The ISHV Cyber Think Tank is a digest of articles, interviews, and other musings compiled by ISHV Board Member Robert B. Tapp.
Amy Couch, Pursuing Truth with Anjan Chakravartty (new professor at Univ. of Miami) “The thing I’m most unsure about is what response we will get, in a society that is so polarized in so many ways, but I’m hopeful that everyone, whatever their personal view of the Chair for the Study of Atheism, Humanism, and Secular Ethics, will join me in thinking that the ideal of excellent education and research is crucial to our wellbeing as a society and to our collective future.”read
Bradford Richardson Atheists slam Trump for referencing only Christianity at prayer breakfast read
The Improbable Friendship That Shaped a Generation of Literary Scholarship: Lionel Trilling and Jacques Barzun seemed an intellectual odd couple. What made their relationship last? read
Colin Marshall, An Animated Introduction to Epicurus and His Answer to the Ancient Question: What Makes Us Happy? watch
Julian Baggini on Steven Pinker “In a work of such breadth and scope, small lapses like this are inevitable, but are far outweighed by the clarity, force and evidential weight of his central arguments.” read
Michelle Goldberg int. on Freethought Matters (28m) watch
Jay Cornell, Techno-Optimism: The World’s Transformation Since the Industrial Revolution (Transhumanism?) read
Michael Shermer, Heavens on Earth:
“For millennia, religions have concocted numerous manifestations of heaven and the afterlife, and though no one has ever returned from such a place to report what it is really like—or that it even exists—today science and technology are being used to try to make it happen in our lifetime. From radical life extension to cryonic suspension to mind uploading, Shermer considers how realistic these attempts are from a proper skeptical perspective.” read
Julie Zauzmer, The complicated history of ‘In God We Trust’ and other examples Trump gives of American religion read
Isabel Fattal, How Should Atheism Be Taught? read
Jennifer Szalai, Steven Pinker Wants You to Know Humanity Is Doing Fine. Just Don’t Ask About Individual Humans.:
“There’s a noble kernel to Pinker’s project. He wants to discourage the kind of fatalism that leads people to think the only way forward is to tear everything down. But he seems surprisingly blind to how he fuels such fatalism by playing to the worst stereotype of the enlightened cosmopolitan: disdainful and condescending — sympathetic to humanity in the abstract but impervious to the suffering of actual human beings.” read
David Breeden, Socbots and the Three Poisons “Ah, American politics. Reminds me of the “three poisons” in Buddhism: anger, greed, and delusion. “ read
Clay Farris Naff, Enlightenment Wow: The Humanist Interview with Steven Pinker “I wonder whether you have plans to push these ideas out into the prevailing culture by other means.
Pinker: I certainly do. I’m participating in a large number of podcasts and web interviews. I endorse websites such as Our World in Data, Human Progress, and Gapminder, which provide interactive graphics that can tell a story in a way that sentences can’t. I give lectures that are distributed on the web. So I’m very much immersed in the new universe of electronic media.”. Why is Google/YouTube taking down these videos and threatening the sites that post them? read
AEU Gun Control Statement read
David Breeden, Gods, Guns, and Gut Emotions ‘“Thoughts and prayers” is fast becoming the “let them eat cake” of our era. Even those who believe that prayer has some efficacy are finding the phrase risible in the face of constant mass shootings.’read