Pre-Xmas Special
Audio Here!
Show 450: Lawrence M. Krauss on “The Unbelievers”
Lawrence M. Krauss on “The Unbelievers”
Audio here!
Where did the universe come from? Is an intelligent creator necessary to have set the Big Bang in motion? Theoretical physicist & cosmologist Lawrence Krauss doesn’t think so, and neither says the scientific evidence.
Krauss laid out that evidence last year in his book, “A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing”, demonstrating that it’s at least possible for a universe to arise spontaneously out of nothing. He’s also been giving talks and participating in debates, promoting science and unbelief, and this year he features with Richard Dawkins in a new documentary film called “The Unbelievers”, in which they travel the country promoting unbelief.
Krauss returns to the show to discuss science, religion, the universe from nothing, and why it’s important to talk about and debate these things. He will also discuss his new film, and much more. Krauss is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is a professor of physics at Arizona State University, where he also serves as Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and director of the Origins Project. He is most well known for his contributions to cosmology, as he was one of the first physicists to suggest that most of the mass and energy of the universe resides in empty space, an idea now widely known as dark energy.
Show 449: Call In Show
Call in show with Xaquri on Naturalism and Atheism
Audio Here!
Show 448: Tom Clark on Naturalism
Tom Clark: Back to Basics: Naturalism
Audio here!
Show 447: Niles Eldredge
Audio here!
Our guest was Dr. Niles Eldredge, a paleontologist who served as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History from 1969 until three years ago. He is well-known for his once controversial and now widely accepted evolutionary theory of “punctuated equilibria,” which he developed with Stephen Jay Gould. He is the author of many books, including The Pattern of Evolution, Life in the Balance, Why We Do It, and Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life.
Show 446: Deconverting from Christianity, the Sensible Thing?
De-converting from Christianity, the Sensible Thing?
Audio here!
It’s one thing to realize that science contradicts the Bible in a lot of ways, that the bible contains a lot of immoral passages (slavery, anyone?), that some passages in the bible are even contradicted by other passages in the Bible. It’s quite another thing to take the next logical step and realize God is nonexistant altogether. After all, maybe the Bible is just a collection of metaphors, an inspired book of wisdom not meant to be literal truth. Maybe “God” is a primal being who set the universe in motion and then did nothing else; a God like that couldn’t possibly conflict with science. Maybe there’s a true god out there, and all the different religions are only glimpsing pieces of divine truth. Right?
Wrong. It turns out there’s absolutely no good reason to believe in a God of any kind, Biblical or otherwise, no matter how little it directly contradicts science or how little immorality is contained in that God’s scripture. Few understand this better than this week’s guest Matt Dillahunty, who was a fundamentalist Christian for 25 years of his life and sincerely believed in and enjoyed his religion and God, before becoming an outspoken atheist. He’s been hosting the cable access show “The Atheist Experience” in Austin, Texas for the past six years, and served as the president of the Atheist Community of Austin for much of that time. He also appears in formal debates with Christian apologists and on his own YouTube channel, discussing atheism. He co-founded the “Iron Chariots” wiki with Russel Glasser, a fellow host on “The Atheist Experience”.
Dillahunty will discuss his experience going from Christian to atheist, why it doesn’t make sense to believe in a God or gods, why theistic arguments are largely based on fallacies, and much more.
Show 445: Naturalism and Personal Growth with Les Garwood MD
Naturalism and Personal Growth with Les Garwood MD
Audio here!
Join us as Psychiatrist Dr. Les Garwood outlines why a naturalistic approach to personal growth is the far more effective than non-evidence based approaches.
Show 476: Fund Drive Show
Fund Drive Show!
No Audio Available for this Show.
Show 444: Jason Silver of Brain Games on Futurism!
Jason Silver of Brain Games on Futurism!
Audio here!
Show 443: How to Think about Weird Things?
Ted Schick on How to Think about Weird Things?
Audio here!
Your neighbor says she had a dream where her friend died, a friend she hasn’t seen in 30 years, and that she woke up to discover her friend had really died recently. Is she psychic?
Your friend was out stargazing when he saw strange lights in the sky, lights that seemed to move too fast to be airplanes. Are we being visited by advanced beings from another world?
A woman at work claims that she used to be someone else in her previous life, and she can speak in uncanny detail about her former life, sometimes even taking on a different accent or entirely different language. Has she proven reincarnation? And if not, how can these incredible claims be explained?
Even if you dismiss these stories as nonsense, it’s natural to wonder why people keep claiming them with such certainty and such frequency. It turns out that many of these weird things can be easily explained by science and logic – if one knows how to think about them. Dr. Ted Schick, co-author of the text “How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age“, returns to the show to explain just how to reason these weird things out; and why, with our understanding of human nature, it’s not surprising that such strange experiences tend to happen…and happen a lot.