Turkish internet users have been blocked via a court order from accessing the site of prominent British biologist Richard Dawkins after complaints from lawyers for Islamic creationist author Adnan Oktar, the website of Turkish television station NTV reported on Wednesday.

A court in Istanbul ordered that Turk Telekom block access to the site and since the weekend Turkish internet users seeking the site have been redirected to a page that says in Turkish ‘access to this site has been suspended in accordance with a court decision’.

Full Story: Monsters and Critics

(via Hit and Run)

Halfcase episode 8.

Phase II: Wes Unruh interview.

The G-Spot episode 20 Sean Marsden interview, and more.

Plus Ultra: Joel Gilbert, writer and director of Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran, and the Revolt of Islam.

Point of Inquiry: Richard Dawkins – Science and the New Atheism.

Point of Inquiry: Student Freethought Leaders Speak Out.

The Viking Youth: How to Cook a Hippie.

Someday You Will Be Dead.

Occult of Personality: An Inquiry Into Suppressed Information.

Nigel Willmott at the Guardian asks if Richard Dawkins is the new Martin Luthor:

But one man does not make a revolution – political or intellectual; Luther tapped into all the sources of dissatisfaction in his world and very quickly found enthusiastic adherents. And what is interesting about Dawkins is that there seems to be a growing following for his uncompromising views. Over the past two or three years, for instance, Dawkins’ assaults on religion have generated more letters to the Guardian by far than any other single topic. As the religious communities have united to counterattack, secularists and members of the scientific community have become increasingly strident about “superstitious belief in unverifiable beings in the sky”. From being passive a-theists, they are becoming active anti-theists; no longer just critics of the existing religious superstructure of our world, but iconoclasts seeking to radically change or abolish it.

Full Story: The Guardian.

Richard Dawkins believes science’s ability to admit ignorance is one of its greatest strengths. On the flip side, he proposes that faith all remains arrogant and all too certain of its validity without any rational set of proofs.

I’ve been watching all the speakers posted up on the Pop!Tech site and this was by far one of my favourites. Dawkins: 1. Faith: uhh, still millions, but whatever. Dawkins makes excellent points.

Hours and hours of video from Beyond Belief 2006, featuring Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, V.S. Ramachandran, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stuart Hameroff, Terry Sejnowski… and piles of scientific sorts. From yon site:

After two centuries, could this be twilight for the Enlightenment project and the beginning of a new age of unreason? Will faith and dogma trump rational inquiry, or will it be possible to reconcile religious and scientific worldviews? Can evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuroscience help us to better understand how we construct beliefs, and experience empathy, fear and awe? Can science help us create a new rational narrative as poetic and powerful as those that have traditionally sustained societies? Can we treat religion as a natural phenomenon? Can we be good without God? And if not God, then what?

This is a critical moment in the human situation, and The Science Network in association with the Crick-Jacobs Center brought together an extraordinary group of scientists and philosophers to explore answers to these questions. The conversation took place at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA from November 5-7, 2006.

(Thanks, Brenden Simpson!)

via Mind Hacks:

Obscured TV is a website that is streaming old TV documentaries. They don’t have permission to do it, but they believe the programmes are too educational to be left gathering dust in a TV company warehouse. As they have so many classic psychology and neuroscience documentaries in their archives, I can only agree.

Just a word of warning if you’re skeptical about these sorts of things – it requires that you install some ActiveX plugin, which is seems painless to install and works OK, but only works in Explorer.

If you’re happy with doing that, have a look at this page which has a list of ‘human interest’ documentaries – largely taken from UK TV.

7 Seconds is a stunning documentary on densely amnesic patients Clive Wearing who has been the subject of some ground-breaking research on the neuropsychology of memory, but also inspires some profound thoughts on identity and remembering.

The Real Rainman, My Family and Autism and Make me Normal profile a number of remarkable individuals with autism, and Teenage Tourettes Camp is a compelling documentary on some UK children with Tourette syndrome who go to a camp in the USA especially for children affected by the disorder (it is both touching and wickedly funny in places).

Another page with documentaries from the Horizon series, includes The Man Who Lost His Body, a documentary about a man who loses his sense of proprioception – the ability to sense where your limbs are, and God on the Brain which contains a memorable scene where Michael Persinger attempts to give Richard Dawkins a religious experience by stimulating his temporal lobes with magnetic fields.

Get them while they’re online, as the site probably won’t stay up for long!

Link to ‘people’ documentaries.
Link to Horizon documentaries.

Richard Dawkins highlights the difference between the efficacy of science and that of religion. QuickTime video available for dl.

My friends, I must ask you an important question today: Where do you stand on God?

It’s a question you may prefer not to be asked. But I’m afraid I have no choice. We find ourselves, this very autumn, three-and-a-half centuries after the intellectual martyrdom of Galileo, caught up in a struggle of ultimate importance, when each one of us must make a commitment. It is time to declare our position.

This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith.

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it’s evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there’s no excuse for shirking.

Three writers have sounded this call to arms. They are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. A few months ago, I set out to talk with them. I wanted to find out what it would mean to enlist in the war against faith.

Full Story: Wired.

The two writers that have really made me come down on the side of atheism are Trevor Blake, who posts frequently about religious issues at American Samizdat and Douglas Rushkoff who recently wrote that faith is a disease.