Nuclear Doomsday clock moves the closest to midnight than it has since 1953.

Courtesy of Reuters: 

Atomic scientists reset their symbolic "Doomsday Clock" to its closest time to midnight in 64 years on Thursday, saying the world was closer to catastrophe due to threats such as nuclear weapons, climate change and Donald Trump's election as U.S. president.

Its hands were moved to two minutes and 30 seconds to midnight, from three minutes. 

"The Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than it's ever been in the lifetime of almost everyone in this room," Lawrence Krauss, the bulletin's chair, told a news conference in Washington. 

The clock was last set this close to midnight in 1953, marking the start of the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Thursday's reset was the first since 2015.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss laid blame for this decision squarely at the feet pf Doanld Trump and his puppet master Vladimir Putin.

Just when you thought the news could not get any worse.

Richard Dawkins believes that children should be protected from religious indoctrination.

Courtesy of Irish Times:

Speaking to The Irish Times in advance of a public talk at Trinity College Dublin on Tuesday evening, Prof Dawkins said: “There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children and I think the balance has swung too far towards parents… 

“Children do need to be protected so that they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in.” 

Prof Dawkins, who spent Monday in Belfast, praised the work of Atheist Ireland in campaigning to separate church and state in education. 

Warning against the “power of childhood indoctrination”, he said it was futile debating with people who put the Bible ahead of scientific evidence. “You have to write off those people” but you can try to convince younger people to avoid superstition, Prof Dawkins said. 

His plea for reform was backed by Prof Krauss who said: “Parents, of course, have concerns and ‘say’ but they don’t have the right to shield their children from knowledge. That is not a right, any more than they have the right to shield their children from healthcare or medicine.”

I don't think that my position on this is any secret, I believe that if something is worthy of our faith it should be strong enough to attract that faith when we are old enough to have developed critical thinking skills.

Do any of you disagree? And if so, why?

New survey finds that half of British people think that religion does more harm than good.

Courtesy of The Independent:  

More than half of people in the UK believe religion does more harm than good, while less than a quarter believe faith is a force for good, a new survey has revealed. 

And the viewpoint even applies to those with strong faiths – one fifth (20 per cent) of Britons who describe themselves as being “very religious” said religion was harmful to society. 

The findings from the study for The Huffington Post, which was carried out by Survation, challenge widely held beliefs about religion and its place in modern British society. 

They show that only eight per cent of Britons describe themselves as very religious, while more than 60 per cent said they are not religious at all. 

And the majority (55 per cent) believe that being religious does not necessarily make you a better person. One in eight Britons said atheists tend to be more moral, compared to just six per cent who said atheists are less moral. 

Of the 2,004 people surveyed, 56 per cent described themselves as Christian, 2.5 per cent were Muslim, one per cent were Jewish and the remainder were of another faith or none.

Well gee, maybe Lawrence Krauss was right, and maybe the end of religion really IS only a generation or two away.

Theoretical Physicist Lawrence Krauss says that the end of religion may be only a generation away.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

People should not assume that religion will always be a part of human society just because it has existed for so long, according to theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss. Religion could disappear in the span of a single generation. 

“People say, ‘Well, religion has been around since the dawn of man. You’ll never change that.’ But I point out that… this issue of gay marriage, it is going to go away, because if you have a child, a 13-year-old, they can’t understand what the issue is. It’s gone. One generation is all it takes,” he said at an event called the Victorian Skeptics Cafe 2014. 

“So, I can tell you a generation ago people said there is no way people would allow gay marriage, and slavery — essentially — [gone in] a generation, we got rid of it,” Krauss continued. “Change is always one generation away… so if we can plant the seeds of doubt in our children, religion will go away in a generation, or at least largely go away. And that’s what I think we have an obligation to do.” 

Krauss was addressing whether religion should be taught to children in school. Though, as an atheist, he opposes religious education, he said he does support teaching comparative religion classes instead of completely “shying away” from the topic. 

“What we need to do is present comparative religion as a bunch of interesting historical anecdotes, and show the silly reasons why they did what they did,” he remarked. 

He said educators should force children to confront their own misconceptions. 

“But you don’t shy away from religion any more than you shy away from the claim that Earth is the center of the universe. We laugh at that now, and we get kids to realize why that might be wrong… and so we should take other falsifiable facts, which are at the center of our society, which is religious doctrine, and make just as much fun of that.”

I am not quite as confident that religion can be eradicated in one, or even two, enlightened generations, but I do agree that planting those seeds of doubt and offering classes that compare religions without lending credence to one over another, will surely have a positive effect on the ability of our children break free from the shackles of ignorance and superstition.

Not only that, but I firmly believe that doing so is necessary for the survival of our species.

Theoretical physicist, Lawrence Krauss, responds to surprising news that he participated in the making of "documentary" promoting geocentricism.

For all who asked: Some clips of me apparently were mined for movie on geocentricism. So stupid does disservice to word nonsense. Ignore it.
— Lawrence Krauss (@LKrauss1) April 8, 2014

Courtesy of Slate:  

A month or so ago, and again last night, my email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts began to buzz about clips of me appearing in some purported new documentary film promoting … wait for it … geocentrism! The notion that anyone in the 21st century could take seriously the notion that the sun orbits the Earth, or that the Earth is the center of the universe, is almost unbelievable. I say almost, because one of the trials and tribulations of being a scientist with some element of popular celebrity is that I get bombarded regularly by all sorts of claims, and have become painfully aware that ideas as old as the notion that the Earth is flat never seem to die out completely. Nevertheless, even after being inured to such things, I was surprised to learn of the premise of the film, until I learned that its producer also apparently questions the Holocaust. It is tempting to say that both claims are obscene nonsense, but I believe that does a disservice to the word nonsense. 

So, the question I had to face after discovering this abuse of my words was what to do about it. I have no recollection of being interviewed for such a film, and of course had I known of its premise I would have refused. So, either the producers used clips of me that were in the public domain, or they bought them from other production companies that I may have given some rights to distribute my interviews to, or they may have interviewed me under false pretenses, in which case I probably signed some release. I simply don’t know. 

Many people have suggested I litigate. But this approach seems to me to be completely wrong because it would elevate the profile of something that shouldn’t even rise to the level of popular discussion. The best thing we can all do when faced by nonsense like that, or equivalent silliness promoted by biblical fundamentalists who claim that science supports a literal interpretation of the Bible, is to ignore it in public forums, and not shine any light on the authors of this trash. As far as this particular film is concerned, one might hope that it has high production value that cost the producers a lot of money. Then, when no one beyond the three people in the country who may somehow have missed the last 500 years of science and history during their education watches the film, we can hope that the whole misbegotten enterprise will bankrupt the production company, or at least severely cramp its style.

I have to agree with Professor Krauss here, though it might be fun to watch this idiot defend his unauthorized  use of the clips, it would also provide attention to something which does not deserve any.

However I am not sure I agree with him when it comes to his policy of ignoring those who espouse a literal interpretation of the Bible, and try to interject it into politics and education.

While I understand how distasteful it is to engage with mental midgets, there a lot of stupid people in the country who see them as visionaries or prophets.

It would certainly serve the greater good if there were always somebody ready and willing to shame these imbeciles every time they opened their slack jawed mouths.

You know, besides me of course.

As for Kate Mulgrew, the narrator of this piece of fiction, she is none to happy to have her name associated with it either:

“I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism,” Mulgrew said in her statement. “More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that.” 

You know I don't think it exactly helps to convince people that you have a point of view worth considering, when it turns out you had to manipulate stolen film footage of scientists into making it appear they agree with you, and then trick an actress into narrating your "documentary."

I'm just saying.

(P.S. Here is my earlier post about this film.)

Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss are interviewed about their upcoming film "The Unbelievers."

Two heroes of mine, doing incredibly important work while courageously enduring a never ending onslaught of threats from those claiming to embrace peaceful religions.

I am going to watch the hell out of this movie.

Trailer for "The Unbelievers" starring Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss.

I know that many people are put off by this kind of an aggressive attack on illogic, superstition, and religion, but of course I would disagree with them.

In fact if we look around we can see numerous examples of people in positions of power making important choices about education, women's rights, and basic human freedoms based on a Biblical mind view that is anti-intellectual and ultimately damaging to the future progress of our people.

For quite a long time most scientists believed that Creationism and its ilk would simply die out as more people became educated, and they resisted the distasteful task of getting into the trenches and battling the ignorance behind it. Instead what happened is that it spread and has become pervasive and even entrenched in certain parts of the country making the task of enlightening our fellow Americans virtually impossible.

So I applaud the efforts of aggressive scientists like Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss to take this issue head on. Ultimately I think our country will benefit from their courage.