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“We Blew it” on Climate Change, But May Survive Anyway: An RD Discussion with the First Transhumanist Candidate

By Andrew Aghapour

Presidential candidates currently fall into two camps. In the first, you have about 20 Republican and Democratic front-runners who have received political endorsements or significant national attention. In the second, you have the remaining 1,200 candidates who, according to the Atlantic, are essentially passionate, quirky people who want to be heard. That includes local yahoos, religious fundamentalists, and fictional characters (with online fil…

Why Scientists Should Be Agnostic: Or, Why Lawrence Krauss Is Still a Windbag

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

A few months ago, one of us (okay, Andrew), referred to the esteemed physicist and public intellectual Lawrence Krauss as “a windbag.” One of us (Michael) can attest that Andrew is among the kindest, most thoughtful people he knows. So what raised Andrew’s ire? Krauss, Arizona State University’s Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and the Director of the Origins Project, had publicly dismissed religion as a mix of v…

Are Evangelicals Really That “Science-Friendly”?

By Andrew Aghapour

“Evangelicals are more science-friendly than you think,” claims the headline of Cathy Lynn Grossman’s latest at RNS. The post examines a recent survey from sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund, who found that 70 percent of American evangelical Christians do not view religion and science as being in conflict, and that almost 50 percent view science and religion as complementary. Furthermore, 84 percent of evangelicals say that modern science is “doin…

Introducing ‘It’s Your Fault,’ a Series on Blame

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

Is Dylann Roof solely to blame for the murder of 9 people in the Emanuel AME church in Charleston? How about our nation’s inadequate gun laws or pervasive racism? Or are we all to blame? Pick just about any issue and you’re likely to find questions of blame at its heart. Is climate change the fault of greedy individuals or a tragedy of the commons? And who’s to blame for the Boston bombing? For rising inequality? For the killing of Jon Snow? As t…

Fighting Fire with Ire: 3 Lessons from Noam Chomsky’s Takedown of Sam Harris

By Andrew Aghapour

The day before Mayweather fought Pacquiao, New Atheist Sam Harris released an email sparring match he’d had with famed linguist and leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky. In his bestselling book The End of Faith, Harris had accused Chomsky of drawing a “moral equivalence” between 9/11 and the 1998 U.S. missile attack on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which the Clinton administration had allegedly believed to be a chemical weapons facto…

How To: Write a Science-Explains-Religion Op-Ed

By Andrew Aghapour

So you’ve decided to write an opinion piece about how science has just about explained religion. Congratulations! What you’re doing is incredibly important, and it couldn’t be easier. Just follow these four easy steps and you’ll get published in no time: 1. Write a short, disarming introduction. You don’t want to lose religious readers from the start, so try opening with something cheeky, like a reference to those popular television cavemen, or a…

If You Liked The Martian You’ll Love These 3 Sci-Fi Shorts

By Andrew Aghapour

Ridley Scott’s The Martian just had a massive $55 million opening weekend. Matt Damon stars as Mark Watney, a stranded astronaut whose limited supplies are made up for by an abundance of wit and ingenuity. The film has received wide critical acclaim, with many praising its grounded, human focus which, in contrast to Scott’s previous sci-fi thrillers, Alien, Prometheus, or, arguably, the awful Exodus: Gods and Kings, is devoid of aliens, mysticism…

The Invention of a Corporate Christian America

By Andrew Aghapour

According to author Kevin Kruse, the idea that America is a “Christian nation” was invented only recently, forged by an alliance between industrialists and conservative clergy who preached the connection between Christianity and capitalism. In One Nation Under God, the Princeton history professor issues a twofold corrective: first, to the popular notion that the United States has always understood itself as a Christian nation; and second, to the…

Are there Atheists in Foxholes?

By Andrew Aghapour

Tom Jacobs at Pacific Standard just posted a nice summary of two psychological studies that seek to answer the persistent question of whether atheists turn to God on their deathbeds. One study tested the effects of “death reminders” on Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and Agnostics. The primary author, Kenneth E. Vail, concludes that being reminded of death motivated Christians and Muslims to self-report higher religiosity. Agnostics were similarly…

Is it Blasphemous to Describe Science as “Magic”?

By Andrew Aghapour

In a thought-provoking post on RD just before the weekend, Yoni Pasternak highlighted some of the enchanted language that has been associated with CERN’s announcement of a Higgs boson-like particle discovery. The Higgs boson has been labeled the “God Particle,” and numerous scientists and journalists have described the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) as a “magical” device. If news about the Higgs boson has struck you as esoteric and confusing you are…