Mecca — Muhammad’s birthplace and the heart of Islam – beautifully captured by Hosain Hadi, using just his Canon 5D mark ll.
H/T @MatthiasRascher
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Middle Eastern History: Free Courses
Five Minutes with Richard Dawkins
You’ll get the schtick pretty quickly. The BBC’s Matthew Stadlen spends five quick minutes with celebrities, thinkers and newsmakers. And, above, he gets down to business with Richard Dawkins, with the conversation touching on religion, the afterlife, spirituality, morality, happiness, and the whole point of life. Other thinkers featured in the series include Martin Amis, AC Grayling, Alain de Botton, Brian Cox, Sir Terry Pratchett and others.
via Metafilter
Ayn Rand Argues That Believing in God Is an Insult to Reason on The Phil Donahue Show (Circa 1979)
Ayn Rand — she’s often considered the intellectual darling of America’s political right. Rand’s free market thinking rubbed off on Alan Greenspan in a big way. At the Cato Institute, Stephen Moore writes, “Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok [Atlas Shrugged] was practically a job requirement.” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledges a deep debt to The Fountainhead, Rand’s celebration of the individual, and makes his law clerks watch the 1949 film adaptation of the novel. Rand Paul, the new Tea Party senator, calls himself a fan of both books. And Ayn Rand book sales surged once Obama came into office. You get the picture.
Given this love affair, it’s a little incongruous to rediscover old footage (circa 1979) that features Rand coming out “against God,” calling faith an abdication of individual responsibility (so important to her philosophy), an insult to the human intellect, and a sign of psychological weakness. If she were alive today, Rand would easily give the “new atheists” (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, etc.) a very good run for their money. It’s not exactly the stuff that traditionally makes you a conservative saint, but stranger things have happened. Maybe.
Related Content:
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, with Jonathan Miller
Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Why He’s Uncomfortable Being Labeled an ‘Atheist’
Atheist Ira Glass Believes Christians Get the Short End of the Media Stick
Do Physicists Believe in God?
Every day, physicists and astronomers confront the wonders of the universe. But does staring into the sublime abyss incline them toward a belief in God? Not if you ask the physicists at The University of Nottingham School of Physics and Astronomy, who answer big questions on YouTube and Sixty Symbols, including “What happens if you stick your hand inside the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator?
The Nottingham physicists are in some good company. According to a well-known 1997 study published in Nature, biologists within the National Academy of Sciences rejected God and immortality at rates of 65.2% and 69.0%. Meanwhile, when physical scientists were polled, the numbers rose to 79.0% and 76.3%. The summary originally published by Nature now appears here.
via PourMeCoffee
The Dalai Lama on the Neuroscience of Compassion
Last week, the Dalai Lama spent several days at Stanford University, where he made compassion his focus. He laid the foundation with a large public address before an audience of 7,000. (Watch an excerpt above or the full talk below.) Then things got more focused when the spiritual leader of Tibet participated in a daylong conference about the neurobiological underpinnings of compassion. Hosted by Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, the conference brought together important scientists from many disciplines – psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and economics. You can watch a recording of the conference here. It’s all in video and ready to go.
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Karen Armstrong Weighs In on the Ground Zero Mosque Debate
America, as a nation, has some big fish to fry these days. But the energy is being focused right now on a symbolic question. Can the nation tolerate the building of an Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero almost a decade after the 9/11 attacks? Or, more to the point, can America uphold one of its core values – religious tolerance? The debate has smoldered on throughout the summer, and we’ve seen the hard right and left condemn the Cordoba Initiative and Islam more generally. On the right, Newt Gingrich has talked about how we’re facing an “Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” And built into his thinking is the assumption that when Christians commit abhorrent crimes, it’s a perversion of the religion, not an indictment of its essence. But the same charity doesn’t get extended to the Islamic minority faith in the country. Meanwhile, Sam Harris on the secular/atheist left gets in bed with Gingrich when he says “there is much that is objectionable—and, frankly, terrifying—about the religion of Islam and about the state of discourse among Muslims living in the West.” If it matters, the main difference between Harris and Gingrich is Harris’ consistency, which boils down to a consistent contempt for religion. (Partially Examined Life takes a much closer look at Harris’ arguments here).
All of this makes me wonder: What would someone who actually knows something about Islam say about the whole affair? So here you have it. Karen Armstrong, one of the most well known thinkers in the field of comparative religion, a former Catholic nun, and the author most recently of The Case for God, offering her thoughts on the matter above.
Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Science & Atheism
No one debates quite as well as an Oxford professor. And so today we feature two Oxford profs – atheist biologist Richard Dawkins and Christian mathematician John Lennox – debating God and science in … of all places … Birmingham, Alabama. The debate turns largely on a question raised in Dawkins’ 2006 bestseller, The God Delusion: To what extent can religious belief and serious scientific discovery go hand-in-hand? The debate is lively, and the thought serious. A good way to spend 90+ minutes. And Brazilian readers, you’re in luck. You get subtitles. If you would like to purchase a copy of the debate, you can buy it through the Fixed Point Foundation, the Christian organization that organized the event. You can also watch a version of the debate on the Fixed Point web site here.
Related Content:
50 Famous Academics & Scientists Talk About God
50 Famous Academics & Scientists Talk About God — Part II
Christopher Hitchens on Cancer, Life and Religion
Christopher Hitchens hasn’t turned inward since his cancer diagnosis in June. Nor, as some might have anticipated, has he budged from his atheist views outlined in his 2007 bestseller God Is Not Great. And if you hear rumors of an eventual deathbed conversion, don’t believe them. That’s the message he passes along to Anderson Cooper in a new CNN interview (above). Also, Hitchens has just published a new piece in Vanity Fair where he talks about his introduction to (esophagus) cancer in a way that only Hitchens can. Regardless of what you think about Hitchens, it’s definitely worth a read…
via Daily Hitchens
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