend of Choprawoo about consciousness and mind-body dualism and how nasty skeptics can't accept the paranormal and the healing powre of "intent." It's…

Years ago I knew Richard Dawkins as a fellow evolutionary biologist (met him only once, at a memorial event for WD Hamilton, but we have numerous mutual friends and colleagues). To be frank, and I'm only being frank now because I'd prefer not to use my real name, Dawkins was considered a bit of an enigma. He had great fame (and fortune and privilege) but that was without doing much important research. I always defended him back in those days. His fame came from The Selfish Gene and his subsequent books, and his popularization of science was well done and important. Those who complained,and…

Recently, Richard Dawkins said (full quote below) that a woman should not be concerned about her own safety if she finds herself in an elevator (under some sort of threat, presumably), because it is trivially easy to get out of an elevator if you are under attack. I'm sure Richard is a very smart guy and maybe he's right, but there is evidence to the contrary that women can just leave the scene if they are uninterested in being raped or groped. For example: Police are looking for a man they say sexually assaulted a woman in Manhattan about two weeks ago. A surveillance photo of the…

tags: The Laryngeal Nerve of the Giraffe is Proof of Natural Selection, animals, giraffe, evolution, creationism, intelligent design, dissection, necropsy, autopsy, recurrent laryngeal nerve pathway, vagus nerve, cranial nerve X, evolutionary legacy, Richard Dawkins, streaming video This video, including comments by Richard Dawkins, documents a necropsy (an autopsy on an animal other than a human) carried out in a classroom on a giraffe. In this video, we follow the pathway of the recurrent (inferior) laryngeal nerve, an important nerve that is a branch of the Vagus nerve (tenth cranial nerve…

In reverse order: 5.  David Sloan Wilson, pissing off the angry atheists. "I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist." This sparked some lively action in the comments. 4. Lively or not, Wilson and Dawkins lost fourth place to snail jokes. A turtle gets mugged by a gang of snails.  3. A walking tour that lets you See exactly where Phineas Gage lost his mind   2. "Push" science journalism, or how diversity matters more than size We're constantly told -- we writers are, anyway -- that people won't read long stories. They're hard to sell to editors,…

David Sloan Wilson, an atheist himself, has a few things to relate to 'angry atheists' like Richard Dawkins. I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist. One of the things that infuriates me about the newest crop of angry atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, is their denial of the beneficial aspects of religion. Their beef is not just that there is no evidence for God. They also insist that religion "poisons everything", as Christopher Hitchens subtitled his book. They are ignoring the scientific theory and evidence for the "secular utility" of religion, as Ãmile…

Traveling. But here's what I'm reading during train, plane, and bus rides -- and over meals:   Gravity-defying ramps take illusion prize. This contest always produces fascinating stuff. This time, the ball rolls up. Video here.  Vaughan Bell ponders cortisol, dopamine, neuroplasticity, and other things that set off his bullshit detector. Riff launched from a post from Neuroskeptic on cortisol and childcare scare stories, equally read-worthy. Dan Vorhaus does a wonderful round-up of reactions and implications stemming from the news that genetic testing is coming to Walgreens. Best blog-…

tags: Did Religion Have an Evolutionary Value?, religion, psychology, social structure, social commentary, cultural observation, Richard Dawkins, streaming video Richard Dawkins argues that humanity's historical predisposition towards religion and supernatural beliefs may have held an evolutionary utility. "The rule of thumb: 'Believe whatever your parents tell you,' quite clearly could have survival value," says Dawkins. He's the King of All the Atheists (um, yeah, right), and now Richard Dawkins is hammering home what he sees as his key argument against the existence of God. In his book,…

It just so happens that I was up quite late last night doing--what else?--writing yet another grant application (well, two actually). Even though the grants aren't due until Wednesday, Tuesday happens to be my operating room day, meaning I need to get this done and buried by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. In any case, I had been planning on just posting a rerun or two, as is my wont when real life gets so crazy that even my rapid-fire blogorrhea is curtailed, and then someone had to go and send me something that merits at least a brief bit of Insolence. Try as I might not to get sucked…

Fossil fish from the Eocene age Green River Formation in Colorado. From Wikipedia. I am pretty tired of Richard Dawkins putting down paleontology. In his 2004 tome The Ancestor's Tale, as well as in his latest book The Greatest Show on Earth, Dawkins felt compelled to cast the fossil record as an unnecessary bonus when it comes to demonstrating the reality of evolution. "The evidence for evolution would be entirely secure," he asserts in the latter book, "even if not a single corpse had ever fossilized." While this statement contains a crumb of truth - we have learned much about evolution…

Last week I posted about the increasing problem of incivility at comment sections for blogs and news sites. As I noted at the end of the discussion thread that was started, I plan to return to the topic in depth, perhaps as part of an article or study. My thoughts on the topic are apparently at least partially shared by Richard Dawkins. In a post yesterday, Dawkins lashed out against many commenters at his own site, noting their "remarkable bile" and extreme reaction to a change in comment and editorial policy at RichardDawkins.net. The full post should be read, but here is just an…

If you think his misrepresentations about what climate scientists told him were bad, check out what Jonathan Leake did to Richard Dawkins: Top Scientist Gives Backing to Astrology However, Seymour's theories won qualified support from an unexpected source. Richard Dawkins, professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford University, who once suggested that astrologers be prosecuted under the trades descriptions act, said that although he had not read the book Seymour's ideas sounded interesting. Dawkins responded "No. I most emphatically did NOT give my support to Percy Seymour. I…

I sort of love the "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" posters that have become the darling of interior decorating bloggers and graphic design jokesters alike in the past few years. I even have one of the posters hanging in my apartment. Then I saw Merlin's version. At first I LOLed, and then I was like "huh." How did we get here? How did this meme evolve from stoic World War II propaganda to hilarious Richard Dawkins jokes? And thus, the phylogenetic tree of "KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON" posters was born: High res here.

I have yet to meet anyone who has read this book, myself included. But apparently some sciency blogger picked up a copy the other day and noticed a near absence of female scientists represented in the anthology. Why? Y, apparently. As you probably know, Richard Dawkins is presently being raked over blogospheric coals for having edited a volume of science writing that includes only about 3.6% of its works written by females. The observation was first made here at hgg, and has been discussed here at The Intersection, here at Aetiology, here at Questionable Authority, at Blue Lab Coats, here…

tags: religion, fundamentalism, christianity, hate mail, Richard Dawkins, streaming video Richard Dawkins responds to some hate mail sent by those architects of brotherly love, god's own followers, christians.

tags: religion, fundamentalism, christianity, atheist meets god, Edward Current, streaming video It's the moment of judgment for one fool who says there is no God. Christians, get ready to laugh as he learns his eternal fate!

Speaking of Richard Dawkins, he's back to science, in this case an excerpt from his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution: The evolution of the dog, then, if Coppinger is right, was not just a matter of artificial selection, but a complicated mixture of natural selection (which predominated in the early stages of domestication) and artificial selection (which came to the fore more recently). The transition would have been seamless, which again goes to emphasise the similarity -- as Darwin recognised -- between artificial and natural selection. Nothing new in the…