Reality Crowd

The Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign is having a lot of trouble getting their message out. The original campaign was to start in Bloomington, Indiana, but the town decided they would not allow “You Can Be Good Without God” posted on the side of their buses. Recently, the campaign was approved to start running the ad on buses in South Bend, Indiana, however, there is a delay because of the “controversial message.” RealityCrowd would like the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign to have all the publicity it can. Please send this post to your friends!

Trouble in Bloomington:

Original Campaign Launch:

I enjoy this discovery because it reminds me of a concept I learned while studying music. Playing very high notes or very low notes (especially on wind instruments) is difficult. Players spend years trying to stretch that one half-step further or gain the ability to play just a little louder or keep control at the very softest tone. Stretching your ability that far, though, has more value than just being able to finally hit that high C. The benefit also lies in the fact that all the notes you play in between—the notes you have played for years—become stronger as you expand your total range.

This gamma ray burst is like that high C, and understanding it will bring the benefit of better understanding all the galaxies, stars, and other celestial objects in between that we have been “playing” for years. Our understanding of physics will become more refined as scientists may now have a glimpse into the very first generation of stars (with undoubtedly different properties from stars we commonly study today). For a more detailed description of this event and its implications, view the NewScience article here.

Please comment what this discovery means to you (even if you don’t see why a little yellow smudge could get people so excited)!

Every morning I wake up, and I still feel like me. My conscious experience feels stable, natural, consistent, and singular (me). However, as Jill Bolte Taylor, our speaker and brain scientist describes, the two halves of our brains have distinctly separate experiences. They function very differently from one another and care about different things entirely. Having a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain and having left-brain functions individually shut down gave to her unique insight to her mind. She describes in vivid detail how her unaffected right hemisphere became more and more responsible for her entire conscious experience as her left-brain failed. She describes a profound awakening experience as she came to know pure right-brain thought and the hemisphere’s personal experience. She gives insights to the mind on a scientific level and even reaches into—dare I say—a spiritual realm offering her own words of hope for the experience of the human race.

Now for the fun part! Test your own hemispheres with this optical illusion.

If we can’t travel to the beginning of time to observe the Big Bang, then we will just have to make our own miniature Big Bang right here on Earth. It may sound a little far-fetched and maybe even a little dangerous. (It’s neither.)

After 10 years of construction and about $8 billion invested in the cause, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has given rise to the Large Hadron Collider. This astounding technological marvel (a ring 27 kilometers in circumference) is constructed for the purpose of recreating conditions that only existed within the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang—unimaginable measures of heat and density—by literally smashing bits of matter together near the speed of light. Recording particles present in this not-since-the-dawn-of-time formation, will give us insight to the very fabric of our universe and further the pursuit of answering arguably the biggest questions human beings have ever set out to answer.

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Have a seat and enjoy your free virtual reality haircut (with headphones). Enjoy the amazing ability of your brain to perceive the location of a sound by calculating input from both ears.

Researchers now say they have strong evidence to suggest that the area of the brain responsible for this discerning ability is the planum temporale. Read this Science Daily article here discussing recent findings of the planum temporale and the brain’s amazing ability to locate sounds in three-dimensional space.

University of Sydney scientists have discovered that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is twice as wide as previously thought. It seems very strange that this could be the case, doesn’t it? Scientists have peered billions of light years into the cosmos. They have made observations and calculations of mass and distance of a multitude of celestial objects and even of the universe itself. But right here at home, our own galaxy we calculated to be about 6,000 light-years thick, and these scientists now claim that in reality, it is 12,000 light-years thick. It is fascinating to learn that these scientists did not even make any new observations; they simply used data already collected that was available on the Internet! This surprising result has elicited mixed emotions from the scientific community. From the University of Sidney article:

“Some colleagues have come up to me and have said ‘That wrecks everything!’” says Professor Gaensler. “And others have said ‘Ah! Now everything fits together!’”

Here at RealityCrowd, we often cite ways in which science and religion are opposed. This event is a beautiful example of how in the scientific community, new evidence can change even a long-held belief. If assertions are supported by evidence, then those assertions must be taken seriously. However, religion, as many readers realize, does not change in the light of new evidence, and this is why we incessantly hear unsupported claims from many Christians such as the age of the universe being only about 6,000 years. Not even the mountain of evidence to the contrary will convince a true Bible believer. This unwavering stance may be comfortable for those who need the universe to be predictable and simple, but those of us with open and inquisitive minds will celebrate these times that we can say, “Hey, we were wrong!”

Read the entire University of Sydney article here.

“…it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressionable, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.”

“It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.”

-Charles Darwin

For more than four decades Moore’s Law has been consistently correct, and since 1965 scientists have made silicon chips twice as efficient about every 18 months. We all experience this exponential increase in processing power directly: by the changing tools we use, the increasing capabilities of software and computer hardware, changing physical and social systems, and especially by the way change keeps coming faster. Think about how much technology has changed over your lifetime.

This speeding-up process has become an important part of the way our society functions. As noted by Michael Foster, division director of computing and communication foundations at the National Science Foundation, human and economic progress in the U.S. over the past 20 years has depended on the predictability of this growth.

Silicon chips, however, do have limitations--physical limitations on how small a scale you can actually place transistors on an integrated circuit. When you get down to the atomic scale, there’s not much further you can go, and quantum effects will start to pose serious problems. Moore’s Law will reach an end, predicted to be within the next 10 to 20 years. Will we find new innovations to leave Moore’s Law in the dust? Many hope so.

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Some of the great minds of human history had pretty interesting things to say about religion. Benjamin Franklin is quoted: “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.” I had to look that up to make sure. View the above video to see quotes of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Homer Simpson, and many other interesting personalities and their takes on religion.

View RealityCrowd’s Quoatable Quotes category to see other posts on influential people and their assertions about religion, faith, reason, and science.

The show “30 days,” a reality TV show on FX, puts people in an unfamiliar lifestyle or culture for a full 30 days and explores the interactions of those put in this juxtaposition. Through stark contrast viewers are able to more plainly see the perceived reality of the groups involved and possible get a closer idea of the actually reality in which we are all involved.

The episode featured in the below video examines the situation of an atheist who agrees to live in the home of a Christian family for 30 days. She attends church with the Christian family as well as Bible study, and she is involved with her hosts daily as a member of the household. As many atheists do, Brenda describes herself as a free thinker: one who builds beliefs based on evidence and logic. The host family immerses Brenda in the community of the faithful.

Highlights of the video are outlined here in minutes and seconds so you can jump to any part of the video you may enjoy:

1:10 - The family and Brenda visit a Christian theme park, The Holy Land Experience where among other events, there is a reenactment of the crucifixion of Christ.

2:40 - Brenda visits the family’s Church for Sunday service.

4:50 - Brenda attends Bible study and is engaged by the members to discuss her views as an atheist. One member asks Brenda, “What did Christ do that was so bad?”

8:10 - Brenda and her host Tracy find some common ground.

9:10 - This last part of the video is especially interesting reporting on general views and attitudes people have about atheists. They cite a University of Minnesota study that showed atheists as being the least trusted minority group in America.