Maya blue - the color of some old fashioned human sacrifice

Here is a fascinating (yes, also grim) story about the motivation behind the making of Maya blue - ■The vibrant sky color can be seen on pottery, murals and other artifacts produced by the Maya people of Central America centuries ago and the unusual, durable pigment remains vibrant today long after...

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Islamic Reformation from Turkey?

Turkey is attempting a (relatively) serious revision of Islam. It is being billed as a major reformation (but then these claims have been made before). May be its a start: The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran. The Hadith...

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High competition at US religious bazaar

We were just recently discussing that the US has created a free religious marketplace and it is now impacting religions worldwide. Just yesterday, Pew Forum released a report, US Religious Landscape Survey, that supports the view of this competitive religious market, at least in the US (also see a NYT...

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Taner Edis on Islam, modernity and science - part 2

Here is the second part of the Reasonable Doubts interview with Taner Edis. The first part dealt with Islamic pseudoscience and the differences between Islam & Christianity. This looks at the complexity of treating Muslims and Islam as a monolithic entity. Then there is an excellent discussion over...

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See, evil can sometimes be funny

Yes, like the character of Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men (I'm rooting for it to get the best picture Oscar tonight). Its also funny in this very creative history of evil (tip from openculture):This also gives me an opportunity to post the first episode of Mr. Deity , which showed up over a...

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Secularism, wealth and religiosity

Is there a connection between religiosity and poverty? There is an excellent article in this month's Atlantic Monthly, pretty much focusing on the above graph. With a few notable exceptions, there definitely is a correlation between low religiosity and high GDP (based on the data from the Pew Global...

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Of lizards and whales

On a cold day in Massachusetts, it is good to hear Richard Dawkins on lava lizards of the Galapagos:And here is a fantastic excerpt about whale evolution from the PBS show, Evolution:(tip for both from richarddawkins.n...

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Belief in God: Nature or Nurture?

Why do we believe in God? (and how much are we willing to spend to find out the answer?) Well at least there is one group now with a big grant to address this question:Researchers at the University of Oxford will spend £1.9 million investigating why people believe in God. Academics have been given a grant to try to find out whether belief in a deity is a matter of nature or nurture.Yes, it is funded...

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Execution expected after a witch-trial in Saudi Arabia

This would be absurdly funny if a human life was not at stake. Saudi Arabia is planning to execute a woman for practicing witchcraft. She appears to have run out of legal options and now the only hope is an intervention by King Abdullah. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has directly appealed to the King for...

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Knowledge-Schmowledge: Proud anti-intellectualism on television

Alright. Get your barf-bags ready again. There is a new inductee in the Sherri Shepherd hall of ignorance (in case you don't remember, Sherri Shepherd is unclear about the shape of the Earth, and believes that history started with Christianity and was surprised to hear about the Romans). This is a clip from Are you smarter than a 5th grader?:Yikes!!! (and sexist jokes are just part of the gravy)This...

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Taner Edis on Islam, modernity and science

Here is a Reasonable Doubts podcast interview that deals with science and (Islamic) pseudoscience in the Islamic world. There is also a good discussion of the differences between Islam and Christianity when tackling issues of modern science. Taner Edis is the author of An Illusion of Harmony: Science...

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Grace: A faith and atheism dialogue on stage

There have been a series of good recent plays that have tackled the complex issues of faith and reason on stage. Darwin's struggle with religion were depicted in Trumpery and more recently, Spinoza's atheism was the center piece in New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah...

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A Scientology round up: Cruise, spoof and hackers

Here is a round-up of Scientology related disaster news and views. Of course, the latest round of PR disaster started when the Church of Scientology tried to remove Tom Cruise's (creepy?) celebration of Scientology video from the internet website gawker.com. Now a group of cyber-hackers, called Anonymous,...

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A new book on the Muslim conquest of Spain and Al-Andalus

Last week's New Yorker has a nice long review of David Levering Lewis's God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215 (if you have time, please read the full review). Apart from analyzing the book (she has some quibbles, but likes it overall), the review does a great job of summarizing...

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Another damning report on poor Arab education standards

Well, this is not exactly a shocker, but there is a new World Bank report out bemoaning the declining standards of education in the Arab world.In its report, the World Bank issued a stark warning about the need for better education in the Arab world. It said that although education was becoming more accessible and the gender gap was being reduced, the region had not witnessed the positive changes...

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Henry Rollins on evolution and Intelligent Design

Ok...you really don't want to upset him by rejecting evolution (tip from pharyngul...

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Gods before Zeus

There is an interesting story in today's New York Times about archaeological evidence pointing to the worship of deities before Zeus took over for the Greeks.Before Zeus hurled his first thunderbolt from Olympus, the pre-Greek people occupying the land presumably paid homage and offered sacrifices to...

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Communicating evolution through animation - old and the new

I'm back from the conference and have barely survived a grueling teaching day. So things will soon get to normal here on the blog.Here is a video showing evolution in 5 minutes and 48 seconds (tip from openculture)I'm not sure how useful this video is. Perhaps with an audio track it becomes amazing, but it seems to show without much motivation (especially towards the latter part). The timing clock,...

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Pope on the offensive again - this time on stem cells research

The blog postings have been a bit slow as I'm at an astronomy conference (The evolution of galaxies through the neutral hydrogen window) in Puerto Rico and the internet access has not been very reliable (but oh...I'm indeed missing the frigid temperatures of Massachusetts at this time of the year). In the mean time it seems that Pope is really getting on the offensive against science. First, the text...

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