Miss USA 2011: Should Schools Teach Evolution? … or Math?

“Should evo­lu­tion be taught in schools?” That was the ques­tion actu­al­ly put to par­tic­i­pants in the Miss USA pageant held this past June.

In response, MacKen­zie Fegan and her friends had some fun with the whole line of think­ing, shoot­ing their own mock video in reply. Enjoy, and do know that we heart Miss Ver­mont…

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Famous Aca­d­e­mics & Sci­en­tists Talk About God

50 Famous Sci­en­tists & Aca­d­e­mics Speak About God: Part II

Do Physi­cists Believe in God

Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism

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50 Famous Scientists & Academics Speak About God: Part II

Last month, Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham cre­at­ed a mon­tage of 50 renowned aca­d­e­mics, includ­ing many Nobel prize win­ners, talk­ing about their thoughts on the exis­tence of God. And boy did it gen­er­ate some debate. (Watch the video and read the com­ments here.) Now comes Part II, which fea­tures George Lakoff, Richard Dawkins, Simon Schaf­fer, Patri­cia Church­land, and Michio Kaku, among oth­ers. The full list appears below the jump. (Click “more.”) You can find this video, along with the first video in the series, in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

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The Sins of the Renaissance, or The History That Shaped Michele Bachmann’s Worldview

Dur­ing the 1970s, Fran­cis A. Scha­ef­fer, an evan­gel­i­cal the­olo­gian, wrote and nar­rat­ed How Should We Then Live?, a ten-part film series that traced the his­to­ry of West­ern cul­ture and thought. Lots of art and phi­los­o­phy were put on dis­play. But the real nar­ra­tive focused on some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent — the his­to­ry of human­i­ty’s lapse from God and a Bib­li­cal world­view. The film became a sen­sa­tion at evan­gel­i­cal church­es across Amer­i­ca, some­times draw­ing 5,000 peo­ple per screen­ing. And, as Ryan Liz­za writes in a New York­er pro­file pub­lished this week, the film had a life-alter­ing effect on Michele Bach­mann, the US Rep­re­sen­ta­tive now vying for the pres­i­den­cy.

For Scha­ef­fer, the big turn­ing point came dur­ing the Renais­sance. That’s when things went wrong. He laments (start­ing around the 10:45 mark above):

At the begin­ning of the Renais­sance, it could have gone either way. Nature could have had its prop­er place. Man could have been in his prop­er place, and it would have been absolute­ly beau­ti­ful. But at a cer­tain point in the Renais­sance, the scales tipped, and man put him­self at the cen­ter absolute­ly, and this opened the door com­plete­ly to the whole destruc­tive force of human­ism that fol­lowed down through the Enlight­en­ment [oth­er­wise called “The Age of Non Rea­son”] and into our own day.

If you want to see where this destruc­tive force brings us, you need only turn to the last seg­ment “Final Choic­es.” (Part 1Part 2Part 3) Accord­ing to Scha­ef­fer, we end up under the con­trol of an author­i­tar­i­an elite that impos­es its arbi­trary will on the peo­ple, some­times inject­ing birth con­trol into the water sup­ply, and some­times decid­ing who will be born, and who won’t. The author­i­tar­i­an elite resides in no one place. It’s shad­owy, doing its work in many places. But one place you def­i­nite­ly find it? The Supreme Court that gave us Roe v. Wade.

Should you wish, you can watch the remain­ing seg­ments via the links below.

Episode I — The Roman Age
Episode II — The Mid­dle Ages
Episode III — The Renais­sance
Episode IV — The Ref­or­ma­tion
Episode V — The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Age
Episode VI — The Sci­en­tif­ic Age
Episode VII — The Age of Non Rea­son
Episode VIII — The Age of Frag­men­ta­tion
Episode IX — The Age of Per­son­al Peace & Afflu­ence
Episode X — Final Choic­es (Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3)

via The LA Times

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Animated: Stephen Fry & Ann Widdecombe Debate the Catholic Church

Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) brings Oxford-style debat­ing to Amer­i­ca. Each debate fea­tures one motion, one mod­er­a­tor, and three pan­elists argu­ing for a motion, and three argu­ing against. Should Air­ports Use Racial and Reli­gious Pro­fil­ing? Is Islam A Reli­gion Of Peace? Is The Two-Par­ty Sys­tem Mak­ing the U.S. Ungovern­able? These are some of the recent top­ics that have been tack­led.

Now, tak­ing a page out of the RSA play­book, Intel­li­gence Squared has pro­duced a short ani­mat­ed video that gives artis­tic life to a debate held in Octo­ber 2009. The motion — “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world” — was sup­port­ed by Ann Noreen Wid­de­combe, a for­mer British Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty politi­cian turned nov­el­ist. And tak­ing the con­trary posi­tion was pop­u­lar British actor and writer Stephen Fry.

You can watch the ani­mat­ed ver­sion above, and the full debate (which also fea­tured Christo­pher Hitchens) here. More iq2 videos can be found at their Youtube Chan­nel, which oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels. H/T @joabaldwin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy and Unbe­lief

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

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50 Famous Academics & Scientists Talk About God

Jonathan Parara­jas­ing­ham has pulled togeth­er a mon­tage of 50 renowned aca­d­e­mics, most­ly all sci­en­tists, talk­ing about their thoughts on the exis­tence of God. The list includes includes 16 Nobel prize win­ners, and a bun­dle of rec­og­niz­able names, includ­ing Richard Feyn­man, Steven Pinker, Oliv­er Sacks, Bertrand Rus­sell, Stephen Hawk­ing, and Leonard Susskind. The full list appears below the jump. (Click “more.”) Click here to find anoth­er 50 Aca­d­e­mics Talk­ing About God and 30 renowned writ­ers doing the same.

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Stephen Fry on Philosophy and Unbelief

Come­di­an Stephen Fry has the clas­sic British intel­lec­tu­al voice, much like philoso­pher Bryan McGee. It turns out that he knows some­thing about phi­los­o­phy, and this clip is a short­ened ver­sion of a longer video called “The Impor­tance of Unbe­lief.”

A more gen­tle ver­sion of George Car­lin, Fry’s views appear heart­felt while par­tak­ing of seri­ous irony. He claims that in order to prop­er­ly appre­ci­ate our present lives, “even if it isn’t true, you must absolute­ly assume that there is no after­life.” Choos­ing his posi­tions to argue as much for their rhetor­i­cal audac­i­ty as any­thing else, he argues for poly­the­ism in favor of monothe­ism, and he treats the issue of the divine pres­ence in nature by ref­er­enc­ing the life cycle of a par­a­sitic worm. He seems an apt voice to add to the new athe­ist debates, at least as amus­ing as Dawkins and much more­so than Sam Har­ris. This clip is added to our col­lec­tion of 250 Cul­tur­al Icons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. He also per­forms with the Madi­son, WI band New Peo­ple.

The “Ask Sam Harris Anything” Hour

Sam Har­ris — he wrote the best­sellers The End of Faith and Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation. He’s also one-fourth of the New Athe­ist quar­tet infor­mal­ly called The Four Horse­men (where you’ll also find Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Hitchens and Daniel Den­nett.) And he has most recent­ly argued that neu­ro­science can even­tu­al­ly answer all moral ques­tions. Sam Har­ris is very much a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al. He’s out there and in the mix. And he’s now answer­ing ques­tions from Reddit.com users. Give Har­ris 54 min­utes and he’ll tell you how to pro­mote pub­lic ratio­nal­i­ty, why med­i­ta­tion can change your life, and much, much more …

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Answers Red­dit User Ques­tions

Richard Dawkins Plays the Piano: “Earth His­to­ry in C Major”

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Leonard Cohen Reads “The Future” (Not Safe for Work)

If you’ve been feel­ing the End Times’ icy breath a lit­tle close on your shoul­ders these past few weeks, we rec­om­mend a healthy dose of Leonard Cohen. You can start with this 20-minute inter­view from 1993, con­duct­ed by Bar­bara Gowdy of the Cana­di­an lit­er­ary series, Imprint. And click “play” with cau­tion — it starts with Cohen read­ing the very NSFW poem “The Future,” from his epony­mous 1992 album.

The sec­ond you hear that famous blue bari­tone say “Give me absolute con­trol over every liv­ing soul,” you know the apoc­a­lypse can cer­tain­ly wait till the poem’s over. Or maybe it can’t, but at least you’ll have spent your last few moments lis­ten­ing to Leonard Cohen.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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