Category: Shows

Sam Harris (The End of Faith) & Brian Flemming (The God that wasn’t There)

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Tom Clark on Naturalism & the Gulf(s)

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“On Consciousness”  w/ Ted Honderich & Susan Blackmore

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What is Consciousness?  Is the “self” just an illusion?  Do we really have “free will?”  The last 300 years has brought us two of the most important scientific discoveries of human civilization.  The Copernican-Galilean Revolution took humankind out of the center of the universe and allowed us to understand the nature of space.  The Darwinian Revolution removed humankind from our privileged position at the center of “God’s Universe,” and allowed us to understand the true nature of godless life.  Now, the upcoming Consciousness Revolution will allow us to understand the nature of our minds and indeed our very existence.

Imagine what a deterministic, self-less understanding of human behavior can lead us to in our many struggles both with each other and with the universe at large.  First, however, we need to understand what is means to be conscious in the first place.

Continue reading “Show 142: “On Consciousness” w/ Ted Honderich & Susan Blackmore”

Jerry Coyne on “The Case against Intelligent Design”

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Now that George Bush has lent his support to the teaching of Intelligent Design, along side of evolution in our public schools, it is important to know just what Intelligent Design is.  Is it really an alternative view on how life on earth came to be; or is it just the newest incarnation of religious creationism?  Either way, why is it important that we should care about this distinction if indeed so many Americans are for equal time for Intelligent Design in our children’s science classes?  Isn’t this a free country, after all?  We’ll find out on Sunday, September 18th at 6:30pm on Equal Time for Freethought!

Jerry Coyne is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution.  There, he is on the Committee on Evolutionary Biology and the Committee on Genetics. His recent essay in the New Republic addresses the political and scientific issues surrounding the new Creationism of Intelligent Design. That essay is called The Case against Intelligent Design: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

Call In Show on  “9/11, New Orleans and the Naturalistic Reaction to Disaster”

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Robert Tapp on EcoHumanism, Multiculturalism and Democracy

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What does humanism have to say about ecology and the environment?  We know religious fundamentalists don’t care about the health of the planet because they await the “End Times,” and the destruction of this world.

What does humanism say about multiculturalism and globalization?  We know the Right disdains the notion that all humans on earth deserve the same quality of life.  We also know that the Left has been so engaged in “identity politics,” that it has often missed the forest for the trees.

What does humanism say about democracy?  We know both the religious and secular Right would prefer anything from a theocracy to an aristocracy, or – worse yet – a neofascist society.

Robert Tapp is the chairperson of the humanities program, and professor of humanities and religious studies, at the University of Minnesota.  He has written extensively on humanism including his anthologies Ecohumanism, Multiculturalism: Humanist Perspectives, and the upcoming The Fate Of Democracy.

Andrew Cohen on What is Enlightenment?

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Who’s Enlightenment?

According to the publishers of What is Enlightenment magazine, the enlightenment movement is about “finding new ways to think and new answers to the difficult questions that are the challenge of our moment in history.  Those answers,” publishers argue, “can only be found by looking freshly at the emerging reality around us, without relying on older solutions that were sufficient for simpler problems.”  But just what are those new solutions, and what reality are they addressing?

Andrew Cohen, fonder of What is Enlightenment, Insists that his study into what he calls, “evolutionary spirituality,” is a science-based method of reaching what we on ETFF consider to be progressive social change.  We agree with Mr. Cohen on the goal, but it seems to us that he is disingenuous about his claim that his movement is scientific.

This program will be a discussion with Mr. Cohen on methods of enlightenment – naturalistic vs. supernaturalistic.

Hector Avalos on Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence

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People who represent the religious Left – such as Jim Wallis of Sojourners, and Michael Lerner of Tikkun – have advocated for what they feel are the inherently progressive teachings of Christianity and Judaism.  If this is so, that would mean that fundamentalists have gotten religion wrong.  But what if it’s the religious Left who has it wrong?  What if violence is built directly into the Abrahamic religions?

Biblical scholar Hector Avalos will talk to this issue as we discuss his new book, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence.  Avalos is the founder and Director of the U.S. Latino Studies Program at ISU, and the Executive Director of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, a part of the Council for Secular Humanism.

A former fundamentalist preacher born in Mexico, he became the first Mexican American to obtain a Ph.D. in Biblical and Near Eastern Studies from the Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

Erik J. Wielenberg on Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe

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Suppose there is no God.  This supposition implies that human life is meaningless, that there are no moral obligations and hence people can do whatever they want, and that the notions of virtue and vice, right and wrong, and good and evil have no place in the universe.  Erik Wielenberg believes this view to be utterly erroneous and, in this thought-provoking book, he explains the reasons why.  He argues that, even if God does not exist, human life can still have meaning, humans do have moral obligations, and human virtue is still possible.  Wielenberg offers readers a cogent explanation of the ethical implications of naturalism – a view that denies the existence of the supernatural in human life.  In his view virtue exists in a godless universe but it is significantly different from virtue in a Christian universe, and he develops naturalistic accounts of humility, charity, and hope.  The overarching theme of Virtue and Value in a Godless Universe is what ethics might look like without God.

David Gerrold on Star Trek, Science Fiction, and Secular Humanism

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“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today – but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.” – Isaac Asimov

Perhaps more than any other kind of genre fiction, Science Fiction has been the one most connected to the naturalistic worldview and humanism since the 19th Century.  Professor H. Bruce Franklin – historian and author – as written about how 19th century and post-WWII Science fiction was one of the most radical forms of literature the west has ever produced.

DAVID GERROLD started writing professionally in 1967.  His first sale was “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode of Star Trek.  Within five years, he had published seven novels, two books about television production, three anthologies, and a short story collection.  He was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards six times in four years.  Since 1967, he has published more than forty books including The Man Who Folded Himself, When HARLIE Was One, and the four books in The War Against The Chtorr.  Gerrold has had columns in six different magazines and two websites, including Starlog, Profiles, and Galaxy Online. In 1995, he won the Hugo and Nebula for The Martian Child, an autobiographical tale of his son’s adoption.