The ISHV Cyber Think Tank is a digest of articles, interviews, and other musings compiled by Board Member Robert B. Tapp.

Meet the American Humanist Association’s new Education Assistant, Emily Newman read

Landon Schnabel and Sean Bock, The Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion: A Response to Recent Research “If it is primarily moderate religionists and those with loose ties to their religions driving the decline in average American religiosity, then we may be seeing more of a polarization of religion than a pattern consistent with the secularization thesis.” read

Michael Shermer’s new book, Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia. (several videos) watch

Free Inquiry has published, in 3 issues, papers from a symposium Fight for Our Philosophy. Key terms are scientific and naturalistic and academic. Introductions by Judy Walker and Tom Flynn summarize the papers. read read read

Michael Shermer, Science Denial versus Science Pleasure “In other words, valuing science for pure pleasure is more of a bulwark against the politicization of science than facts alone.” read

Hemant Mehta, What’s the Main Source of Global Conflict? Survey Says: “Religious Beliefs” read

“The Greatest Showman”: A Nickell-odeon Review (Barnum was a Universalist) read

Rob Brotherton, Suspicious Minds read

Online Books by Free Religious Association (Boston Mass.) read)

Leigh Eric Schmidt, Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation read

Hemant Mehta, Atheists Support Abortion Rights More Than Any Other Group (Except One…) read

Michael Shermer, Science Denial versus Science Pleasure read

David Breeden Good Cat, Bad Person: the Human Intuition of Being “Wrong” read

FFRF, The (further) rise of Christian nationalism by Michelle Goldberg read

Rick Snedeker. Why Do We Believe in the Unbelievable? It’s Natural read

Michael Shermer, For the Love of Science:

“That liberals are just as guilty of antiscience bias comports more with accounts of humans chomping canines, and yet those on the left are just as skeptical of well-established science when findings clash with their political ideologies, such as with GMOs, nuclear power, genetic engineering and evolutionary psychology—skepticism of the last I call “cognitive creationism” for its endorsement of a blank-slate model of the mind in which natural selection operated on humans only from the neck down.” read