It's time to get back in the swing of things with my video Sundays.

• Hot off the presses, Potholer54Debunks has a new video debunking the creationist myth that the Grand Canyon had to have been formed in the flood.

• A look back at the classic "Mr. Show", their video The Limits of Science:

• That Mitchell and Webb Look take on the Abraham and Isaac story:

Call me naive. Call me what you will. Watch this clip:

I don't see sexism. I just don't see it. I *can see how someone might take it as sexist, but let's dissect what he's saying:

• First example
• • Random girl approaches in a hotel bar and "wants to spend time with you"
• • Be skeptical, she's most likely a prostitute (especially in Vegas)
• Second example:
• • Suppose you're being hit on in a bar.
• • She then says, "You're very interesting, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a Pisces."
• • He says you have two choices
• • • Tell her that astrology is bunk and offend her
• • • Ignore it and move on

The first example clearly is a joke and lies directly in the stereotypical setting for the "confused person doesn't realize he needs to pay" experience. It also is an allusion to an episode in season 2 of Big Bang Theory where this situation happens.

The second example is with what some people take exception. But Bill Prady phrased the situation very specifically. He didn't say, "If any girl approaches you, you can either tell her astrology is bunk or ignore it." He specifically says if a girl happens to tell you more about herself and the first thing she mentions is her sign, you can either ignore it or let her know how you feel about astrology.

It's very similar to any situation where I'm talking with any gendered person, and they bring up religion. Depending on who this person is and how much I want the conversation to continue, I will either change the subject/say something non-committal or tell them I'm an atheist.

Let alone he wasn't being sexist to any of the women attending TAM7, unless you happen to be someone who would introduce yourself as your astrological sign. If you are, you need to seriously get caught up on your reading.

What I really feel is going on here is confirmation bias. I think there's a lot of situations that can be considered "gray area" for any number of topics, including sexism or racism. When something triggers that notion that is similar to what you're expecting, you assume it was what you were expecting. I feel that a lot of the movements often claim injustice when the offense wasn't really there.

I'm not saying that every claim of injustice is unwarranted -- far from it. I realize we still battle with sexism and racism. There is legitimate concern to be had when people are sexist or racist and harm others, whether it's emotionally or physically. But I think that before anyone makes a claim as severe as calling someone sexist, one should consider the arguments skeptically and thoroughly before coming out with the claim.

But perhaps I'm misunderstanding why this is considered sexist. If so, please leave a comment and let me know, because I'm utterly clueless right now.

I got back from The Amazing Meeting 7 (TAM7) on Tuesday. This was my first TAM, and I had a great time. I wanted to share some highlights, and hopefully encourage more people to come next year. TAM is a conference where skeptics get together to discuss different topics that are currently affecting the world. The most prominent one this year was probably the Anti-vax movement.

This year 1,007 people were officially registered when James Randi stood up to give his opening remarks. This was a huge crowd, but I did run into a lot of the people I was hoping to meet. On Thursday after I arrived, I went to Red Rock Canyon with a skeptic couple I met on the JREF Forums. It's amazing to see what was created in only 6,000 years.

It was hard to get pictures that did the scale justice. If you've never been to Red Rock, it's a must see. It's only $5 per vehicle, and is totally worth the scenic drive. That night was the "meet and greet" where I started to make some friends. I did end up meeting up with Matt Dillahunty for a few minutes before going our separate ways. While we were both there, we tended to go our own paths syncing up once in a while.

The original plan to do some recorded interviews fell through as it was realized a little too late that the speakers could only be booked by going through the TAM organizers, and by the time we inquired, they were basically all booked. That was actually OK with me, because I enjoyed having the flexibility of doing whatever I wanted to :)

I got great seats for the Jamy Ian Swiss, Banachek, Mac King, and Burke show that night. A few moments after I sat down in the second row, none other than Randi himself is seated right in front of me. A few minutes after that, Penn comes up and talks to him for a few minutes.

The show was hilarious and mesmerizing. As a skeptic I know nothing magical is happening, but I can't figure out how in the world they do their tricks. Mac King was great, and I will be going to see his full show, but what stumped me the most was Banachek. It appeared that he was able to guess people's full names, birth dates, and more. I haven't a clue how it works.

Later that night in the lounge, I happened to take a great picture of Brian Brushwood from Scam School:

Day 1 - Friday

Friday morning started off with a live taping of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Shortly thereafter, Randi gave his introduction in which he explained his absence as of late.

During a routine medical examination more than a month ago, it was discovered that I had a nasty visitor inside me – yet another stunning example of Intelligent Design at work, friends. My doctors went in and removed it, and things are looking up again.

While he is certainly looking his age, his spirits were high through the conference.

Up next was the keynote delivered by Bill Prady, co-creator of The Big Bang Theory. It was a very entertaining talk, and it's refreshing to have a TV show written by people who love science, and it shows in the dialogue. He showed some highlights from the show, and talked about some of the stories behind the characters. It was a great way to kick off the show.

The next part of the day that amazed me was the conversation between Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi about some of his previous stunts and gigs. Would you believe that he was part of Alice Cooper's videos and built some of the effects?

That night was the SGU dinner, which was very delicious. I was able to meet Jay Novella and briefly Evan Bernstein. Technically I "met" Rebecca because she was the reason Evan left our table so quickly. Unfortunately my paths never crossed with Steve Novella.

After the dinner was Dean Cameron's Nigerian Spam Scam Scam. This was by far the most I laughed all weekend. It is a reenactment of the all-too-common Nigerian 419 scam letters, to which he replied and kept dragging them along. Apparently he always replies with the same line to start off the exchange: "Great! Do you have any toast?"

While it's hilarious to read, it's great to see it acted out with great timing, voices, and facial expressions.

After that George Hrab gave a slightly condensed version of his songs for the elements (a short song written for each of the elements of the periodic table).

Day 2 - Saturday

During the Saturday Morning breakfast, the SGU was scheduled for another live taping. After showing their spoof ghost hunting show video (which hasn't been posted yet AFAIK), things took a surprising turn when Sid Rodrigues stood up and proposed to Rebecca Watson.

Adam Savage of the Mythbusters gave an extremely moving and wonderful talk about his failures getting to where he is now in life. It was this talk that made me 100% sure I was going to buy the DVDs when they're available.

The Magic and Skepticism panel was also excellent. DJ Grothe asked questions and the magicians responded. The questions centered around ethics, when is it OK to lie, etc. It was very interesting to hear them talk about how to structure their magic shows so that they come across explicitly as "tricks" and nothing supernatural.

The Skepticism in Broadcasting panel was equally as entertaining and interesting.

And of course, Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer finished up with a great talk about why the world will not end in 2012.

Day 3 - Sunday

Sunday was a light day that started with paper presentations, which were all done very well. But the big focus was on the Million Dollar Challenge.

This was the first challenge I had watched, and there are many write-ups already, so I won't go into details about what exactly happened -- she failed. What was fascinating to me is that she flew on her own dime out to Vegas without ever trying the test protocol on her own. I would think that anyone who was about to spend that kind of money would double check that the protocol they agreed to would still let their "powers" work.

It was boring, yet extremely fascinating. Everyone was extremely quiet -- apparently the audience watching the stream over the internet didn't even realize there was a crowd of 1,000 skeptics in the room. Of course she's already bickering about the test not being fair, but she did agree to it all.

But the real highlight to me of the day was an auction item that I was a partial winner of -- four people went to a planetarium and observatory with Phil Plait for the evening. We started off by eating a quick dinner, and then watching his Bad Astronomy planetarium show, which despite his uncertainty, was done quite well and was entertaining. The stars were out by then, and we made our way out to the telescopes.

Unfortunately the observatory was right by two baseball fields, and the lights were on full blast for most of the night. But it was still a great experience, having our astronomy questions answered first hand and observing a few globular clusters and binary stars. If anything it confirmed my desire to delve into astronomy more.

Conclusion

Even though I tried to keep my summaries short, you can see how much stuff is jam packed into the TAM experience. If you don't walk away with anything else from this post, definitely mark your calendars next year for TAM 8. I'll be trying my best to make sure I'm there.

Sorry for the long outage, I've been having a crazy busy summer. I'm trying to finish up a lot of work before I'm off to TAM, but as I was walking my dog the other day, I was listening to the latest episode of The Non-Prophets. In it Dennis reads out part of an email from someone named Jim they received. If anyone knows who the author is and if they have a website, please let me know so I can link to them.

I play drums in a rock band for fun, and I've decided I need to help the global financial crisis by buying a new set of drums. Anyway, I was busy setting them up, all excited, when I dropped my tuning key -- a small key, a few centimeters across used for setting up and tuning the drums. Something that drummers always lose.

I watched it bounce to the floor, and under my kick drum pedal. I got down on my hands and knees and found the key under the pedal, resting on the pedal base plate. However, it was sitting perfectly in a drum-key shaped rubber hollow. It had fallen in into a special spot designed by the kick pedal designers to store the drum key.

I was amazed. The key holder was a clever and useful design and I only found it because I accidentally dropped my drum key, and it fell into it. I have a mathematics degree, and I knew this was not impossible, but certainly improbable. However, I was quite excited about how I discovered the secret storage place. The odds were very low, so I knew it would make a great story to share about how I found it.

I want you to pause here, and ask yourself what assumption you personally would have drawn from that experience. Same as me?

Because a while later, I was packing up the drums and found a drum key on the floor. It was the one I had dropped. The rubber hollow already had another spare drum key in it by those very clever kick pedal designers.

Now I, a very scientifically minded person, automatically assumed the incredibly high odds of it falling-perfectly-into-its-mold hypothesis, rather than the very obvious spare-key-already-in-place hypothesis. In both cases, I jumped to the less probable conclusion.

This is a perfect anecdote to use to ponder: when should you be skeptical of highly improbable events? The discussion ensues, and they highlight most of the good points:

• Since his skepticism would have only wasted his efforts when all he needed was a drum key, his conclusion jumping wasn't harmful.
• Someone might be too skeptical if they were to look an additional 10-15 minutes after they found the spare key.
• A true-believer is someone who would later find the other key and continue to proclaim that the original key was the one in the mold.

So, how would you have reacted? I found this story fascinating because I jumped to the same conclusion -- probably partially a result of his choice of words. However, I think I would have also came to that conclusion initially as well.

I had a theist follow me on twitter, and as I usually do, I click around a bit. He had a video on YouTube that required much more than 500 characters to reply to. Here's the video:

It's hard to respond to this video, because there are so many separate statements. I'm going to tackle the first half of the video and respond to every statement. I'm not responding to the second half purely because if I can't show how ridiculous these statements are by just responding to the first half, the rest will fall on deaf ears as well.

From looking around, this person is clearly a Christian, and thus my answers will be showing the hypocrisy in his statements (and likewise the book he got them from).

Just in case no one reads to the end, the main thing points anyone should take away from this are:

1. All of the statements must be false for all other gods than the one you believe in, otherwise your god is not the thing that inspires/creates the concept being questioned. Otherwise, all gods are equally valid.
2. Even if you claim "X does not exist if god does not exist", unless you can prove that atheists cannot experience or see "X", it doesn't make it true.

Now, onto the fun part:

First of all, if there is no God, man has no soul or spirit.

I don't have a problem with this statement. The interesting part is that this is somehow implied a problem with atheism. This is only a problem to those who want to believe that we will have something after death.

People have no greater value than other life-forms.

I'm actually somewhat agreeing with this statement. After all, if all of the other organisms did not exist, we wouldn't have a source of food and we would eventually run out of oxygen. Thus, everything in the universe is truly needed to get us to where we are today, and without it, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

There is no right and wrong, no morality and no integrity.

Right and wrong are defined based on a moral understanding, so let me address morality. I've already defined my thoughts on the origin of morality. Beyond showing that there is a clear way to have morality without a god, this statement also implies two things:

1. The only thing keeping theists moral is their belief that they will be punished eternally if they sin.
2. There are many instances of things that we consider immoral today in the bible (slavery, incest, polygamy, genocide, rape of children, etc.). The main moral teaching people claim for the bible is the golden rule. However, the golden rule dates way back before it was ever mentioned in the Bible.

Human destiny belongs to the clever and strong.

This is true, and I'm surprised you wouldn't agree with it. Who is the most powerful person today? Arguably it would be Barack Obama, a clever and strong (in the needed ways) person. Our destiny of the human race does depend on world leaders deciding to cooperate, despite their opposing and often conflicting religious teachings.

At any level, we have leaders who make decisions for groups of people. This trickles up all the way to the scope of our planet. Thus, we have ourselves constructed a system in which we allow the smart, trusted, or powerful people to make our decisions. When enough people disagree, we have revolutions or civil wars to attempt to overthrow the leader.

The concepts of worth and value do not exist.

I assume that this means of life itself and not the economics terms. Life is as valuable as you allow it to be. For the extreme case of value, let's ponder whether you consider your life valuable enough to keep living. If you think the only reason you would want to live is to please a god, I think you're lying to yourself. In fact if you honestly believe there is a heaven, you should be taking as much risk as possible to spread the gospel to the far reaches of the world. Who cares if you're martyred, right? You'll be going to heaven, and will be praised for doing your best to spread Christianity.

Of course, you want to stay alive. You don't want to take the risk. Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding the source, but I remember hearing of a study that showed that Christians who were facing death in hospitals fought harder to stay alive by requesting experimental medicines and procedures than non-believers in the same situation. The opposite should be true -- if god dealt you a hand that would get you to heaven more quickly, why not take it?

There is no love, and love is no better than indifference

There are many sciences that have studied and essentially explained love. Evolutionary psychology can hypothesize about how we evolved love. Additionally, neuroscience, anthropology, biology, and psychology all have a lot of research showing how love is a physical, natural thing, not inspired by a god.

Life is no better than death.

If you say so. I personally value my life greatly, as it's the only one I have. I'd say I've enjoyed being alive more than I did not existing.

There is no difference between life and non-life. Humans are just simply a collection of atoms, how is that different from a rock?

That's the inverse intelligent design argument. That's like saying if you have a wedge and a platform that it's no different than putting the platform on the wedge and having a lever.

Obviously the way things are put together makes a huge difference. A rock does not reproduce, asexually or sexually. That is one of the main differences between life and non-life.

There is no hope beyond death, and death is the end.

Correct. To be honest, this was the hardest thing to cope with as I was losing my faith in Christianity. However, I see nothing wrong with this statement, other than it is an implication of atheism.

There is no purpose or design in the universe.

Correct. Implying purpose is something we like to do, as it's been helpful for us in our evolutionary past. For example, let's look at simplistic behavior of someone who doesn't know about pain relievers: if someone had a toothache and found that chewing a certain weed/herb made the tooth not hurt anymore, one would imply that its purpose was a pain reliever.

However, the plant itself doesn't serve a purpose. In fact, the same pain relieving effect can be a toxin to its natural predators and this was a line of defense that was naturally selected that allowed the plant to survive.

Even though this is all hypothetical (I'm too lazy and tired after my road trip today), it shows how we have evolved to assume a purpose behind things. However, I'm completely fine with thinking there is no divine purpose in life.

Peace is no better than war. War can be good because it is the perfect environment for natural selection, "Survival of the fittest."

Says the person who has a god that commanded war a lot in the bible, and whose religion has a history of starting wars in the name of that god. After all, there is a time for war, and there is a time for peace. There is a time for everything.

Natural selection is indeed survival of the fittest, but we've reached a point in modern warfare where it's no longer about fittest. Nuclear holocaust is not about fitness, but purely who has the nukes and presses the button first. Because of our gross allocation of planet-threatening warfare, we've come to realize we need to learn how to get along rather than go to war. This is much more of a modern concept than a concept you find in the bible.

Humans are not responsible for the care of the earth. Why are humans more responsible than elephants. Why does human intelligence make them responsible for the care of the Earth? Why not simply the exploitation of the earth?

This actually made me laugh out loud. Do you realize who in America is most against attempting to reverse our recent influences on our atmosphere? Bible-thumpers. Most atheists recognize this planet as being something we have the ability to influence, and as a whole we've recognized that our technological advances have had negative impacts on the planet.

Why should we take responsibility? Well, if we don't, we may not survive. While that may not be reason enough for you, I take pride in us possibly being one of the only intelligent organisms in this universe, and I would like us to exist long enough to potentially meet others if they exist. I may not be here for it, but if I can do something to ensure that our descendants are, I'm going to do it.

Freedom is no better than slavery.

Again, says the person who's holy book sets out the rules for slavery. Yes, your bible specifically states how much to pay for slaves and how to treat them. In fact, it specifically outlines what the limits of punishing a slave are:

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

That's right, the slave owner can punish his slaves within inches of death, as long as the slave doesn't die within two days. Only if the slave dies is this wrong and the owner should be punished.

The abolition of slavery happened relatively recently, and I would take that as a victory for the morals of society overcoming the moral teachings of our ancestors, including that of the bible.

There is no beginning and no end and time is an illusion. The past and the future don't exist because they cannot be directly observed. And the present is always moving into the past, so it cannot be directly observed. And without direct observation, we are told things do not exist.

While an interesting thought experiment, this statement doesn't actually reflect reality. We are not told that direct observation is required to think things exist. Direct observation is one form of empirical evidence, but it is not the only. We have writings, pictures, archaeology, and many other physical pieces of evidence that allow us to see that dinosaurs existed. By writings, we can see what people did back in their time. We can also compare writings to archaeology and other writings to better understand what really happened in a given period.

This argument is trying to claim that we atheists claim that we can't believe in anything we can't directly observe. That's just a flat out lie.

Innocence is no better than guilt.

So the only thing keeping you from stealing, raping, murdering is that you fear it would upset your god?

There is no murder, because murder depends upon human value. Unique human value. We don't speak of killing an ant as murder. Or even of killing a dog, or even killing an elephant. That's not murder.

Actually, for the dog argument, I've actually heard that be called murder. In fact, one of the definitions of murder is, "to kill brutally or inhumanly."

To the original statement, we as a society don't like people killing each other. If we allowed people to kill each other, we would be in constant fear for our lives. Thus, there is a benefit to encouraging people from killing other people. We've chosen a word "murder" to represent that concept.

There is no reason for sexual purity and the concept of marriage. The only reason for sexual purity is because of certain sexual taboos that come from religion. And specifically Judeo-Christianity.

The bible specifically shows, without disapproval:

• Rape: Offering young daughters up to be raped instead of letting the mob have access to the two angels. (Gen. 19:8) 2 Peter 2:7-8 calls this same man "just" and "righteous"
• Incest: (Including, but not limited to) Daughters getting their father drunk and having sex with him. (Gen 19:31), God getting angry for not reproducing with his brother's wife (Gen 38:8-10),
• Polygamy: A lot of verses

... And without that, one can have sexual relations with as many people as one wishes, at the same time or different times. After all, the most successful organism is the one who bears the most offspring.

Two thoughts:

1. STDs are a good reason not to have sex with many partners. If you claim god responsible for STDs, then you might have a point.
2. While we may be more successful as humans if we reproduce a lot, we will overcrowd the planet and drive extinction of the very animals we rely on as a source of food.

According to atheist ideas, there is no reason for compassion and caring for others. There's no reason for generosity or philanthropy. There's no reason for kindness. There's no reason for gentleness above cruelty.

You're only kind to people because your God tells you to be? I've already linked to the golden rule page above, and that shows that this statement is false.

Human joy is no greater than animal contentment.

This is just a nonsensical statement. It certainly is superior to whomever is experiencing it. However, the animal doesn't know what it's missing out on.

We're in a unique position as humans because we've evolved a consciousness.

There's no love beyond lust, and no intimacy beyond physical touch.

This again is another repeat statement.

Honesty is no better than lying and stealing.

Again, basically the same as "no morality"

At this point I became too bored with the repeats and lack of actually stimulating things to discuss. If these statements are representative of the level of discourse provided by the book you mention, I would highly recommend against this book. It sounds like a lot of fluff with some tired, old arguments.

I'm going to be attending two conferences this year, maybe three if dates line up correctly.

First up is The Amazing Meeting 7 (TAM7) organized by the James Randi Educational Foundation. Through The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe Podcast, I came to realize how great of a meeting this was. With the potential to meet Penn & Teller, James Randi, Phil Plait, Adam Savage, as well as many other distinguished people, I made it a goal to attend this year. I finally booked my tickets about a month ago. TAM is from July 9 through 12 in Las Vegas.

Next, I found the Atheist Alliance International Convention with Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher headlining, and many other noted speakers including people I admire such as Jerry Coyne and Eugene Scott. I'm extremely excited about this conference and the prospect of potentially being able to see Dawkins speak in person. This conference is held in Los Angeles from October 2 through 4.

Lastly is the Texas Freethought Convention which is still being organized. If the date is the same as last year, I unfortunately will most likely be out of town. However, if I'm in town, I'll definitely be there.

For the past few months I've been monitoring for various speakers that I would love to see. The top of my list includes Dawkins, Hitchens, and Ehrman. It's incredibly hard to find a schedule for Hitchens -- I wish the man would put together a simple website. Hell, I would volunteer to post and host an official website with a calendar of events.

To illicit some feedback, I have a few questions for the few readers I get:

1. Are you attending any conventions this year, especially the ones above?
2. Who in the atheist/skeptic/freethought movements are you most interested in hearing speak?

Hopefully through these conferences I'll be able to put a face to many of the bloggers I've come to read and appreciate, as well as possibly meet some of the more influential public figures like Dawkins and Hitchens.

• Nikola Tesla: They tried to make the world forget his name: This is a great introduction to Nikola Tesla, a great mind that most of us don't recognize the accomplishments of.

• Pat Condell: Take your god and shove him: This relatively recent find on YouTube has a good grasp of funny analogies and metaphors. Plus, he has an English accent.

• Atheist Experience: Feeling one with the universe: I was sitting in the studio for the live recording of this episode. This call almost had me laughing out loud. With his dodging nature as soon as I heard the word "recreational" I knew where this call was heading. This was the call I referenced in my Getting Spiritual post. It's where Jen, the cohost, uses the phrase, "found God in a bong." Surprisingly, I've had more hits on this phrase from Google than any other phrase.

• Five minutes with Richard Dawkins: This new interview is in an interesting format: 5 minutes, uncut. Not a lot of new material, but interesting nonetheless.

• Hitchens Uncut: Unlike the above Dawkins video, I felt that this interview actually did cover some new material (at least for me). Especially the bit about the waxing. Unfortunately this video doesn't have a way to embed, so you'll have to click through to see it.

I've been reading a so-far great book Philosophers without Gods, and in one of the essays the author notes that he desires for there to be a god, but he just can't bring himself to believe in a god. He goes on to discuss Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's Wager is this:

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is....

..."God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all."

Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

"That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much." Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.

This argument boils down to this analogy: you can't win the lottery if you don't play. However, this author knew all of the flaws in the argument, but still saw something in the argument. The part of Pascal's argument that I had not read much commentary on is his argument of how you can believe in something you do not actually think is true.

His proposition is that if you begin to live as a believer, God will eventually reveal himself to you:

God's will has been to redeem men and open the way of salvation to those who seek it, but men have shown themselves so unworthy that it is right for God to refuse to some, for their hardness of heart, what he grants to others by a mercy they have not earned

... Thus wishing to appear openly to those who seek him with all their heart and hidden from those who shun him with all their heart, he has qualified our knowledge of him by giving signs which can be seen by those who seek him and not by those who do not.

There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.

The author of the essay describes his reluctance in accepting this proposition, even when faced with the idea of being granted knowledge of God:

My worry is different. If I follow Pascal's program, I will, indeed, land in a state in which I believe, and in which I am genuinely convinced that I can give a good reason for what I believe, if challenged. But am I entitled to trust my confidence when I am in that state? After all, I deliberately performed a series of steps that I knew would, if I followed them, put me into exactly that state. Now, it is one thing if, in the course of events, I find myself in that epistemic state. But it would seem to be quite another if I deliberately put myself into that state. In that case, it looks as if I am deliberately going about deceiving myself, believing because I want to believe.

And that wraps up one of the core problems with religious people's reasoning. To them, they feel like they have the evidence. However, to anyone who has not undergone the act of presupposition, their evidence is not evidence at all. Pascal actually summarizes it quite well in this cryptic passage:

Why, do you not say yourself that the sky and the birds prove God?

No.

Does your religion not say so?

No. For though it is true in a sense for some souls whom God has enlightened in this way, yet it is untrue for the majority.

Pascal understands that what evidence believers have is not empirical evidence, but rather reaffirmation of a presupposition.

My journey to unbelief came to a point that I decided the only evidence I could truly trust was empirical evidence, and that anything that required emotions or desires to be true must be discarded in favor of empirical evidence. It was that rationalization that eventually led to me becoming an atheist.

A huge breakthrough was announced today. Two essential elements of RNA have been made from scratch in a "primordial soup". This is an interesting feat for science and potentially understanding how we got here.

Quoting the article:

"By changing the way we mix the ingredients together, we managed to make ribonucleotides," said Sutherland. "The chemistry works very effectively from simple precursors, and the conditions required are not distinct from what one might imagine took place on the early Earth."

In other words, while we cannot guarantee that this is the way that we got on the path of forming RNA, it gives a scientifically tested theory as to how that might have occurred. This is a huge deal because provides us the empirical evidence to show that our theories about abiogenesis are possible, and we do not need a god to give rise to life.

The conclusion of the article is a great quote:

"Ribonucleotides are simply an expression of the fundamental principles of organic chemistry," said Sutherland. "They're doing it unwittingly. The instructions for them to do it are inherent in the structure of the precursor materials. And if they can self-assemble so easily, perhaps they shouldn't be viewed as complicated."

I love science.

One major change in my life after giving up my belief in God was my fascination with astronomy. I had always enjoyed astronomy, but what came with the acceptance of the age of the universe and big bang was a renewal of my interest in what lays beyond us. I've spent a lot of time reading and listening about astronomy.

For the new years my wife, dog, and I spent a little over a week in a log cabin in the mountains in Virginia. Without light pollution and at a little higher elevation, the night skies were simply amazing.

Unfortunately in Austin, TX, while you can still see stars, it's nothing like it was out in the Virginia mountains. I tried to get pictures of Comet Lulin, but I failed quite miserably.

However, I'm excited for this summer. We're going to spend it in Santa Fe, NM, and I am anticipating some wonderful viewing opportunities. The elevation there is over a mile above sea level, and there's lots of easily accessed areas in the mountains outside of Santa Fe. I'm having fantasies of grabbing my tent and spending some nights out in the mountains with my telescope and camera.

I have a penchant for astrophotography, which when reading about, is an idea I shouldn't try to bother with initially :-) But what do all the article authors know ;-)

Anyone else astronomy aficionados? I'd love to hear any anecdotes in the comments.