Backchatting the Gnu Atheists

Listen to my mum and you might think that religion is to blame for everything from world wars to cold calling. She's a paid up member of the Dawkins Tendancy, the affectionately-titled Gnu Atheists. But every now and then some fellow unbeliever finds the guts to say "but hang on ... you're scientists ... er ... where's your evidence ...?"

Prof Jim Woodward is one of those brave souls, and here he is (from John Wilkins' Evolving Thoughts blog). Good on ya Prof.

Seeing this reminded me of the brilliant Dick to the Dawk video, seen here from back in 2008, and which had a better reception, by and large, probably because it was ambiguous and demanded no answers - unlike this young lady, who really ruffled scientific male feathers.

And it has a tiny sequel, here.

Are You Ready for the Shift?

Short and incisive, these videos from Kit Hill at the Stockholm Resilience Centre pack a fair punch into a minute or two.

Life operates in thresholds, time-lags and tipping points, on a multitude of scales. Breezing along for years, decades, millennia or aeons, before, quite suddenly, the paradigm crumbles and shifts to a wholly new state.

Wise old Charles Darwin understood the workings of evolution all too well, explaining, as Gautama Buddha did, also in his way, that suffering and death are inescapable parts of life, intrinsic to it, whether we humans accept that fact or no.

"... the Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase, will be treated of. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form ..."