The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by Voyager 1 from a record distance, showing it against the vastness of space. By request of Carl Sagan, NASA commanded the Voyager 1 spacecraft, having completed its primary mission and now leaving the Solar System, to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space.

Subsequently, the title of the photograph was used by Sagan as the primary title of his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.

“The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

The pale blue dot.”

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial is an award-winning NOVA documentary on the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, which concentrated on the question of whether or not intelligent design could be viewed as science and taught in school science class. It first aired on PBS in November 2007 and features interviews with the judge, witnesses, and lawyers as well as re-enacted scenes using the official transcript of the trial.

In April 2008 the documentary won a Peabody Award. It won the 2008 Science Journalism Award presented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to honor excellence in science reporting.

The documentary was praised by Nature, and described as accurate by the National Center for Science Education. Variety magazine also gave the documentary a positive review, and said it was one of the year’s most important television projects, that “should be shown not just in every U.S. high school but in houses of worship as well.”

In contrast, creationist and intelligent design supporters have criticized the documentary. The Discovery Institute produced a website critical of the broadcast,^[8][9] while Answers in Genesis stated the evidence for evolution presented by scientists in Judgment Day was fallacious. The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) also claimed the film was not balanced.

WKNO-TV, the local PBS affiliate in Memphis, initially decided not to air the documentary because of the “controversial nature” of the subject, but later reversed its decision.

Carl Sagan gave his last interview with Charlie rose on May 27th 1996. He discussed pseudo-science, religion, unfounded claims, his personal love affair with science and his struggle with myelodysplasia as well as other elements of his last book: The Demon-Haunted World.

The Demon-Haunted World changed my life in ways more profound than I thought possible. That book, and the name of Carl Sagan, should be known to every high school graduate.

“Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.”

Intelligence Squared debate: Catholics humiliated by Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry

I have just witnessed a rout – tonight’s Intelligence Squared debate. It considered the motion “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, opposing the motion, comprehensively trounced Archbishop Onaiyekan (of Abuja, Nigeria) and Ann Widdecombe, who spoke for it. The archbishop in particular was hopeless.

The voting gives a good idea of how it went. Before the debate, for the motion: 678. Against: 1102. Don’t know: 346. This is how it changed after the debate. For: 268. Against: 1876. Don’t know: 34. In other words, after hearing the speakers, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774. My friend Simon, who’s a season ticket holder, said it was the most decisive swing against a motion that he could remember.

The problem (from the Catholic point of view) was that the speakers arguing for the Church as a force for good were hopelessly outclassed by two hugely popular, professional performers. The archbishop had obviously decided that it would work best if he stuck to facts and figures and presented the Church as a sort of vast charitable or “social welfare” organisation. He emphasised how many Catholics there were in the world, and that even included “heads of state”, he said, as if that was a clincher. But he said virtually nothing of a religious or spiritual nature as far as I could tell, and non-Catholics would have been none the wiser about what you might call the transcendent aspects of the Church. Then later when challenged he became painfully hesitant. In the end he mumbled and spluttered and retreated into embarrassing excuses and evasions. He repeatedly got Ann Widdecombe’s name wrong. The hostility of both the audience and his opponents seemed to have discomfited him.

So it was left to Ann Widdecombe to defend the Church single-handedly. She did well, showed a light touch and took Hitchens to task for exaggerations and so on. But in the end Hitchens and Fry were able to persuade decisively by simply listing one after another the wicked things that have been done in the Church’s name over the centuries. More than anything they focused on the “institutionalisation of the rape and torture and maltreatment of children”. That’s what Hitchens called it – that’s pretty much what it was – and Fry returned to it. I don’t blame them for harping on about these unspeakable crimes, because there is no answer to them. Then they talked about the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. When Zeinab Badawi in the chair asked the archbishop whether Christ himself ever actually said anything about homosexuality, he replied by saying “that’s not the point” or words to that effect, and sounded slippery.

Even if you didn’t agree with him you’d have to concede Hitchens especially was spectacular and hyper-articulate. Fry, who is less avuncular somehow now he is so slimline, was visibly nervous and appeared to have a dry mouth. Hitchens drank bottled water mostly, and plenty of it, though from time to time when he was sitting down he raised a glass of amber fluid from out of sight, down on the floor somewhere, and took a slug from that. I don’t know why he kept a drink under the table like that, perhaps because the debate was filmed for broadcast. He sweated profusely and dabbed his shiny forehead, eyes and cheeks with a handkerchief. But his diction was clear and he was in control, like a revivalist tent preacher, building the volume to a crescendo at the end, to applause and roars from the audience.

It was a gripping evening’s entertainment but a little discouraging for those of us who are Catholics. I found myself wishing, one, that the Catholic debaters would for once not content themselves with offering pettifogging excuses but instead actually own up to some of the charges, and, two, I wished that there still existed a great Catholic apologist like Chesterton or Belloc, someone who was not only brave and prepared to square up to the Hitch, but was his intellectual equal. Surely there is someone today who could do that?

Via  telegraph.co.uk

Christopher Hitchens on Australian Q&A panel, October 1st 2009.

If you thought Orly Taitz was a raving loony, Wendy Wright proves Orly doesn’t hold a candy to a classic evolution denier. Here’s the first video in a series of seven where Richard Dawkins interviews her.

There’s so much epic stupidity and unjustified arrogant smugness from her I wanted to reach through the computer screen to punch her in the face numerous times. This interview proves once and for all that Richard Dawkins is the most patient man alive!

But there were perhaps two bits here that bothered me the most. The first was Wright’s insistence that the mere fact that scientists like Dawkins aggressively criticize the evolution denial position is somehow proof in and of itself that there is something to the deniers’ position. There is not. She used this as a platform for characterizing the position of scientists like Dawkins as being one their entire mission is just to silence legitimate criticism of evolution only to then repeatedly asking why Dawkins, et al care about what they’re doing at all. Unfortuntely, I think Dawkins didn’t adequately address this ridiculous argument here.  So I will. Dawkins is a scientist and an educator. That means it’s his job to seek out new knowledge and teach that knowledge to the next generation. And like historians who have to combat Holocaust deniers and Moon Hoaxers, etc., when ignorant fools like Ms. Wright who do have agendas organize to form movements that spread misinformation through propaganda campaigns, it becomes absolutely necessary for those who are experts in the material to aggressively combat those campaigns with the truth.

The other bit that bugged me was in the fourth video in the series where Wright starts trying to criticize Dawkins’ rejection of the soul concept with her stupid, dismissive giggles that she used when she failed to be able to provide an actual criticism. It’s REALLY NOT THAT FUCKIN’ COMPLICATED, WENDY! If someone shoots you in the head and damages your brain, you no thinky the same anymore. If your brain is damaged or drugged or lobotomized, your entire personality or your “soul” can be radically transformed. And without a functioning pre-frontal cortex, you may either not have a sense of right and wrong anymore or you might just not care about right and wrong anymore. Again, it’s not complicated!

Case in point, a new study from researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London have found differences in the brain that could provide a biological explanation for psychopathy:

The research investigated the brain biology of psychopaths with convictions that included attempted murder, manslaughter, multiple rape with strangulation and false imprisonment. Using a powerful imaging technique (DT-MRI) the researchers have highlighted biological differences in the brain which may underpin these types of behaviour and provide a more comprehensive understanding of criminal psychopathy.

Dr Michael Craig said: ‘If replicated by larger studies the significance of these findings cannot be underestimated. The suggestion of a clear structural deficit in the brains of psychopaths has profound implications for clinicians, research scientists and the criminal justice system.’

Suck on it, Wendy! In second thought, let me guess. You find the evidence unpersuasive.

via skepacabra.wordpress.com

Making friends with meaninglessness, Avoiding the straitjacket of inflicted identity, How and why philosophy brings happiness. Famed philosopher Stefan Molyneux provides his opinion on what the meaning of life is and where it takes us.

The 3rd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism;
human interpretation = absolute truth.

Exploring the erroneous notion that the holy scriptures were written by God, rather than be subject to the errors of humanity

My personal rant against one of foremost falsehoods of the creationism movement; the idea that accepting evolution is tantamount to declaring atheism, or that one need be creationist to be Christian.

The 1st Falsehood of creationism: “evolution = atheism”