Free Curiosity Rover Poster With Carl Sagan Quote

For quite a while I’ve been looking for just the right poster to frame and hang in my office, but I’d yet to find anything that really caught my eye. Instead of continuing to search for something I probably wouldn’t be completely happy with, I decided to make my own poster. Here it is:

In a couple of weeks my 24″x36″ poster will be delivered from
http://shortrunposters.com
for the affordable price of $26.86. That’s the cheapest I’ve found for printing up a single poster, and if you’d like to have a copy of your own printed up you can feel free to use this PDF (my gift to you – 24.6mb), which has been prepared for those dimensions. Enjoy!

Original Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Note: I am not affiliated with ShortRunPosters.com in any way. They are just the cheapest that I’ve found, and they do a good job. If you find a cheaper place to have the poster done up, please leave a comment. Thanks!

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Conspiracy Road Trip: Creationism

Comedian Andrew Maxwell takes five British creationists to the west coast of America to try to convince them that evolution rather than creationism explains how we all got here. Stuck on a bus across 2,000 miles of dustbowl roads with these passionate believers, Maxwell tackles some firmly held beliefs – could the Earth be only 6,000 years old, and did humans and T-Rex really live side by side? It’s a bumpy ride as he’s confronted with some lively debates along the way, but by the end could he possibly win over any of these believers with what he regards as hard scientific fact? [BBC]

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Strolling Bonobos

Bonobos have to be the coolest primates on the whole planet next to humans.  We share about 99% of our DNA with them, and if you take a couple of minutes to watch this video, you can see them walk upright like humans as they carry sugar cane and their young.   It’s amazing footage….

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2nd Place Finish & Thoughts On The Contest

I’m going to steal away a few minutes from my ever busy schedule to write about the Project Reason 2012 Video Contest, that I recently participated in, and ultimately ended up taking home 2nd place, and the $4000 prize.  I’ll start off by saying that this was one of the best organized video contests I’ve ever been a part of.  I submitted my video, and was notified it was a finalist the day before the voting period started.  Once voting was over, I was notified that I had won 2nd place the day the voting ended.  If that wasn’t speedy enough – I had a check in hand 1 week later.  Video contests rarely run that smooth, or are that well organized.  My hat is off to Sam and Annika Harris for doing an outstanding job with the logistics.  Now, onto the entries…

1st Place – $10,000

I absolutely loved the 1st place winner.  The animation, the scripting, the narration (everything sounds better with a British accent), the music, and most of all – the message.  It was great.  While it was great, however, it was not my first choice, and the only reason is because it was preaching right to me “in the choir.”  I just don’t think the video would challenge the thought process of the theistically-minded enough to have an impact.  I could be wrong, but that’s just my impression.  Just the same, I’m very happy for the 1st place winner, and if I was going to take 2nd place to another video, I wanted it to be that one.  The producers did an outstanding job.

2nd Place – $4000

I won’t add anything new on my video seeing as I’ve already given the background on it here.

3rd Place – $1000

This was probably my least favorite of the 6 finalists.  Had it been shortened into a 30-second video, I probably would have liked it a little better, but I’m just not one for long, text-driven (small text at that) videos.  Obviously there were others who liked it, and overall the message is a good one.  Dogmatism really IS NOT patriotic.  I just would have like to have seen that message driven home in a slightly different format.

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The Making Of: “Genesis Creation Visualized – Scientifically”

As promised, I’m following up on my previous blog post where I revealed the first video I’ve produced here at TheSkepticalMagician.com – “Genesis Creation Visualized – Scientifically.”  I put a considerable amount of thought and energy into creating this video, and I wanted to give you a behind the scenes look into the reasons why I made it the way I did.

Why re-write Genesis?

A common response one gets when talking to Christians about the origins of the Universe and the lack of specificity and accuracy of the Genesis account — is that the complex laws of physics would have been lost on bronze age peoples, so God had to dumb it down so humans could comprehend all that he had done.  In other words, the divine creator had to be vague, and not quite as accurate because the concepts were not there to explain it fully.  This seems to make a lot of intuitive sense to believers, and it is something that enables them to continue believing what they want to believe, so they don’t take that next crucial step that everyone should take when determining whether or not something they believe is true… They don’t try to prove themselves wrong!  And just like a scientist who submits something for peer review without first trying to disprove their ideas, if they don’t do it — someone else will.  By re-writing the Genesis account as I did (and I could have been far more detailed were it not for my time limits), I was able to show that one could give a scientifically accurate portrayal of the evolution of the Cosmos that a bronze age human could understand, while still maintaining certain poetic liberties.  Had the first 18 verses of Genesis been something similar to what I created, we in present day would have to stop and ask, “How in the heck did these bronze age illiterates know about things like fusion and the forging of the elements within stars?”  “How did they know the Earth orbits the Sun, and how did they know it rolls upon the fabric of space like it does?”  Instead of having to answer difficult questions like these, we’re left with undeniable evidence that the Genesis account of creation is just one more in a long line of creation myths.

Now, I fully admit that the Genesis account as currently written could have happened just like the Bible says, and I say as much in the video.  There is no way for me to disprove this, though I don’t think most Christians would be comfortable with what this would tell us about the creator.  If the Genesis account of the Bible is a literal, historical account of the creation of the Universe, then the creator is a deceiver.  He’s a trickster.  He’s a hoaxer.  In order for the Genesis account to be true, it would mean that creator would have had to intentionally alter time and space itself to make it look like things had occurred completely different than they actually had.  In essence,  that God is one who not only tricks people, but tricks people into not believing in him, or in his written text, which plainly goes against the idea in 2 Peter 3:9 that God is “…not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.“

A track that many liberal Christians take is that the Genesis account is not a literal history of creation, but that it’s a symbolic or metaphoric account of man’s relationship with his creator etc, etc, etc.  Again, I can’t disprove that either, though I don’t think people who follow that line of thinking consider the greater negative theological implications for the Christian faith later on down the line.  Without a literal Genesis, or a literal Adam and Eve – there is no basis or necessity for a literal 2nd Adam (i.e. Jesus) to undo what they did in Genesis.  For these types, much of the Bible is looked at as metaphorical or symbolic, and these issues aren’t of any great concern to them, and they are happy to believe just the same.  Again, trying to disprove their perspective is a bit like trying to nail jello to a wall, and there are so many ad hoc fallacies, and so much special pleading injected into the conversation that one can find themselves quickly frustrated.  In general, these types of believers aren’t usually trying to get Biblical creation crammed into science classrooms, and are often times just as against their fundamentalist brethren in that regard as secularists are.  So while I don’t agree with their conclusions, and can no more disprove their claims than I can disprove Russell’s teapot, I can at least respect their ability to accept the clear evidence of origins instead of dogmatically clinging to ideas that are either false (my position), or the product of an omnipotent trickster.

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Genesis Creation Visualized – Scientifically

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for — I give you the first video production for TheSkepticalMagician.com…

Blog post to follow in the next couple of days talking about what went into the making.  Enjoy!

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Your Vitamins Could Kill You Faster

An article popped up in my Facebook feed from Forbes Magazine this week concerning the use of multivitamins and supplements, and how their use can actually shorten your life.  Having people in my family that are huge into vitamins and supplements, I was eager to see what the results of the studies by Jaakko Mursu and colleagues had to say.

I was very impressed by the sample size for both of the studies which followed 38,772 women for 25 years, and 35,533 men for 10 years in a study by Eric Klein and colleagues.  The news isn’t really anything new — vitamins and supplements for the most part do not improve health at all, and can actually make your health worse by killing you quicker, rather than prolonging your life.  The only supplement that seemed to have mixed results was calcium.

Some people say, “But my vitamins give me so much energy and strength.  I could never live without my vitamins and supplements.”  These people are experiencing what is known as a placebo effect, where even though the vitamins and supplements are having no effect, or a negative effect on their overall health — their perception is that of benefit.  The short and entertaining video below will give you a good perspective on the power of placebo.

So, if vitamins and supplements can kill us faster, what should we do?  Eat a well balanced diet with lots of fruit and vegetables, and get a healthy amount of physical exercise.  Your body will love you for it, and you won’t have to waste your money on pills that will only kill you faster.

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Book Review: Sex & God – How Religion Distorts Sexuality

If you visit my blog often, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve had the same two books in my “Currently Reading” section of the sidebar for quite a while.  Now that my schedule has smoothed out a little bit, I was able to finish reading both of them, and have finally gotten around to writing my review of Dr. Darrel Ray’s new book, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality.

Back in January of 2011, my wife and I had the pleasure of participating in Dr. Ray’s Sex and Secularism Survey, which sought to explore how people’s sex lives changed after coming out of religion.  Some of the research from that survey went into the book, but you can also download the results of the survey in a PDF report here.

The book is broken up into 5 different sections (Religion in Perspective, Follow the Biology, Follow the Culture, The Psychology of Religion and Sex, and Program Yourself for a Change) with a total of 26 chapters spit up among the sections.  Despite it taking me a while to get through the book, most should find this to be a quick read.  I’ll state at the beginning that the only real negative thing I have to say about the book is that it was repetitious at times, but that was a minor issue, and does not detract from the book or the subject matter at hand.  Others have criticized the Sex and Secularism Survey because of the self-selected sample, but there’s really no getting around that when you’re dealing with the topic of sex.  If you disagree, head down to the local shopping mall and approach random people with a clipboard, and tell them you’re going to talk to them about their sex lives.  Be sure to report back to me afterward to let me know how that went for you.

Religious people are really hung up on the idea of sex.  Whether it’s heterosexual sex, homosexual sex, bisexual sex, oral sex, anal sex, self-sex (masturbation), and everything here, there, and everywhere pertaining to human sexuality – you can bet your sweet bippy that religion is going to have it’s fingers in the pie.  The reason for this, as Dr. Ray so eloquently reasons in the book, is because sex is common to everyone, and if the various religions can make you feel guilty about it, then you’re going to have to return to that religion to get forgiveness or alleviate the guilt that has been imposed on you by that religion.  Because people are sexual creatures, this guilt cycle is very successful in keeping people coming back to their respective religions.  How many successful large-scale religions do you see that are sexually permissive?  None, and I would argue one of the reasons is that guilt is a powerful motivator and tool to keep people locked into a religion.

From the Christian perspective, people are often sold this idea that if you just wait until you’re married, you’re going to have this awesome sex life that God is going to bless because you waited.   From a strictly anecdotal point of view — I call bullshit, and would venture to say that’s why you see so many Christian marriages ending in divorce, and why you have so many Christians who are disillusioned with their faith.  Whether Christians like it or not — no matter how often you speak of sex as God’s gift in the context of marriage, having such a negative view of human sexuality coupled with the guilt heaped on over the years for any potential sexual thought or action is going to create problems in the bedroom for a great number of people even after they are married.  It’s amazing how many people I’ve known over the years, both as a pastor and just as a friend, where the sexual relationship within the marriage was far from what people had been promised.  Rich Lyons, a former Pentecostal preacher for 20 years, only had sex with his wife about 12 times during his marriage of 21 years!  Research from the conservative Schafer Institute matches with the experience of pastors like Rich, and the numbers are not in the favor of the Christian perspective of God’s blessing on sex within the confines of Christian marriage:

• Of the 1,050 (100%) of pastors surveyed, every one had a close associate or seminary buddy who had left the ministry because of burnout, conflict in their church or from a moral failure.
• 808 (77%) of the pastors surveyed felt they did not have a good marriage.
• 399 (38%) of the pastors said they were divorced or currently in a divorce process.
• 315 (30%) said they had either been in an ongoing affair or a one-time sexual encounter with a parishioner.
• Almost 40% said they had had an extramarital affair since beginning their ministry.
• 70% of pastors constantly fought depression.

It doesn’t take long for people to start thinking thoughts like: “My religion told me my sex life would be great in my marriage.”  ”My sex life in my marriage sucks.”  ”If my religion is wrong about sex, what else is it wrong about?”

One of the most fascinating aspects of Sex & God, was the anthropological exploration of the Hadza, Mangaians, and Na cultures, which differ immensely from the traditional western views of human sexuality.  These cultures have a vastly different perspective on sex, which has not been influenced by any of the major monotheistic religions.  As a result, it provides an interesting perspective into what things looked like before our transition from hunter gatherer to agrarian societies.  If there’s a holy spirit that is universally convicting people of their sin, including their sexual sin, he apparently decided to skip the Hadza, Mangaians, and the Na, because the sexual do’s and don’ts that accompany western religions like Christianity simply do not exist within these cultures, and the people feel no guilt concerning the natural expression of their sexuality.

The 26 chapters of the book are chocked full of information, and I can really only scratch the surface in this review.  There are over 7 billion people on this planet, and they all got here the same way.  Ignoring or distorting human sexuality is useful to no one, and it is only through studying the topic in a scientific manner, instead of relying on bronze aged texts, that we can hope to understand what makes humans tick sexually.  I highly recommend Dr. Darrel Ray’s, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality as a useful resource in understanding the topic of human sexuality, as well in helping people to heal from having a warped perspective on their sexuality as they come out of religion.  The book is available in both paperback and ebook formats.

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The Complexity of Human Sexuality

People tend to think of human sexuality as a very black and white issue, particularly within the heat of the American Culture War.  Straight or gay, right or wrong, good and evil seem to dominate the conversation, and the idea that one chooses their sexuality, or can change it simply by willing it to be so, is a prevalent and misguided perspective.  “Man bits fit with lady bits, and lady bits fit with man bits” is the mantra (or something similar), and anything else is an abomination according to ancient texts, written in dead languages, by Bronze Age men.  The problem with that perspective, however, is that it attempts to simplify an extremely complex issue, and demonizes anyone that doesn’t fall into the range of what the religious right deems morally acceptable.

One of the reasons I think it is so easy for some to judge others based on their sexual orientation is because sexuality cannot be seen.  Not that you couldn’t “see” two people having same-sex intercourse, but what I mean to say is that a person’s sexual desires are an internal mental state, and not something visible you can determine just by looking at someone.  Because mental activity is generally viewed in terms of “choosing,” this makes it very easy for a person to look at someone’s physical characteristics (i.e. male/female), and then determine what their appropriate mental attitude should be regarding those of the same or opposite gender.  This is usually a pretty comfortable place for those who like to keep sexuality a black or white issue, but things get a little murky and confusing for them when you introduce them to a category they are likely unfamiliar with: intersex.

“Intersex, in humans and other animals, is the presence of intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish female from male. This is usually understood to be congenital, involving chromosomal, morphologic, genital and/or gonadal anomalies, such as diversion from typical XX-female or XY-male presentations, e.g., sex reversal (XY-female, XX-male), genital ambiguity, or sex developmental differences. An intersex individual may have biological characteristics of both the male and the female sexes.”

With the introduction of intersex individuals, things become much more difficult to explain from the perspective of religious texts.  What does the Bible or the Koran say about someone who has a vagina and a penis?  Or a vagina and testicles? Or a penis and ovaries?  Or ovaries and testicles?  Can they go either way?  Can they only have sex with other intersex individuals?  If a person with a vagina and testicles has sex with someone with a penis and ovaries, is that a homosexual relationship, or do the opposites cancel each other out?  Perhaps the best course of action is to let the 109,000+ born each year love and have sex with whomever they want, because it’s their body, and they know better than anyone who they are, and no one has the right to tell them otherwise.

Now let’s take a step back for a moment because if you thought sexuality was all neat and tidy before, I have a hunch you’re at least willing to admit that maybe it’s not as tidy as you thought it was.  Is it not reasonable to acknowledge that if external sexual characteristics cannot be chosen, such as with the cases of intersex individuals — that the internal sexual characteristics of those in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community are also not chosen?  Is it also not reasonable to acknowledge that because we see intersex specimens among other species in the animal kingdom, as well as homosexual and bisexual behavior among other animals, that this behavior would be expected in certain percentages of humans as well?

I’ll leave you with part 1 of this excellent documentary on intersex individuals.  If you have not seen it previously, I highly recommend that you watch it, no matter what side of the fence you happen to be on concerning human sexuality.  If nothing else, you’ll come out a little more informed about a little-known issue than you were before.

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Free Will and Determinism

Sam Harris has a new book due out on March 6th called, Free Will, which is about (you may have guessed it) free will, or in reality, the lack there of.  I’ve got my copy on pre-order ($3.99 for Kindle Version), and it should be delivered to my Kindle the day it comes out.  If you think you have free will, I would encourage you to read it, but if you don’t, the choice wasn’t yours to begin with.  ;)

Many people are disturbed by the idea that they do not have free will, though I don’t think they should be.  Like any other bit of knowledge gained that challenges previously held thoughts, beliefs, and convictions – reality itself did not change, only your awareness of it did.  When people discovered the earth was round, it did not therefore mean it was flat before their change in perspective.  They simply made a discovery that gave them a more accurate view of their place and position in the universe.  Learning that free will is an illusion is no different.

Some individuals are concerned with potential social impacts as a result of people being aware that they do not have free will.  The philosopher Daniel Dennett is one such person, who has criticized neuroscientists like Sam Harris for writing books that show free will to be an illusion.  He considers it reckless, and is concerned that people will use it as an excuse for antisocial and destructive behavior.  Instead of “The devil made me do it,” he’s concerned people will say, “My brain made me do it.”  I think his fears are for the most part unwarranted, but also understandable.  Human beings are seldom worried about their own actions in given situations, but are almost always worried about what “the other guy” will do.  While there may be people who latch onto a deterministic view as an excuse for their misdeeds, I think for the most part, people in general will be quite reasonable, and their behavior is not likely to change for the worse.  I’m hoping Sam will address and respond to some of these concerns and criticisms from people like Dennett in the book, and possibly alleviate understandable, but ultimately unwarranted fears.

Again, I highly encourage you to pick up Sam’s new book when it comes out in March.  If you believe you have free will currently, I’m sure Sam will challenge you a great deal on that belief.  In the meantime, you can watch the video below as an introduction of sorts to get you thinking, and possibly entice you to pick up the book if you weren’t planning on doing so already.

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