1. New Zealand man sells his soul to 'Hell'

Comment #203658 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 3, 2008 at 10:28 am

Shouldn't some Christian organization start offering to buy any loose souls that end up on the market in order to "save" them? We should start suggesting this to evangelicals we run across. Then there wouldn't be a supply vs. demand problem.

2. Did newborn Earth harbour life?

Comment #203654 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 3, 2008 at 10:21 am

I've been wondering if it would have been possible for life to form in the protoplanetary disk and survive the formation of Earth. It seems like one of those hypotheses that is just crazy enough to be right. As I understand it, versions of the Miller experiment produce amino acids and other organic molecules at all kinds of starting conditions, and a protoplanetary disk would have a lot more surface area for reactions to take place than any planet.

3. Vatican bans Dan Brown film Angels & Demons from Rome churches

Comment #193883 by Your_Noodly_Master on June 16, 2008 at 7:33 am

"It's bad enough having to put up with tour guides explaining the scene to tourists"
"The Vatican asked the faithful to boycott the film of The Da Vinci Code"

I thought the appropriate response to misinformation or conspiracy theorists is to explain the truth as often as possible. Trying to prevent people from being exposed to a viewpoint is something to be expected from an actual conspiracy, and will therefore backfire and build suspicion that the information is accurate.

4. The Great Tantra Challenge

Comment #145842 by Your_Noodly_Master on March 18, 2008 at 8:08 am

FTA: "The tantrik, unwilling to admit defeat, tried the excuse that a very strong god whom Sanal might be worshipping obviously protected him."

Sanal definitely could have had some fun with this, i.e. don't you wish you knew my god's name?

I'm surprised the tantrik didn't try an "I can't because I don't really want to hurt you" defense. That would seem logically unassailable, and prevent people from using this as evidence against his "black magic"

5. Satellite shows Saturn moon might have rings

Comment #142347 by Your_Noodly_Master on March 12, 2008 at 11:09 am

You both missed this: "the apparent arcs around Rhea remain invisible and have not been directly seen. Scientists inferred their existence based on measurements by Cassini, which detected a drop in electrons on both sides of the moon, suggesting the presence of rings was absorbing the electrons."

The presence of rings is not an observation; it is an hypothesis to explain an observation that now needs to be tested.

6. In Defence of Selfish Genes

Comment #140430 by Your_Noodly_Master on March 7, 2008 at 9:48 am

The articles are all available here:

Midgley's original: http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=14
Dawkin's response: http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=5
Midgley's rebuttal: http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/article.php?id=15
If there is a response to this, I would like to know where it is.

7. Gamma-Ray Wipe-Out

Comment #58923 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 26, 2007 at 5:28 pm

Hypernovae happen less often now - they require stars of substantial mass, which are pretty rare (they were much more common in the early universe).

Hypernovae also shouldn't be that damaging. They could cause extinctions at thousands of light years, but almost certainly not at hundreds of thousands. The idea of 'galaxy sterilizing' events is fortunately much more science fiction than real science.

8. What use is Religion? Part 2

Comment #58391 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 24, 2007 at 5:16 pm

I hypothesize that religion does have a relative fitness advantage; at least those religions which are patriarchal and focus on regulating sexual behavior. As a simple example, a religion which preaches that sex is solely for procreation will necessarily look disfavorably on contraceptives. Further, the patriarchal nature of the most common modern religions has lead to reduced women's reproductive rights for those cultures.
This hypothesis predicts an increased average birth rate per woman with a religion compared to without, which obviously relates to Darwinian fitness. This leads to the prediction that in any population, the more religious members will reproduce more quickly, spreading the religion through the population. There should also be a decrease in sexual selection in a religious population; the results of which I don't claim to be able to predict.
This leads to another hypothesis: that atheism, or feminism or civil rights in general for that matter, can serve as Malthusian checks on population. This raises the prediction that in civilizations with similar forms of government and enforcement of civil rights, areas with lower population densities will tend to be more religious than areas with higher population densities.
I believe I have seen anecdotal or otherwise unscientific evidence for these predictions; e.g. I propose that the United States being more religious than Europe, and within the US, rural areas being more religious than urban can be interpreted as evidence of this last point. If anyone has seen a detailed study that provides the correlations necessary to support or refute these hypotheses, I would be interested.

9. Imagine No Religion

Comment #58389 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 24, 2007 at 5:13 pm

I agree that no one is born with a religion; my point is that from then on, indoctrination occurs. Trying to determine exactly when a child's beliefs are such that they could be considered a member of that religion seems impossible and pointless. Therefore, deciding whether it is appropriate to describe a child as Christian, Muslim, etc. would have to be done on a by case basis.

10. Imagine No Religion

Comment #58343 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 24, 2007 at 2:40 pm

RD makes the claim that children, who have given no thought to their religious beliefs, can not accurately be described as having a religion. However, in other articles, he theorizes that the spread of religion occurs because the minds of children are open to be easily programmed. His stated goal for his book is to get people to question the validity of their religions, which implies that most people don't. These ideas seem contradictory; people are programmed with religion as children and largely don't question it, but it is improper to describe some people as members of whatever religion for that same reason.

11. The Only One in Step

Comment #58340 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 24, 2007 at 2:28 pm

I believe the argument would would be more persuasive if it were based on the biological and geological evidence, lack of conflicting evidence, and how extraordinary the creationists' claims are compared to said evidence, rather than just to what mainstream scientists believe. I realize that one defines the other, but the creationists obviously do not. Someone who believes science is a dogma or belief system would regard this article more as peer pressure than anything else.

12. The Only One in Step

Comment #57871 by Your_Noodly_Master on July 21, 2007 at 6:34 pm

Forgive me if someone has already addressed this; there are very many posts here. Dawkins is obviously bending over backwards to make sure no one interprets him as saying that consensus in the scientific community is proof of correctness, but isn't this still a form of the Appeal to Authority fallacy? Perhaps I've missed the point, but I can't see what intention this article has besides influencing a reader to believe in evolution by virtue of other people that believe in it.