ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 393
April 25, 2017
Necessity of Secularism, pgs 15-16
“The rise and fall of religious beliefs is difficult to predict with assurance. It’s doubtful whether many Romans in the early second century would have predicted the rise of Christianity, whether many Europeans in the early sixteenth century would have predicted the Reformation and the subsequent rejection of Catholicism by much of the continent, whether many Americans in the early twentieth century would have foreseen the simultaneous decline of mainstream Protestant denominations and the rise of Protestant fundamentalism, or whether many in the West anticipated the recent spike in atheists, agnostics, and other nonbelievers. Perhaps over the next one hundred years, some faith will sweep aside other beliefs; perhaps religious beliefs, in general, will decline precipitously and all but disappear. Either outcome is possible.
However, a much more likely outcome is a significant increase in the number of nonbelievers, accompanied by a decrease, but not a collapse, in the number of believers. This increase could come fairly quickly if nonbelievers reach a critical mass, which would allow for greater acceptance and the sense among many nominal believers that it’s no longer socially injurious to acknowledge that one is an atheist or agnostic. The big break in the United States will come if and when a number of politicians who are open atheists and nominal believers to come out of the closet. But even if there is an exponential increase in the number of nonbelievers, it’s improbable that religion will be completely abandoned. Religious belief is resilient. Some debate whether religious belief has a genetic basis, but regardless of whether it has a biological foundation, it’s undeniable it has deep cultural and psychological roots. Beliefs that have had a firm grip on the human psyche for millennia are unlikely to vanish in a century.”
–Ron Lindsay, The Necessity of Secularism, pgs 15-16
Discuss!
Question of the Week 4-25-17
April 24, 2017
Venus hair bacteria colonised underwater volcano after eruption
By Sam Wong
Gone today, hair tomorrow. Soon after an underwater volcano erupted and wiped out all nearby life forms, hardy bacteria moved in and covered the area in a huge mat of hair-like filaments.
These strange colonies were found by an expedition to Tagoro Volcano, near the Canary Islands, in 2014, two years after an eruption that reshaped 9 square kilometres of the sea floor. The researchers explored the area via a robotic submarine equipped with cameras and arms for collecting samples.
“Something very strange appeared to us: a very nice picturesque coverage of very long white filaments which were very unusual. It was the first time we had seen something like that,” says Roberto Danovaro of the Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy.
They named the organism Venus’s hair, recalling Botticelli’s painting of the goddess Venus emerging from the sea.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
When Pluto Changed from a Fuzzy Dot into a Full-Fledged World
By Tod R. Lauer
Two years ago this coming July, the long journey of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto was approaching its end. Years earlier we had used New Horizons’ long-range camera to spot Pluto as a faint point of light off the bow of the spacecraft, but it took until April of 2015 for Pluto to begin to slowly, slowly reveal itself as an incredible new world. The best images would come on the day of closest approach, July 14, 2015, but three months out we cranked up our cameras to document our steady approach. And so we watched as, week by week, and then day by day, New Horizons beamed back ever more detailed images of Pluto from the edge of the solar system.
The distant pictures, however, were more enigmatic than anything. The dot of light became a fuzzy blob, which became a little disk with bright and dark markings, which became a bigger disk with finer bright and dark markings. We couldn’t help but to speculate on what we were seeing, but the geologists and geophysicists on the team weren’t really saying that much beyond “It’s not geology, yet.” Consider an open book resting on a table across the room. From where you’re standing you see a gray mass of printed text. Maybe if you squint you can see that the mass is organized into lines and words, but that’s about it. To read it, to learn from it, you have to walk over and pick it up.
So it is with planets. We explore the worlds of our solar system by sending spacecraft across immense distances on multiyear missions to get close enough to read their stories directly. We’ve sent rovers across the dry lakebeds of Mars. We’ve watched immense thunderstorms hurl lighting bolts across the skies of Jupiter. We’ve plumbed the methane seas of Titan, and dived inside the rings of Saturn. Our journeys have made these places real. We’ve always been rewarded with startling surprises – strange new worlds with hard won new knowledge.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
A famous “ancestor” may be ousted from the human family
By Ann Gibbons
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA—A remarkably complete skeleton introduced in 2010 as “the best candidate” for the immediate ancestor of our genus Homo may just be a pretender. Instead of belonging to the human lineage, the new species of Australopithecus sediba is more closely related to other hominins from South Africa that are on a side branch of the human family tree, according to a new analysis of the fossil presented here last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
When fossils from several individuals’ skeletons were found in a collapsed cave in Malapa, South Africa, in 2008, their discoverer, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, noted that they helped fill a key gap in the fossil record 2 million to 3 million years ago when some upright-walking australopithecine evolved into the earliest member of our genus, Homo. But the oldest Homo fossils, at 2.4 million to 2.9 million years, are scrappy, and a half dozen more primitive hominins may have been walking around Africa at roughly the right time to be the ancestor. Researchers have hotly debated whether their direct ancestor was the famous 3.2-million-year-old fossil Lucy and her kind, Australopithecus afarensis from Ethiopia, or another australopithecine.
With its fossils dated to 1.98 million years ago, Au. sediba is too young to be directly ancestral to all members of the genus Homo. But Berger and his colleagues proposed in 2010, and again in 2013 in six papers in Science, that given the many humanlike traits in Au. sediba’s face, teeth, and body, the Malapa fossils were a better candidate than Lucy or other East African fossils to be ancestral to Homo erectus, a direct human ancestor that appeared 1.8 million years ago.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
What’s happening at March for Science events around the world
By Sara Reardon, Nicky Phillips, Alison Abbott, Barbara Casassus, Ewen Callaway, Alexandra Witze, Corie Lok & Emiliano Rodriguez Mega
Tens of thousands of people will gather today in Washington DC, and at least 600 other cities around the world, in what may be one of the largest-ever demonstrations in support of scientific research and evidence-based policymaking.
The March for Science was organized shortly after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, largely in response to widespread alarm about his administration’s attitude toward science. Trump has repeatedly called global warming a “hoax” and promised to roll back numerous environmental protection laws. And in March, the White House released a budget proposal that included double-digit cuts to agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health.
More than 100 scientific societies and advocacy organizations have endorsed the march, but it has also proved controversial. Critics charge that march organizers have diluted the event’s message by focusing on challenges that the scientific community faces, such as the inclusion of racial minorities, rather than advocating for science itself. Many are also concerned that the protest casts science as a partisan issue, although event organizers and supporters have pushed back, insisting the marches aren’t political.
Nature is reporting from science marches around the world today. Check back throughout the day for updates.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
April 21, 2017
New report halves the number of people infected with hepatitis C worldwide
By Jon Cohen
A new World Health Organization (WHO) report chops the estimated number of people around the world living with the liver-damaging hepatitis C virus (HCV) in half—but the drop has nothing to do with the recent advent of powerful drugs that cure the disease for most everyone.
WHO’s Global Hepatitis Report estimates that 71 million people in 2015 were living with HCV, down from an earlier estimate of 130 million to 150 million. As the report explains, the dramatic drop occurred primarily because of tests that measured HCV’s genetic material, RNA, in people. Previous epidemiological surveys tested whether people had antibodies against the virus, which is less precise.
The report estimates that 257 million people are infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV), a number very close to previous estimates. Although HBV and HCV are unrelated, they both persist for decades, often without a person’s knowledge, and both can ultimately cause cirrhosis or liver cancer. Together, the viruses killed 1.34 million people in 2015, which the report notes is comparable to deaths from tuberculosis and higher than those from HIV/AIDS.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
DNA’s secret weapon against knots and tangles
By Elie Dolgin
Leonid Mirny swivels in his office chair and grabs the power cord for his laptop. He practically bounces in his seat as he threads the cable through his fingers, creating a doughnut-sized loop. “It’s a dynamic process of motors constantly extruding loops!” says Mirny, a biophysicist here at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Mirny’s excitement isn’t about keeping computer accessories orderly. Rather, he’s talking about a central organizing principle of the genome — how roughly 2 metres of DNA can be squeezed into nearly every cell of the human body without getting tangled up like last year’s Christmas lights.
He argues that DNA is constantly being slipped through ring-like motor proteins to make loops. This process, called loop extrusion, helps to keep local regions of DNA together, disentangling them from other parts of the genome and even giving shape and structure to the chromosomes.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
Here’s what to expect from Saturday’s March for Science
By Chelsea Whyte and Lisa Grossman
The March for Science is set for tomorrow, when thousands are expected to descend on the National Mall in Washington DC. Hundreds of satellite marches are set to take place around the globe. Despite criticisms of the organising committee and a perceived lack of a clear message, it could be a turning point for how scientists approach government.
In the days after the 2017 US presidential inauguration, resistance to the anti-science stance trumpeted during the 2016 campaign grew in online discussions on Reddit. Several people, including physiologist Jonathan Berman, proposed a march on Washington similar to the Women’s March in January.
“There was this building desire among scientists to become more willing to enter into the political discussion, and we sort of got the timing right to become the fulcrum for that,” says Berman, who became one of the national organisers of the March for Science.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
March for Science or March for Reality?
By Lawrence Krauss
Shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump as President, it was announced that a March for Science would be held Washington DC and in a host of other cities in the United States and around the world to protest the new Administration’s apparent anti-science agenda—from denial of climate change to dismantling the EPA, to budget priorities that will cut key science programs throughout the country—and to lobby for science-based policymaking as well as support for scientific research to address the challenges of the 21st century.
Meanwhile the Trump administration’s anti-science actions continue. Attorney General Sessions announced just this week that he was disbanding the National Commission on Forensic Science, which advises the federal government to enhance national standards in this area.
I have no idea how the Marches for Science—now over 400 in number across the globe—will play out, and how the media will interpret them. A series of worrisome tweets emanating from the March for Science twitter account over the past week, following similar early statements made on the groups website that were subsequently removed, claimed that scientific research promotes violence and inequity in society. These have been disavowed but the variety of mixed communications from leaders of the march over the past months suggests at the very least that the organization encompasses a wide diversity of agendas.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog
- ريتشارد دوكنز's profile
- 106 followers
