Atheists visualized

I stumbled across this interesting graphic today, depicting four of our most prominent atheist (secular humanist) thinkers: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

The image groups them based on various (slightly arbitrary, but still very interesting) categories, highlighting some of their differences and commonalities. It certainly conveys a lot of information efficiently and elegantly.



Click here for a larger image, or check out the author's Flickr photostream.

United Sins of America

Theoretically interesting, but sketchy in its execution: geographers from Kansas State University create visual maps of the prevalence of the seven deadly sins across the U.S. using various statistics as a (tenuous) proxy for the country's sinfulness.


Lust: based on the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases. Because lusty people have unsafe sex and spread disease. Research courtesy of the Bible Belt!



Gluttony: based on the number of fast food restaurants per capita... While I definitely get the correlation between gluttony and fast food (big, cheap and FAST!), perhaps an obesity map would have worked better? All this shows to me is the homogeneity with which fast food franchises have colonized the country.



Greed: reflects average incomes versus total inhabitants below the poverty line... This one I believe is flawed. I can't think of a way of combining these two statistics to come up with a measure that would at all correlate to or even connote greed. The map too seems to indicate that they are simply equating greed with prosperity.



Sloth: reflects spending on arts, entertainment and recreation versus rate of employment... A bit uninspired, and ideologically flawed, but okay.



Wrath: reflects total violent crimes per capita. Sounds about right!



Envy: based on the total number of thefts... Seriously? San Francisco guiltier of envy than LA???



Pride: calculated as the average of the six other sins... because pride is the origin of all sins? Cop out.


So... I take it Heaven is full of mid-westerners.

Via Flowing Data and Revolutions.

Seeing is believing!

This one's a bit dated, but it's truly priceless and I couldn't resist!

Imagine a quaint county courthouse, in rural Tennessee, and imagine that its surrounding grounds have been designated as a sort of "free speech zone" -- a space open to outdoor displays and installations of all sorts. What might you expect to find there?

Well, as it turns out: a soldiers' memorial, a Statue of Liberty, a cross-bearing Jesus, a chainsaw-carved sculpture of monkeys and bears, and...

...wait for it...

...a Flying Spaghetti Monster!



To those of you unaware of the deep significance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, get thyself an education.

To everyone else, may you be touched by his noodly appendage!

You can read more the county courthouse and its inadvertent encounter with Pastafarianism here.

And while you're at it, do treat yourself to the open letter to the Kansas State Board of Education that started it all.

Of icons and iconoclasms

Great article in The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine.

The topic: the word "iconic". And it manages to draw a parallel between Jesus, Hitler, Stalin, stadium rock and Marmite, all in the first sentence!

Enjoy!

The 1.4 million dollar question...

French physicist and philosopher of science Bernard d'Espagnat has been awarded the John Templeton Foundation's prestigious and highly generous Templeton Prize, amounting to 1 million British pounds. It's the world's largest annual prize.

As for what Monsieur d'Espagnat has done to deserve such a prize, I'll begin by noting that his scientific pedigree is off the charts. Known for his work in quantum mechanics, d'Espagnat enjoyed the tutorship of Louis de Broglie who was his thesis advisor, he was Enrico Fermi's research assistant, and he worked under Niels Bohr at CERN.

Yet he was awarded the Templeton Prize less for his advancements of the field of quantum mechanics, than for his exploration of its philosophical implications. The Foundation's press release offers this telling quote by d'Espagnat:

"[Quantum mechanics allows for] the possibility that the things we observe may be tentatively interpreted as signs providing us with some perhaps not entirely misleading glimpses of a higher reality and, therefore, that higher forms of spirituality are fully compatible with what seems to emerge from contemporary physics.”

It seems that the 1.4 million dollar question has ventured way off the path of science and into the territory of religion and spirituality. And I'm not sure how I feel about this.

On the one hand, at a time when our economic hardships are driving us to reduce everything to a cost benefit analysis, and the humanities are falling further and further out of favor, it's nice to see a purely theoretical endeavor rewarded. I also think we would benefit from mending the current massively unproductive rift between science and religion.

But on the other hand, is this really the 1.4 million dollar question? Or is there some truth to Richard Dawkin's critique that the Templeton Prize is just "a very large sum of money given...usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion?"

I may be leaning toward the latter...