1. An Original Confession

Comment #207369 by Steinsky on July 9, 2008 at 3:23 pm

By all accounts, it is Voyage that must be read. Voyage was a delight, but Origin still sits in my unread pile too.

2. Lab agrees to test Shroud of Turin for new theory

Comment #182883 by Steinsky on May 21, 2008 at 5:04 am

Count von Count has pretty much said what I was going to say, but....

"Science still has much to tell us about the shroud," said Jackson, a devout Catholic. "If we are dealing with the burial cloth of Christ, it is the witness to the birth of Christianity. But my faith doesn't depend on that outcome."

... I think I see how this works:
1. The shroud is shown to be 2000 years old,
2. Therefore it logically follows that Jesus existed and this was his shroud
3. Therefore it logically follows that the bible is literally true in all aspects and the universe is ruled over by an elderly male interventionist deity who loves zygotes and takes a great interest in your sex life

... or ...

1. The shroud is not shown to be 2000 years old
2. Therefore there was contamination, or this is a fake/replica and the real one is out there somewhere

Lets all agree in advance that this study's results will be worthless either way.

3. Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Comment #160709 by Steinsky on April 14, 2008 at 10:03 am

Oh dear. If I don't learn to control myself, I'll end up doing something very stupid. Like writing to Points of View.

from Joe Dunckley
to letters@guardian.co.uk,
date Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 4:26 PM
subject Re: Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art
Mark Ravenhill
Monday April 14, 2008
The Guardian
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2273469,00.html

Dear Sir,

Please ask Mark Ravenhill to come back and try again when he has actually read the works of Richard Dawkins and the other officers of the secular army. He may be pleasantly surprised when he learns that field commander Dawkins et al have plenty to say on religion-influenced art, including the occasional nice thing, and that militant agnostics do not wish to burn books in city squares. Indeed, Dawkins has himself argued that the Bible belongs in schools -- in English literature classes, alongside other influential works of fiction.

Of course an atheist can feel joy, awe, and admiration for religious art -- that is so obvious that it seems like a waste of paper to have to have to make such a case. But one can also enjoy a Dickens without mourning penal transportation, love Tchaikovsky without wishing for an invading French army, and admire the architecture of East Berlin without admiring the GDR.

Yours,

etc

4. Over half of Britons claim no religion

Comment #131304 by Steinsky on February 22, 2008 at 8:08 am

Steve N: I can actually imagine things being the other way around -- people answering "no" to the God question (whether agnostic or atheist) but stating that they are "Christian" because they grew up in a Christian family and went to a CofE school, vaguely remember the parables and nativity, and just don't relate to islam, hinduism, and all the rest of them.

5. What would Darwin have made of the Human Genome Project?

Comment #125491 by Steinsky on February 11, 2008 at 12:50 pm

I'm with Cairnarvon -- the whole "junk" section is a bit of a mess, giving an at best oversimplified and misleading picture of the situation. The reference to TSG I take to be a cheap shot at it -- I don't see what other purpose there can be for mentioning it in passing in a general purpose article. The paper should have cut it, since it makes no contribution to the article. Since the author is a prof of genetics (not that I'm questioning the existence of stupidity amongst profs), I'll be charitable, and assume that it's all the fault of the subeditor, with perhaps a little lack of experience of writing concise popular articles.

6. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #121818 by Steinsky on February 4, 2008 at 7:50 am

yanco said: Mutation doesn't equal evolution. There still needs to be a process of selection be it natural or artificial.

Sorry, this is simply wrong. You may wish to read up on genetic drift and related concepts.

7. Sprinting down the evolutionary highway

Comment #121815 by Steinsky on February 4, 2008 at 7:46 am

I'm skeptical about the conclusion that the Evolution of humans will go faster. Medicine and plentitude of food in modern countries must inevitably slow down the process, because most people will survive and reproduce even with serious health problems that would some 200 years ago prohibit them to even reach adulthood.

Oh? You're proposing that a major change to our environment and lifestyle is going to stop evolution? Sounds like nonsense to me. You seem to be imagining evolution as a progressive force toward a super race. If, as you assert, most people will now survive and reproduce with serious health problems, when they would not in the past, don't you think that there may perhaps be some consequences for allele distributions? A change in allele frequency caused by the removal of a selection pressure is just as much evolution as one caused by the addition of a selection pressure.

And anyway, the conditions that you are describing appear to assume a Western civilisation, and little migration. Have you considered the possibility that there may be a little evolution going on in those areas of Africa where HIV infection rates are above 50% of the population?

8. MySpace: No place for Atheists?

Comment #118248 by Steinsky on January 30, 2008 at 2:04 pm

I deleted my account. I hardly needed this new excuse to, and it was the first time I had logged in for a year.

To those who think that deleting your account is the wrong approach: myspace is still just about the largest such networking site in the world. But its market share has fallen from nearly everything, to around half. The more users it has, the more musicians and other content it attracts, the more page imprints it gets, and the more advertising revenue it gets. My approach is to delete my account, and tell all the musicians and other content providers that I think would be sympathetic. They can't ignore a fall in content and visitors.

9. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism

Comment #115408 by Steinsky on January 24, 2008 at 6:56 am

*Yawn*

What is it with the constant recycling of the same old?

http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Evolution_is_racist
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Darwin_himself_was_racist

10. Ethical storm as scientist becomes first man to clone HIMSELF

Comment #113619 by Steinsky on January 20, 2008 at 7:40 am

I see I'm a little late, but I just had to flag up this quote too:

And the Vatican condemned the cloning of human embryos, calling it the "worst type of exploitation of the human being".

Wow. Yes. That's the billion strong Roman Catholic church. What was that about us atheists always picking up on the extremists with ludicrous ethical ideas that nobody really holds?

11. New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory: Evolution Not Random

Comment #113393 by Steinsky on January 19, 2008 at 1:39 pm

I _love_ scientific press releases. There are some absolute crackers out there. I subscribe to EurekAlert's biology press releases and it really is marvelous. I've yet to see one that demonstrates any actual understanding of the research being reviewed, but they show such incredible creativity in their attempt. There are a selection of them linked here.

12. Richard Dawkins on The Late Edition with Marcus Brigstocke

Comment #109972 by Steinsky on January 10, 2008 at 7:46 am

I went to a recording of the Late Edition -- I was overwhelmed: sat in the front row with the wonderful Marcus stood right next to me.

But I'm so dissapointed that rather than being assigned the edition with Dawkins or the marvelous Tony Benn, I ended up at the one with the utterly utterly pointless "comedian" Michael McIntyre.

13. New attempt to end blasphemy law

Comment #109949 by Steinsky on January 10, 2008 at 6:23 am

I wrote about this yesterday, because it turns out that there are people who oppose the law being repealed because of "the signal it would send".

It's not that suprising that this is still on the books -- all sorts of old laws get forgotten. I was rather suprised to discover how many countries (and not just the usual Islamicist suspects) have such laws -- many of them far stricter and better enforced than our own. South Africa I thought was a rather bizarre one, what with their famously liberal constitution.

14. It is possible to be moral without God

Comment #105256 by Steinsky on December 31, 2007 at 2:37 am

I really love this:

Philosopher Michael Ruse has written: 'The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist.'

I can't work out whether it's a marvelously simple but clevel rhetorical device -- giving the reader the impression that tGD is crap, without Harries having to look like the rude reviewer -- or if perhaps Harries feels the need to constantly and publically display that he hasn't lost his faith, but can't quite bring himself to say it, so quotes others.

15. Devil of a problem

Comment #80537 by Steinsky on October 22, 2007 at 5:16 am

Re: the immune system normally rejecting foreign cells. I wrote about this on my blog the other day ("Rogues and Devils"). The devils went through a genetic bottleneck (founder effect) when Tasmania was separated from the mainland at the end of the last ice age, which is probably why it was easier for a transmissible cancer to take hold in this particular species -- less diversity in the MHC, etc.