Posts Tagged ‘ science ’
A debate featuring Dr. Forbes and Dr. Jerry Bergman sponsored by sponsored by Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo Community College, the Kalamazoo Gazette, the ACLU, the Kalamazoo Trial Lawyers Association, the League of Women Voters, Better Together Kalamazoo and the Kalamazoo Bar Association. March 22, 2007.
373 MB | .7z (archive) .avi (extracted) | 1:49:20 runtime
As the title suggests, bestselling author Bryson (In a Sunburned Country) sets out to put his irrepressible stamp on all things under the sun. As he states at the outset, this is a book about life, the universe and everything, from the Big Bang to the ascendancy of Homo sapiens. “This is a book about how it happened,” the author writes. “In particular how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since.” What follows is a brick of a volume summarizing moments both great and curious in the history of science, covering already well-trod territory in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, paleontology, geology, chemistry, physics and so on. Bryson relies on some of the best material in the history of science to have come out in recent years. This is great for Bryson fans, who can encounter this material in its barest essence with the bonus of having it served up in Bryson’s distinctive voice. But readers in the field will already have studied this information more in-depth in the originals and may find themselves questioning the point of a breakneck tour of the sciences that contributes nothing novel. Nevertheless, to read Bryson is to travel with a memoirist gifted with wry observation and keen insight that shed new light on things we mistake for commonplace. To accompany the author as he travels with the likes of Charles Darwin on the Beagle, Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton is a trip worth taking for most readers.
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If I was going to recommend any of the books I have read promoting atheism out of the many I have read so far, the first book that comes to mind is Victor Stenger’s God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows God Does Not Exist.
I enjoyed this book for many reasons, but the number one reason would have to be it does something very few people are willing to do: it argues against religion with current scientific knowledge. So few people are brave enough in bring science into a debate about religion.
For one thing, science and religion are two fundamentally opposed institutions, at least to me. One tries to explain Nature with appeals to higher powers. The other more or less tries to understand how things work in Nature and see how this understanding can be used to explain Nature, those science is far from really “explaining” anything.
Stenger thinks, of course, science better understand the Universe than religion, thus religion is a best redundant, and at worst harmful to the human race. He also outlines fundamental logical errors in the understanding of the various types of Gods that people profess exist. A list is given by him by which he thinks people should use to gauge extraordinary claims. In the beginning of the book, he is trying to loosen the reader’s emotions and get them to think ratioanlly.
But after the first chapter Stenger lays down everything he can in the most general of terms to keep the book short, but in-depth enough to give you a good feeling of the many arguments and counter-arguments for the existence of God. This book is not meant to be the be-all-end-all of atheist books, but it is the stepping stone to a thorough understanding of the many atheistic and scientific arguments to the existence of God. Which brings us to the best quality of this book, the fact that it is heavily sourced and the end-notes are accessible and allow you to explore even more content outside of the book.
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Infinite Infinities 