Category Archives: critical thinking

That Old Time Feeling

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I was just reading Godless Girl’s blog, and one of her posts got me all thinky. She describes the feeling she gets watching the Symphony of Science videos (which I love) as being like what she used to get as a Christian at prayer meetings and the like. And I can totally relate with that.

It made me start thinking about that feeling, a feeling I am thrilled to say I get on a fairly regular basis. Like any feeling, I can’t properly desribe it, but I think you know what I mean when I say that incredible feeling of awe, wonder, and amazement. As a kid, that feeling came to me in church from time to time, but I always found it a lot more when out in the world and seeing something amazing.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson is a Gateway Drug

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Grade A Certified Tyson ... the good shit.

So a Muslim and an Atheist walk out for a smoke …

A Muslim co-worker and I have been getting pretty friendly these days. Obviously, we disagree on the god topic, but he’s liberal minded and open to discussion about anything: religion, science, politics, pornography … everything is fair game, and that’s why our relationship works.

A few months back we were outside with a few co-workers talking about the possibility of living in space. I was adamant that I would take the opportunity in a heartbeat. My friend found the prospect of living in space to be tantamount to living in a black box. “There’s nothing really going in space … we’ve learned all there is to know … pretty boring really.” Astonished, I encouraged him to look a little further.

He did.

Science communication is a hot topic these days. Continue reading →

Dazzle Them With Strange Sounding Terms

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Often, we in the various technical spheres have trouble making others understand what we mean. When I wear my Business Analyst hat, one of the main parts of my job is to act as a John Edwards style medium between the tech savvy and their business customers. The difference between myself and Mr. Edwards, of course, is that I’m actually communicating between real parties instead of making up facts and wasting everybody’s time. It is necessary to use highly technical terminology when getting into the specifics of things, and often that triggers confusion and communication breakdown for those who don’t speak the speak.

I believe that this phenomenon might well be true for almost every field, if one delves deeply enough into it. It is as confusing for some of my non-tech friends to hear me talk about entity relationship diagrams or agile methodologies as it is to hear my mechanic tell me my poppet valve is on the fritz. Hell, I don’t even know if a poppet valve can fritz.

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Trusting Our Memories

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I had a conversation a couple of days ago with the Lovely Lady, and we were talking about how fickle memory is. It surprises me how few people really understand this, and what sort of repercussions can come as a result. This is a particular topic I have been aware of for many years simply because of my own experience, but I never really considered what it meant until recently.

I have a memory. It is of me. As a baby, I was able to crawl around on all fours while sucking the nipple of my bottle (one of them old jobbies with the plastic bag of milk inside) hard enough that I was still drinking. I have heard this story many times from my parents, and I can actually remember it. But the trouble is, I remember it in the third person.

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Texas Prays For Texas

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Poor Rick Perry. In what I have to assume is a misguided attempt to curry favor with the religious right in support of his election dreams, he has held a giant prayer rally to beg God to forgive Texas and the USA for their not kissing his celestial butt enough. Obviously, the vengeful and wrathful God is so angered in his omnipotence that he is punishing America for turning their back on him. Interestingly, he isn’t punishing Canada, the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, or any other equally-or-even-more secular society, just the US.

Thousands of people gathered to beseech the lord to stop hurting Texas. Of course, these people have probably been praying in the same fashion for quite some time and the Lord clearly didn’t do a thing to help them before, but this time it’s different. This time it’s… umm… all together? Perhaps God is hard of hearing. I mean, he is infinity years old after all.

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Preach The Controversy

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I’m a fair guy. I believe that life isn’t fair by nature because concepts like karma are human inventions that mean nothing. There is no invisible hand that keeps things as they ought to be, but fair is something we strive for. And it is in the interest of fairness and universal get-along-ishness that I ask us to consider my new movement, Preach The Controversy.

Christians have been moaning for years that it isn’t fair that actual science like evolution and the big bang gets taught in science classes instead of their ideas of Creationism and Intelligent Design. Rather than pointing out that it is science class and not science fiction class, I think it is better that we allow them to teach this pap to our students. Fair is fair, right? And in return, it’s only fair that they devote an equal amount of pulpit time to valid, peer-reviewed science.

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Soggy Colons

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I’m not speaking of that great jazzy/bluesy song of the same name (“Don’t know why / There’s no sun up in the sky / Soggy colons / Since my man and I / Ain’t together / Keeps cleansing all the time”) but instead about colon irrigation. And I will gladly express in doing so that I am no expert. However, I find the notion a bit disturbing, and I just read an article that has some scientific legs that coincides with my concerns and provides data to back it up.

My largest concerns about colon cleansing have always been around the cleanliness of the equipment (which is something that can be managed) and the magic cure-all (which is not). People seem to think that a nicely cleaned colon can cure a myriad of health concerns, but they never seem to cite specific studies or other scientific proof. I may at the time have fully accepted the divinity of a God, but at least when it came to medical claims, I was keen on making sure there was reason to believe.

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Blowing Big Holes, Or Blowing Hot Air?

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Yesterday on my cute little cell phone, I checked Facebook and saw a reference to an article entitled New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism. I knew it had to be crap, not because it is impossible for new data to show that global warming is not a significant concern, but because of the wording of the title. Legitimate science doesn’t sound like that, but right wing Christian evangelicals who believe that God will fix global warming do.

I read the paper earlier today, and I knew that it had to be flawed. However, I’m not a climate scientist, nor am I all that well versed in the particulars of the climate change debate. What I do know is that the vast majority of climate scientists agree that there is an issue. When you see figures showing what types of scientist believe in the “everything’s fine” model, they tend to be geologists and engineers, often heavily tied to the Oil and Gas industry. It’s a little hard to not notice that both a) they are not the experts and b) they have a dog in the policy side of this race. But do I possess the knowledge to properly dissect it and rebuke it? No.

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Procrastination

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Honestly, I’ve been doing a lot of this lately. My ex-wife used to say, “Procrastination is like masturbation. Either way, you’re just fucking yourself.” And it’s true, but we all do it. I understand that this is one of those evolutionary remnants that comes from the necessity to make sure we’re happy now instead of holding off for some future happiness that may or may not happy, but it’s annoying. I have things I need to get done, and waiting around doesn’t help.

Well, I just finished an excellent article on this topic called Why Our Monkey Brains Are Prone To Procrastination (No, It’s Not Just Laziness or Lack Of Willpower) and it reminded me of where I have slipped lately. It isn’t that procrastinating is easier or harder than it was in the past, it is that, at least in those situations, I’m not thinking things through.

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A Christian Gets It Right

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I had to comment on this. PZ Myers just posted this comment on the words of a Christian apologist named Josh McDowell. Josh, it turns out, has figured out that the internet is super dangerous because it let us atheists, agnostics, and free thinkers have equal access to Christian children (and youth pastors). His words are funny because they’re true:

“…the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism.”

Remember, folks. The first sin was eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Information is something for them to fear, because the more people learn, the less likely they are to believe the incoherent writings of a bunch of bronze aged shepherds.

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