Podcast alert

UVA Astronomy Professor Ed Murphy with the top 8 space stories of 2008

Click!
http://www.cvillepodcast.com/2009/01/11/ed-murphy/

Does religion make you nice?

I just wanted to post a link to this brief but very interesting article on Slate.com, "Does Religion Make You Nice."

The end is particularly poignant. The author notes that Danes and Swedes are particularly happy countries despite their rampant godlessness, but also points out that they still attend church (they just don't believe in God.) This points to the importance of community.

"American atheists, by contrast, are often left out of community life. The studies that Brooks cites in Gross National Happiness, which find that the religious are happier and more generous then the secular, do not define religious and secular in terms of belief. They define it in terms of religious attendance. It is not hard to see how being left out of one of the dominant modes of American togetherness can have a corrosive effect on morality. ...

"The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country where many of their fellow citizens, including very vocal ones like Schlessinger, find them immoral and unpatriotic. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one."

This highlights the importance, then, of groups like The Cville Skeptics! And it also gives some value to the possible group motto of "A church for the rest of us," which I couldn't decide if it was appropriate or not. ha!

Molecule self-replicates in lab

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

"Obviously what we're trying to do is make a biology," says Gerald Joyce, a biochemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He hopes to imbue his team's molecule with all the fundamental properties of life: self-replication, evolution, and function.

Whole story:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16382-artificial-molecule-evolves-in-the-lab.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news


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Reminder: Social Hour Jan. 22!

Click here to join & RSVP!

Book Club Proposal

Greetings! I recently read a couple reviews of Eric Maisel's new book, The Atheist's Way and thought it would make a great book club selection.

A tidbit from Maisel's blog:

A charmingly apt anonymous saying: “Atheism is a non-prophet organization.” Therefore each atheist must make his or her own way. The very essence of making personal meaning is nominating yourself as the hero of your own story and making your own way in life, listening for echoes in the observations of others but never following in another person’s footsteps. Your circumstances are unique; your causes are yours to choose; one day you can play, one day you can be serious, one day you can rest, one day you can exhaust yourself. Make your own way: even the slightest pull to follow opens the door to mischief.

If we get at least 10 people interested, that would be a viable number to declare a book club. Moreover, if folks are interested, we can arrange to have a free telechat with the author!

If you're interested in joining the book club, e-mail cvilleskeptics (at) gmail (dot) com. (let me know if you'd rather just read the book or read the book and do the telechat).

If you'd like to start a book club but with a DIFFERENT title, email me that too!

Is "Dear Abby" a skeptic!?

Well I've read enough of her column to surmise that, at the very least, she regularly panders to the religious, but this particular response made me say Woah!

DEAR ABBY: I have a "pennies from heaven" story you might appreciate. My best friend, "Darrel," was a smoker who collected quarters. His apartment had two distinguishing features -- stacks of quarters and the smell of secondhand smoke. Because we were both busy people, we had seen each other only twice in about a year, but maintained a phone and e-mail friendship.

I had planned a trip out west to spend time with family and had e-mailed him about it. Unbeknownst to me, Darrel had been very ill, and he died the day I sent the e-mail. I learned about it while I was in transit to my destination. There was nothing I could do. I had no way to get to his funeral and no way to say goodbye.

When we reached our hotel -- part of a smoke-free chain -- my husband and I opened the door to our room and were greeted by a familiar odor. It smelled just like Darrel's apartment! And when I walked to the dresser to unpack, two quarters were sitting on top. It was then that my husband and I agreed that Darrel had stopped to say goodbye on his way to heaven. -- QUARTERS FROM HEAVEN

DEAR QUARTERS: Please accept my sympathy for the loss of your friend. I'm glad you received some comfort in your time of need. However, it's entirely possible that the guest who occupied the room before you broke the rules and puffed away in a room that was supposed to be nonsmoking. I hope you notified the front desk so you could be switched to other accommodations, and the room could be thoroughly cleaned and deodorized to prevent someone with a sensitivity to smoke from walking in and experiencing a severe allergic reaction.

Happy New Year!

The Top 100 stories of 2008 at Scientific American:
http://discovermagazine.com/columns/top-100-stories-of-2008


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