Sandwalk: The New Skeptics

Sunday, April 12, 2009

The New Skeptics

The next generation of skeptics/atheists is well represented at the CFI World Congress in Washington.

Meet Derek Rodgers (left), a computer science student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) and Jason Ball (right), a political science/history and philosophy of science student at Melborne University (Australia). Jason might be taking a course from John Wilkins next term. I expressed my sympathy. :-)

Visit the Dalhousie Atheists and Young Australian Skeptics to see what these leaders of the future are doing today.

11 comments :

Anonymous said...: No girl skeptics?; Sunday, April 12, 2009 3:10:00 PM
Veronica Abbass said...: Anonymous said...
"No girl skeptics?"

Let me fix that for you:

No female skeptics?
or
No women skeptics?

Here is an answer to your question. Yes, there are female/women skeptics; you need to get out more.

Furthermore, most women are skeptical about someone who hides behind the anonymous tag.; Sunday, April 12, 2009 3:29:00 PM
Anonymous said...: It doesn't need fixing. The photo shows two boys.

What is the approximate male:female skeptic ratio?; Sunday, April 12, 2009 5:51:00 PM
Alex said...: Maybe it's me but I don't see anything actually wrong with "girl skeptics," and its kindred term "guy skeptics". Then again, I speak entirely in the colloquial because I'm young and hip.; Sunday, April 12, 2009 7:40:00 PM
Unknown said...: Jason's kind of girly, if that qualifies :P He's also President of the University Melbourne Secular Society http://www.umss.org/
(I'm his vice-president which gives me license to make fun of him while he gets to hang out with people from my home country); Sunday, April 12, 2009 8:14:00 PM
Larry Moran said...: annayeung says,

(I'm his vice-president which gives me license to make fun of him while he gets to hang out with people from my home country)

Jason mentioned you. He said to pass along a message.

Now what was that message?

It was very important ...

.....

Now I remember .....

He said, "Eat your heart out, Anna!" :-); Sunday, April 12, 2009 8:41:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Vronvron: bawwww. Don't be such a sandybox, you make atheism look dull; Sunday, April 12, 2009 10:23:00 PM
Unknown said...: Well...if you don't mind passing along a message for me, dr. Moran.

No more cupcakes. Ever.; Sunday, April 12, 2009 11:14:00 PM
Bayesian Bouffant, FCD said...: Visit the Dalhousie Atheists and Young Australian Skeptics to see what these leaders of the future are doing today.

Apparently they are not investing large portions of their time in hair care.; Monday, April 13, 2009 9:28:00 AM
Veronica Abbass said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; Monday, April 13, 2009 7:45:00 PM
Veronica Abbass said...: Sandyboxes, boy versus girl skeptics and hair care? I think we lost the point of this post.

PS What is a sandybox? Is it defined in the OED?; Monday, April 13, 2009 7:46:00 PM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Sunday, April 12, 2009

The New Skeptics

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