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Serving food at an aid center. Introduction Recently several writers have attacked religious belief as a pernicious delusion [Dawkins2006; Dennett2006; Harris2006; Hitchens2007; Stenger2008]. Victor Stenger, for example, specifically rejects claims that there are any health or social benefits from religious beliefs or participation. Other writers sharply disagree, noting benefits bestowed by religion throughout history Continue reading Does a sense of purpose improve one’s health? MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark is no stranger to controversy. In his 2014 book Our Mathematical Universe, Tegmark proposed that our universe and everything in it are merely mathematical structures operating according to certain rules of logic. He argued that this hypothesis answers Stephen Hawking’s question “What breathes fire into the equations?” — there is no Continue reading The future of artificial intelligence: Utopia or dystopia? A “freakishly” fine-tuned universe Ever since the time of Copernicus, the overriding worldview of scientific discovery has been that there is nothing special about Earth and humanity: the Earth is not the center of the solar system — we are merely one of several planets orbiting the Sun; the Sun is not the center of Continue reading Fine tuning and Fermi’s paradox Introduction The progress of modern science over the past few decades is nothing short of astounding. Just in the past 50 years, science has unlocked the code of life and read the complete DNA of many organisms (including humans), traced the history of the known universe back to nearly the big bang, and discovered a Continue reading Can there be harmony between science and religion? Introduction In Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion (pg. 23-24), he asks us to imagine “a world with no religion … no suicide bombers, no 9/11 no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers,’ no Northern Ireland ‘troubles,’ no Continue reading Does a secular worldview lead to greater rejection of pseudoscience? Hollywood stars as public spokespersons Nowadays it is not at all unusual for Hollywood stars to lend their public celebrity status to endorse or promote some cause. For example, Angelina Jolie has lent her name and support to international efforts dealing with the refugee crisis. Sean Penn personally assisted efforts to deal with the Haiti Continue reading Are Hollywood stars qualified to comment on science? C.P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” Back in 1959, the influential British scholar C. P. Snow gave a lecture entitled The two cultures and the scientific revolution. In this discourse Snow warned of a widening divide between the scientific world on one hand and the humanities on the other: “This polarization is a sheer loss to us Continue reading Carlos Rovelli’s “Reality Is Not What It Seems” Introduction Is the universe fine-tuned for intelligent life? Astrophysicist Geraint Lewis and cosmologist Luke Barnes, both at the University of Sydney, Australia, wade into this perplexing and controversial arena in a new book, published by Cambridge University Press, entitled A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos. The book presents a comprehensive analysis of Continue reading Is the universe fine-tuned for intelligent life? What do exoplanets, four-billion-year-old life, Fermi’s paradox and zero-one laws of probability theory have to do with each other? Quite a bit, actually. Let us review these developments, one by one: New exoplanet discoveries Depiction of the seven exoplanets of the TRAPPIST-1 system. Courtesy NASA. On 22 February 2017, a consortium of NASA and European Continue reading Exoplanets, 4 billion-year-old life, Fermi’s paradox and zero-one laws Introduction Recently several books written by prominent authors have been published that attack religious belief as a pernicious delusion. The four most prominent authors are Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens [Dawkins2006; Dennett2006; Harris2006; Hitchens2007]. Along this line, physicist Victor J. Stenger, in his book God: The Failed Hypothesis and other writings, Continue reading Christmas 2016: Benefits of a charitable life |
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