Sam Harris and Michael Shermer debate Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston on Nightline (23rd March 2010).
If you want to watch some more debates click here.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Do chimps know death?
An interesting article on how we as great apes deal with death.
I've always said that we are the only species whose members know they’re going to die. I’m not sure that’s true, of course, but there have been suggestions that some mammals, even if they don’t grasp their own personal mortality, at least understand that death is something final and unique.
Two years ago, Natalie Angier of The New York Times had a piece on this issue, prompted by the death of a baby gorilla in a German zoo whose mother continued to carry the corpse for days, refusing to surrender it to keepers. Angier mentioned work by Karen McComb and her colleagues showing that African elephants preferentially fondle the bones of dead elephants as opposed to bones from other species.
The latest issue of Current Biology has two thanatological notes (thanatology is the scientific study of death) suggesting that chimps, our closest relatives, perceive death as something unique.
The Power to Open our Eyes
In The Blind Watchmaker, penned by Richard Dawkins almost 25 years ago, Tim Radford rediscovers a writer who is patient, lyrical and immensely persuasive.
One sometimes forgets, given his recent combative secular humanism, just how warm and lyrical Richard Dawkins can be. This is a patient, often beautiful book from 1986 that begins in a generous mood and sustains its generosity to the end. It takes its title from a famous sentence in William Paley's Natural Theology (1802), which Dawkins calls "a book that I greatly admire..."
Not only does he profess admiration, he even concedes that he might once have been convinced by Paley. "I could not imagine being an atheist at any time before 1859, when Darwin's Origin of Species was published," he volunteers.
This generosity extends even to the "sincere and honest", but clearly somewhat confused, Church of England bishop Hugh Montefiore who could not believe (Dawkins calls this the Argument from Personal Incredulity) that natural selection explained, for instance, the whiteness of polar bears.
But most of all, Dawkins' generosity extends to the reader, who is confronted with meticulous reasoning, leavened by lyrical riffs upon metaphor that have always been his trademark.
Who wants absolute morality?
It's funny how religion can make all of these irrational claims, and yet if an Atheist says anything in disagreement then they claim they are offended.
They offend us constantly. Double standards.
All we ask for is rational discussion on what actions would be best to help all people have a better life.
Why no Asbo for the Pope?
A very cutting article by A. C. Grayling of the Independent about the lack of punishment for the Pope regarding his involvement in the Catholic Churches Child Abuse cover up
Why is it that large, rich, influential organisations and those who run them get away with big crimes and misdemeanours, when ordinary folk are punished for their miniature versions of them? It's an old story, of course, but no more pleasant or right for being so.
Compare the circumstances of two men whose occupations and avocations have brought them to pubic notice recently. One is Harry Taylor, an unemployed 59-year-old, who was found guilty last week in a Liverpool court of putting "offensive religious images" in the prayer room of the city's John Lennon airport (which he did on the grounds that having such a room in an airport named after John Lennon would, he said, have offended John Lennon). The jury of 10 women and two men had all sworn to consider his case fairly – on the Bible.
Mr Taylor received a five-year Asbo forbidding him from carrying religiously offensive images in public, and sentencing him to six months' imprisonment suspended for two years, but with 100 hours of unpaid work and £250 costs to make him feel the sting of the judge's disapproval.
The other man is Joseph Ratzinger, otherwise Pope Benedict XVI, right, current head of the Roman Catholic church. To appreciate the contrast between the Pope and Mr Taylor, we need to remind ourselves of the following simple facts. Child sex abuse is a serious crime. Concealing crimes is a serious crime. Systematic, decades-long deliberate concealment of many thousands of crimes in many countries is a very large-scale criminal conspiracy. It is a matter of public record that the Catholic church is guilty of just such a conspiracy. The Pope, as head of the church, is accountable for the its actions. It is also on public record that he personally protected abusers and covered up cases of child abuse before becoming Pope.
Is the Pope in any danger of receiving 100 hours of community service for hiding hundreds of paedophiles from the law all round the world? Is he likely to get an Asbo? Or has he been invited to the United Kingdom as an official visitor who will meet the Queen and be feted and courted, secure in the knowledge that efforts to arrest him and put him on trial for heading a huge criminal conspiracy will fail?
Bill Maher Slams 'Extremist' Muslims
As the world gets smaller and people live closer together, and different world views clash, its inevitable that we start to build a Global Community based upon a common moral guideline.
We want to assimilate every individual on the planet's cultures and traditions, it makes us more rounded and educated, it gives us the ability to see things from a different perspective.
However, some things are not negotiable.
Creationism propaganda for children caught on camera
If someone taught children that the Holocaust didn't happen there would be uproar.
If someone taught children that contraception was evil and STIs were safer the media would have a field day.
If someone taught children that Gravity was a myth and jumping out of the window was safe, well...
So why are we letting these guys get away with this? It should be against the law to lie like this to children.
Just because something is easier to explain doesn't make it fact. Just because you don't understand something doesn't make the alternative true, and to piss all over your child's opportunity to understand something you were unable to do, well that just messed up.
Why are we in 2010 having to fight these people on something that has a proven, tried and tested answer time and time again?
Please someone, help me.
Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes
I found an interesting article from Evolution Pages that explains not just the difference in the DNA string of a Human and that of a Chimpanzee, but also how that genetic string changed.
All great apes apart from human have 24 pairs of chromosomes.
There are 23 paired chromosomes in human DNA. A chromosome is a very long DNA molecule and associated proteins, that carry portions of the hereditary information of an organism.
There is therefore a hypothesis that the common ancestor of all great apes had 24 pairs of chromosomes and that the fusion of two of the ancestor's chromosomes created chromosome 2 in humans. The evidence for this hypothesis is very strong.Not only is this strong evidence for a fusion event, but it is also strong evidence for common ancestry; in fact, it is hard to explain by any other mechanism.Let us re-iterate what we find on human chromosome 2. Its centromere is at the same place as the chimpanzee chromosome 2p as determined by sequence similarity. Even more telling is the fact that on the 2q arm of the human chromosome 2 is the unmistakable remains of the original chromosome centromere of the common ancestor of human and chimp 2q chromosome, at the same position as the chimp 2q centromere (this structure in humans no longer acts as a centromere for chromosome 2.
Very cool stuff, but for more detailed information please read the full article.
Read the article
Do Wildlife documentaries infringe animals' privacy?
An interesting article by Ian Sample of the Guardian about how wildlife documentaries may be causing the animals unnecessary stress.
Wildlife documentary makers are infringing animals' rights to privacy by filming their most private and intimate moments, according to a new study.Footage of animals giving birth in their burrows or mating crosses an ethical line that film-makers should respect, according to Brett Mills, a lecturer in film studies at the University of East Anglia.Mills compiled a report on animals' rights to privacy after reviewing scenes from the BBC's 2009 wildlife series "Nature's Great Events". Among the offending footage was film of a narwhal whale that appeared to have retreated from view beneath the Arctic ice sheet."Instead of thinking we'll leave it alone, film-makers decide the only solution is to develop new technology so they can film it," Mills said."We have an assumption that humans have some right to privacy, so why do we not assume that for other species, particularly when they are engaging in behaviour that suggests they don't want to be seen?"
In the BBC's Planet Earth they used high definition high zoom lenses from hot air balloons to ensure that they filmed a lot of their work from a distance that didn't disturb the animals.
It also meant that they saw the creatures at their most natural.
Maybe we should change some of our methods of observation when it comes to the Natural World, however, if we are to ensure that the next generation feel connected to the natural world we need to educate them about as many of the natural wonders as possible.
Once you feel connected to something, you want to ensure its protection and survival.
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