I think I have a good excuse for my absence--moving to a different city and starting a new program at a new school--but I wanted to pop my head in and post a link.
This American Life is a radio show that I highly recommend. It never ceases to be entertaining and compelling, and it doesn't hurt that they use great music between segments.
ReligionWriter takes an example from economist Tyler Cowen's new book and applies it to attending religious services. Tyler approves.
Good Math, Bad Math points to the course description of a geometry class taught at a Christian high school,
It seems to me that all of the rules/commandments of Christianity can be broken down into a small set of categories.
1) Self-preservation
Obviously there will be some ground rules establishing the self-preservation of Christianity. Stuff like not having other gods or not treating other religious writings as authoritative.
2) Universals
Then you have the whole set of morals that come from human universals. These tend to be echoed in virtually every culture and religion, and can even be easily derived without appealing to religion at all: for example, secular ethics (like Kai Nelson's) derives a thorough framework from Kant's categorical imperative. There also tend to be very good evolutionary reasons for why humans might be ingrained with the kinds of ethics in this category.
3) Signaling
PZ Myers points to an article detailing a new Focus on the Family apologetics seminar.
The article cites the statistical range of 50-85% as the number of "kids involved in church groups [who] will abandon their faith during their first year in college." FOTF's response has been to ditch the trampolines, magicians, and paintball ranges (the organizer's words, not mine) for a hardcore apologetics seminar.
Steven "Freakonomics" Levitt recently puzzled over the popularity of recent books by the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens on religion,
Here is what puzzles me: who buys these books?
I’m not religious. I don’t think much about God, except when I am in a pinch and need some special favors. I have no particular reason to think he’ll deliver, but I sometimes take a shot anyway. Other than that, I’m just not that interested in God. I’m definitely not interested enough to go out and buy books explaining to me why I shouldn’t believe in God, even when they are written by people like Dennett and Dawkins, whom I greatly admire. If I were religious, I think it would be even more likely that I would go out of my way to avoid books telling me that my faith was misplaced.
