Planet of My Dreams

Great article on why the Discovery Institute has so much to loose if/when we discover new life in the cosmos.

http://guff.com/glt-why-creationists-are-praying-we-never-find-alien-life/20?ts_pid=2&ts_pid=5

A good read.

I would laugh but...

The other day I posted a link to some information on National Darwin Day.
http://freedomofnonbelief.blogspot.com/2013/01/darwin-day-2-12-2013.html

I think it is a neat idea, but it doesn't have much of a chance of getting through.  Our Government can't even pass a budget or immigration reform.

But that doesn't mean the crazy Christian right is going to take this one sitting down! No. This is 'Merica damn it!

So check out this petition:  http://questionevolution.blogspot.com/2013/01/stop-darwin-day-in-usa-petition-our.html

Sure. Cause their little petition, under a hundred signatures, will have any bearing at all.
I would say it is like they don't understand how governments work, but that is obvious.

Reading over the blog (which to be fair is like mine in some weird, evil parallel mirror/mirror universe) would be funny, except that I fear too many people read it and take it seriously.

I particularly love how the makes claims and then uses his own blog to support those claims.  Or uses such websites as Creation.com.  Sure. What ever you need to do to convince yourself your are right.

I spent a little time on the site, but frankly the circular logic made me dizzy.
Go there if you must. But don't expect anything like rational arguments or intellectual discourse.

Sanity vs. Insanity

This post is not about Atheism per se, but more about how we will sometimes, many times, engage in some truly insane thinking.

There was a secret government operation known as A119 which was a plan to blow up a nuclear device on the Moon to impress/scare the Russians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119

The news media is covering this as our plan to "blow up the moon" but I seriously doubt that 1950s nucelar devices could have done this.  In fact the bomb they planned on using was about a tenth of the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima.   Though this is how we get Space:1999.

Who was one of the people that pointed out that this plan was, well, insane?  Carl Sagan.

Listen to the Scientists people. They don't always know better, but at least they know WHY they know what they know.

GONK! Gravity Always Wins

You know what argument makes my blood boil?

"It's just a theory."

It isn't even an argument  It's an excuse.  Worse it also shows how fundamentally ignorant the person I am talking to is.

Evolution is a Theory.  A scientific theory supported by multiple hypotheses, data, observation and yes experiments.  We do know what it would take to disprove the Theory of Evolution.  Scientists look for those sorts of things all the time, but they have not found them. Not once.

Gravity is also a Theory.  We know it works. We know how it is applied and can make observations, collect data and run experiments that confirm the finds and data.  We DON'T know WHY it works.  We know the more massive an object is the more "gravity" it has.  We know that there is a time dilatation effect the further you are removed from gravity.  Astrophysics even uses gravity to hypothesize about other things like black holes, extra solar planets and even parallel universes.  But Gravity is still "just a theory".

I was explaining this to my two kids today.

I was talking to them about gravity and how it always wins.  Gravity can be "just a theory" but if you try jumping out your window.  GONK. Gravity wins.
Try floating away.  GONK. Gravity wins.

For something that is "just a theory" it has an awful lot of power.  Here is the thing, like I said, we still don't know 100% how gravity works.
Our understanding of the mechanics of Evolution is much better. Do we know how it got started? Not that I know.  Can we see it working? Every-freaking-day.

So the next time someone says "it's just a theory" I am tempted to say "GONK."

Carl Sagan Day

I don't celebrate on the anniversary of someone's birth or death after they are dead.
I remember their life, I think about how they touched mine, but don't expect long drawn out posts on it from me.

Carl Sagan is different.

For the longest time he was why I was interested in astronomy, math, physics and yes eventually psychology (Broca's Brain is still a favorite of mine).

Today is the anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth.  I don't say birthday, since obviously he not having anymore.

It is also Carl Sagan day.

I talked a lot about him back in April, http://freedomofnonbelief.blogspot.com/2012/04/s-is-for-carl-sagan.html, but honestly though I really can't say enough about the guy.

I have been tempted to re-read "Demon Haunted World", maybe one of the best books on science (as opposed to a science book) I have ever read.

My lament is that he could not have lived longer.  His cogent and critical voice would have been much appreciated in the last couple of years.  I do take solace though  that we still have Neil deGrasse Tyson around.

Fight on Bill Nye

Bill Nye has leveled some serious criticism against creationism.

In a nutshell, he doesn't care what you think or do, but please do not subject you children to this stupidity.

Here is the original video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHbYJfwFgOU

And some recent news articles where the creationists respond back:
http://www.mail.com/scitech/news/1583172-creation-views-threaten-us-science.html#.23140-stage-mostviewed1-3

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/24/bill-nye-creationism-science_n_1908926.html

My ONLY beef with all of this is this.  Why are we still having this debate?
This is 2012. Not 1712 or 212.

One one hand evolution has the weight of science, data, history, genetics, biology, geology and embryology all behind it.  Creationism has some book of questionable authorship and validity written in a time when people still didn't understand Germ Theory.

It boggles the mind really.

Sally Ride

Yesterday we learned of the death of a true pioneer in space, Astronaut Sally Ride.

I don't know about Dr. Ride's views on faith or god or she was or was not a theist.

I do know she was the first American woman into space.  She was also the first lesbian and at one time the youngest person that went into space.

I do know she was an inspiration to millions of people, not just girls and women.  I remember when she first went into space I thought to myself that is was kinda sad that this was the 1980s and we still were in a position to have a "First Woman to..." at all.  But as I got older I realized that things were not as far along as I had hoped they would have been.  Plus so few people had gone into space by then and the requirements are so high that few people in general made it.  It took more "First Woman to..."s for Dr. Ride to get that far.

She kept her private life very private and instead focused on her educational efforts like Sally Ride Science.
She flew on two shuttle missions, both on Columbia and she served on both Shuttle disaster commissions.

Dr. Ride was 61.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Ride
Sally Ride Science, set up be her and her partner.  https://www.sallyridescience.com/

Conservapedia??

Can anyone tell me what is the REAL deal with Conservapedia?

I know the history, but the more I read it the more I am convinced it is some elaborate joke designed to make fun of the conservatives rather than be a voice for them.  Some of the things there are just shit-eating insane.

Take for example these articles on Einstein's famous equation, E=mc².
Here is the Wikipedia version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence
Here is the Conservapedia version: http://www.conservapedia.com/E%3Dmc%C2%B2

I don't know what the hell I just read.  It's like trying to read Time Cube or something.

I would link more, but frankly the entire site is a joke.

Again it comes down to this:  "Conservatives, if you are not smart enough to understand something that doesn't mean there are not others that do and have shown it to be a scientific fact."

Champions of Reason

Nothing deep today. Just some freaking awesome art.

From left: John Cleese, Penn Jillette, Bill Nye, Stephen Hawking, (above) Frederick Nietzsche, (below) George Carlin, Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Charles Darwin, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Adam Savage, Michio Kaku.

You can see the original and the artist here: http://saejinoh.blogspot.ca/2012/05/champions-of-reason.html

There's a Little Black Spot on the Sun today

If you follow science news (and if you follow this blog, I am sure you do) then you know that Venus is making an historic trip across the sun.  The last time this century.

It's not just that Venus is doing it.  We are all lined up in such a way that we can see it.

I recall reading about the Transit of Mercury back in the late 70s early 80s.  For those of you keeping score at home you know that this is also the same time of my atheist self-awareness.

I can't help but connect the two.

The Copernican Model of the Solar System was revolutionary for a number of reasons.  It helped explain why Transits of Mercury and Venus can occur for starters, but it also took in all the data we had and explained the observations we could make.  It did it all by throwing out one basic assumption. The assumption was that the Earth was the center of the Universe.

This assumption, while observational, was given biblical weight in the passage of Joshua 10:12-13 which talked about the Sun and Moon standing still.  I got into an argument with an adult at the time about this. Again she came from the point of view that if it was in the Bible it had to be true and all other evidence be damned.

Again this flies in the face of not just  Copernicus, but 450 years of data collection after that.  And much before that two since there were Greeks in 250 BCE that also knew this and I am sure the Egyptians and the Chinese astronomers also knew this (but I would have to double check).   What do these all have in common? They never made the Earth-centric assumption.

If we apply this same logic to other fields of science we see once again that once the bible is ignored then fields of evolution and cosmology do quite fine on their own.  It is only when people pull in this ancient text that has already  been shown time and time again to be in error that we have a problem.

So please, enjoy this once in a lifetime event and enjoy knowing that reason can explain why it happens and no supernatural forces are needed.

The Evolution "Debate"

Creationists like to think there is an Evolution debate.  There isn't one.
It's not that Evolutionary Biologists are so set in their ways they can't see other alternatives, it is just that the alternatives have been tested and weighed and retested over the last century.

There is so much support in terms of not just biology (and genetics, and embryology, micro-biology)  but also geology,  and the fossil record.  There is so much data to support it that it would be, to quote Stephen J. Gould, perverse to ignore it.  All of modern biology depends on it.  All our current theories on how organisms live and grow in the environment depend on it.  If it didn't, then we would see it right away.  This is not an arbitrary discussion on something that happened in the past, this is current as how do we create new drugs or gene therapy or even breed animals or plants.

So well supported that Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey that the evolution debate is over.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/paleoanthropologist-richard-leakey-predicts-end-is-near-on-debate-over-evolution/2012/05/26/gJQAsB8DsU_story.html

Though Leakey, as brilliant as he is, is not taking into consideration that Creationists have a vested interest in evolution not being true.

Here is a video of Jerry Coyne discussing evolution, and more importantly however, why can't creationists see the truth?
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-evolution-is-true-and-why-many.html

Here is the entire series, http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/lectures-classes-events/evolution-matters-video-lectures-2012.html

The key here is that the amount of evidence gathered makes no difference.  According to the video, 64% of Americans will REJECT a scientific fact if it contradicts their religion.  Of course this is a country of Anti-Vaxers too, so I should not be surprised.

Religion is the biggest obstacle to understanding evolution. 
It should be noted that Evolution is the biggest threat to religion, as stated here: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/645853-conversion-on-mount-improbable-how-evolution-challenges-christian-dogma

Indeed. Darwin killed God.

You can read more on Jerry Coyne at his blog at "Why Evolution Is True" at http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/

There were giants in those days...

Or not.

I have to admit one of my guilty pleasures is watching "Ancient Aliens" on History Channel.  A show (and network) that takes both science and history down a back alley and executes them gang-land style.

This weekend there was nothing else on so I watched it.  This one was about how ancient aliens interacted with dinosaurs and how our ancestors knew about it.   Now before I get into that, I should not have to point out how our ancestors of even a few thousand years ago could have any better of a clue about what happened a few million years ago.  But apparently I do.

So this speculation all grows out of Genesis 6:4 "There were giants in the earth in those days", meaning the fallen angels or Nephelim or whatever.  The implication is that the "Giants" of the bible were the Dinosaurs.

Ok. Sure.

It is a typical Creationism myth that humans and dinosaurs coexisted. Which of course there in not only no proof, there is substantial evidence that there will never be any proof.   Creationist though hold on to this idea for dear life since they know (correctly as it turns out) that a human coexisting with a dinosaur at 65 million years or more before would challenge evolution to it's very core.  But that is not likely to happen.

Of course this got me thinking about the other argument that creationists usually make with this verse.  The existence of giant sized humans.  I once got into an argument online with one guy about this.  It ended as these arguments often do for me; the person I am arguing with deleting all my posts and closing his site to comments.

Let's talk about giant humans for a bit.  If you have been on the Internet for a bit I am sure you have seen this picture.

In fact I still get this one sent to me as "proof" of either the existence of giant humans (and therefore the literal truth of the bible) OR the Great Science Conspiracy^TM in action to hide this evidence from the American people.

Of course neither are true.  The photo is from Cornell University and it was Photoshopped.  Here is the original.

You can read more about this photo at Snopes and at National Geographic..

Here are a bunch of others, many appearing in Creationist "Museums".

But what about the guy that decided to delete all my comments?  He said, basically, I could not use evolution, biology or Snopes to prove my point (but oddly enough he cherry-picked his arguments from all the above).  What did I finally say that made him so mad he had to delete all my responses?

I attacked his argument with math.

The trouble with giants, of any type, is they must still behave in ways consistent with this world's physics.  The rules are not different for different animals.  All physical things (living or not) behave as spelled out by the Square-Cube Law.

I won't go into detail about this, you can read for yourself, but the simple fact is a human that large would break their bones every time they walked, a bone that long can't support it's own weight.  There are long bones out there of course, elephants are a great example, but their bones are shaped different.   Galileo even drew a bone for a large human in his 1638 Dialogues.  Dinosaurs likewise have different shaped bones AND we are still discovering more and more about how their bones and structure worked.  Whales of course get the buoyancy of water to help them (which is one of the reasons why a beached whale will die on land).

This is not just simple science, it's simple math.  Yet people ignore this so they can push their own agendas or badly constructed views of the universe.

Banana Man

I don't ask for much really, but if you are going to argue for creationism please at least do your homework.  Failing that at least look it up on Wikipedia.  (Banana on Wikipedia).

Here is evangelist and creationist Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron.  I believe combined they know less about science than most 2nd graders.




See this is exactly why I don't take creationism seriously.  Well, one of the many, many reasons, but let's talk about this one.

So Ray here holds up a banana as the perfect example god's design.  Except that the banana he is holding was designed by people.

This is the banana as it occurs naturally,

It's a near inedible, fibrous mass full of large, hard seeds.  If this was "designed by god as a perfect food" then god hates us.

The point here is this.
We live in a fascinating world full grand, and sometimes sublime, human achievements.

The modern banana is one those grand and sublime achievements.  Not made by a supernatural agent, but by humans over thousands of years of selective breeding, of trial and error, of science.  WE designed the perfect food for US.   And, here is the important part, all of this is documented.  We know it.

To look at, well any of our food, and assume it has always been like that is not just near-sighted folly, it's laziness and stupidity.

Why didn't Ray "Banana Man" Comfort just go look up banana?  Did he talk to anyone that grows them?  Did he talk to a biologist about where they come from?  Either he did or he didn't.  If didn't then that is laziness and points to a strong tendency just to accept the world as is and not question things.  If did and choose not to believe it, then that is just stupidity in the sight of overwhelming data.

That video is not "Atheist Nightmare", that video is pure comedy gold.  It should be called "Creationist Nightmare" because there is no way the creationist can honestly look at this and not be embarrassed by it.

V is for Victory

V is an odd one for this blog.  Over at my other blog, the Other Side I have been talking about Victorian era games.  So I have an embarrassing of riches over there.

Here I started thinking about the battle/fight/whatever of atheism.  I see reports on atheist blogs about how our side is "winning" (damn Charlie Sheen has ruined that word) and I'll see the same on Christian blogs.

So I have to ask, what is "Winning" or more to the point how will either side know they have "won".

V is then is for Victory.

Victory for me personally would be to see an Atheist President elected to office.  Look how long it took us to get an African American President. We still don't have a woman president.  So, how long will it be before we get an Atheist one?

A really long time I am guessing.

I am not concerned with "stopping" Christians or Christianity or any other religion.   I don't expect them to end in my life time.  Nor would I want too since that is antithetical to what I would want for myself.  But I do want to get to a point where scientific discourse happens without having someone bringing up religion or belief.

What are the Victory conditions for the Atheist movement?
How do we know if we "won"?

U is for Unicorns, Invisible Pink Unicorns!

What if I told you I believe in something.  Something you can't see. But you have to believe in it, cause I do and  I faith it is real.

I believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
Not only is She invisible, she is Pink!  That is how awesome She is.
She can do wondrous things.  Like the other day I went to make coffee and I was all out of Blue Mountain coffee all I had was Columbia. So I cried out I was being oppressed so I prayed for more and you know what? There was some in my basement pantry!  The Invisible Pink Unicorn provides!

Now you make think this is silly, where upon I cry out "Don't mock my faith!".

But seriously.
It is silly.  There are no unicorns. Invisible, pink or any combination of the two.

Just as there is no God.

Most of the arguments I have heard for god are just as lame as the ones for the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Sagan's Invisible Dragon.   People can claim all sorts of things, but that does not make of them true.
Now lest you suspect I am part of logical fallacy here, yes just because one is not true doesn't imply the others are not true.  The IPU is independent of the FSM who is independent from God.  But in science they are all the same because they can't be observed, measured or otherwise quantified.

You can no more prove to me God exists than I can prove to you that the Invisible Pink Unicorn does.

To quote Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Frankly god has shown any of that.
To re-quote Christopher Hitchens, "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."  So if I want you to believe in the IPU then I had better cough up some evidence.  If I can't (and it had better be good evidence) then you are free not to believe me.

And I will do the same.

T is for Neil deGrasse Tyson

If Carl Sagan has an heir apparent then it is astronomer and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

I don't quite know as much about him as I do Sagan or even Stephen Hawking, but I have watched him on TV (PBS' Nova) and seen a number of his interviews to know that this guy is smarter than rest of us.  He is a staunch advocate for science and the teaching of science in our schools.  In one interview I saw him give on C-SPAN he told a congressional committee about how important science education is, not just to raise child to be scientists but also to understand the world we live in now.

Tyson is a bit more of an atheist than Sagan was, but he still considered himself agnostic.  Many though hear him talking and assume he is an atheist.  In truth if he were define himself as anything I think "Scientist" would be his preferred label.  He is a staunch opponent "Intelligent Design"  calling it an impediment to science education.

Among his books that are my faves (which I have not finished reading) are "Death by Black Hole" and "The Pluto Files".

I am looking forward to learning more about this guy and reading more of his work.

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson
http://anamericanatheist.org/interviews/interview-with-neil-degrasse-tyson/

And to be honest, this graphic that appeared everywhere on Facebook a while back explains it perfectly.

S is for Carl Sagan

Growing up as an atheist in a predominantly overwhelmingly christian town was not an easy task.  I was already at a disadvantage of being small, asthmatic, a science geek and a Dungeons & Dragons player.  Add to the fact that I didn't believe ANYTHING that was being told to me didn't help (it was also why I left the Boy Scouts, but is for another day).

What made it all better though was the fact that I had discovered "Cosmos" on PBS and Dr. Carl Sagan.

Carl Sagan was not an atheist he was agnostic.  For while there I was also agnostic, mostly due to his arguments for it, but also because he was the scientist I wanted to be.

He was eloquent, intelligent, and it seemed to me, a polymath on many many subjects.    He had his own personal issues (married a three times) but I never felt that this got in the way of what he was to me; an example of an intelligent, good person that had no need for a god in his life.

Since Cosmos first aired and I watched it on PBS, I have seen it a half a dozen more times and read the book twice.

Sagan was until Hawking one of our best scientists turned authors to get science into the popular press.
He has written a number of books but these are my favorites.
The Dragons of Eden, Broca's Brain, Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot, and The Demon Haunted World.  Outside of Cosmos my favorite one is Demon Haunted World.  A book that is just as true today as it was nearly 20 years ago.

I never became the scientist like Carl Sagan, I became a different sort.  But it was Carl Sagan that showed me that there is wonder in the natural world, there is beauty in the universe and even in the human spirit and none of these ever needed a god.

Monday I want to talk about Sagan's heir apparent.

Q is for Quackery

Quack science, quack medicine, it's all voodoo.

A lot of stuff gets passed off as a miracle cure these days.  I can understand the desire; a loved one is sick and you will do anything to make them better. Grasp at any straw, take any chance just so you are doing something.  But that doesn't mean it will work.

Along with Atheism I have long held a very, very skeptical belief in all forms of "Alternative Medicine".

Here are some of the things that people will do instead of thinking.  A lot of it comes from people's unclear understanding or out right ignorance of the way the body or science works.

"It's Natural" lots of claims are made that something is good for you because it is natural.  Plutonium is natural, all sorts of poisons and toxins are natural.  All of them will kill you.  Tylenol is not natural.  I am sure as hell going to grab one or two of those when my next headache comes around and not chew on some willow bark.

"It's Ancient/It's Eastern" you know what else is ancient? Driving out demons from a body instead of the disease.  You know what's also really old, leaches.  Sure their maybe something to some old remedy (chicken soup won't cure your cold, but it will make you feel less bad).  But just because something has been done the same way for thousands of years doesn't always mean it works better, it just means no one has had the chance to find a better way.

"Aromatherapy" and "Homepathy" man this stuff is pure bullshit.  There is no science what so ever behind any of this.

"Vaccines cause Autism" this might be the worse of the bunch.  We were so close to eliminating diseases that have plagued humankind since the well dawn of humankind.  And an idiot doctor and a Playboy centerfold have nearly undone it all.  Well not completely, but there is no established link between vaccines and Autism.  Not even weak correlation data (and remember kids, correlation is not causation). And just so we are clear here is the group saying there is a link:  Jenny McCarthy and scared parents.
Here is the group saying there is no link: the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Medical Toxicology, the Canadian Paediatric Society,the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Food and Drug Administration,Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the European Medicines Agency.
I am sorry, but I don't care what Jenny and her band thinks, that is some powerful backing.

I could go on and on, but I need topics for the future.

Look I have no love for the drug companies.  I worked as QMHP for a while and I felt that the psychiatric staff were only giving the patients the drugs the drug company reps were selling to them at the time. It's big business.  But that doesn't mean they have it wrong.  Tamoxifen for example works.  There are tens of thousands of other drugs that also do what they say.

Not knowing though how to choose or how to find out is where science in our schools is failing.  Not through their own faults, but due to lack of funding or stupid "teach the controversy" tactics.

I'll save magic for my games and science for the real world.

O is for On the Origin of Species

"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" or as we most often call it "The Origin of Species" is the magnum opus of Charles Darwin, it is also the subject of today's "O" post.

When "Origin" was published in  1859, Charles Darwin had already made a name for himself as a naturalist, scientist and writer.  It is not too much to state that this is one of the most important pieces of scientific literature on the subject of biology ever written. It is not the first book on evolution ever written, but it certainly was at the time the most well known.  It is also not without flaws, which the anti-evolution crowd are quick to point out.  But reading the text today, I get a sense of amazement over Darwin's observations.  Observation is still the first, best tool in science.

It is also interesting that the whole "man came from apes" flap that this book supposedly caused is not even in this book.  Human evolution is only a very small part of it.  Fully half the book is about domestication of animals.  How over generations we (as in Humankind) took the wolf and domesticated it into the dog we know today and indeed all the various breeds we know today.  That's evolution at work.  Sure it was faster than natural selection, but natural selection works on a time frame of millions and billions of years, not just thousands.

There are a lot of things people think this book is, but really isn't.  It is not a justification for slavery (the bible does that. It does not cover the origins of life, only how today's species may have come about from others.  It does not say "We come from apes" or anything of the sort.  Darwin does ask why haven't the apes evolved to the intellect of man yet.

Remember this was 1859.  DNA had not been discovered yet and the proper means of fossil dating had not been developed yet (radio-carbon dating was still 90years away).  This was not the first text, and it certainly wasn't the last.

This book is a absolute classic of scientific inquiry and though.  One I feel is on par with Galileo's "Dialogue" (which he spent the rest of his life under house arrest for because of the Church) and Newton's "Principia".

Great science has always been treated poorly by the church and the faithful.  They answer the questions that until now had been the sole proprieties of the clergy and gods. Darwin was never jailed or excommunicated, but his work is still pilloried today by the fearful and the ignorant.  Do yourself a favor and read his work for yourself.

http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_OntheOriginofSpecies.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species

M is for Morality and Religion

One of the arguments I often hear from the faithful is that without religion where would get morality.  People need religion to act good.

I have thought about this for a while, and something about this argument never really made sense to me.

The bible is under the best of circumstances only a few thousand years old.  Or rather the texts that lead to the modern bible which it self is less than 2,600 years old.  What governed morality for the 2+ million other years before that?
Simple. Religion does govern morality.  It may codify it, but it did create it.

Today M is for Morality and Religion.

This is a topic I have wanted to investigate.
So instead of talking to religious experts I instead have been talking sociologists, social psychologists and trying to find some evolutionary biologists.

It seems (and please keep in mind I am only in the Research phase) that morality was a system that developed around the same time as civilization.  As we learned to live in groups, we learned to live together.  Behaviors that were positive to society were rewarded, behaviors that were not, well were not.

We know the Code of Hammurabi comes from around 1770 BCE, the earliest parts of the Bible, the Torah, from only around 600 BCE. So that gives us1,000 years of coded morality before the Bible was even written.
Then that is not even counting the civilizations since 3500 BCE.

So where did morality come from in the 2,000 years humans were living together and writing about it before the Bible was written? Or the nearly 2 million before recorded history?

We can observe tribal cultures around the world now, especially ones that do not have easy access to modern humans. Thee cultures have behaviors that are considered moral, but they don't read the bible or have access to the christian religion.

What of these earliest humans? We can't observe their behavior.  They are long since dead and left very few traces behind. We can however observe chimps, our closest biological relative, and especially Bonobos which a complex system of governing their sexual behavior.

This leads to a probable hypothesis, that morality evolved along with humans as a means of social interaction.  Put Freud aside we can say humans are predominately good and gravitate towards socially acceptable behaviors.  Altruism and socially accepted behaviors then have a genetic base, where the humans that had these genes were give more chances to breed and pass their genes on to the next generation.  Something we can see today, right now in Bonobos.

Richard Dawkins covers this a bit in his book, The God Delusion.  But I think I should read more on it.  Another name for me to check out is Matt J. Rossano and his book "Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved".

Afterall, secular morality tells us that slavery (even sexual slavery, Exodus 21:7) and beating your wife or children are all wrong, but the Christian Bible tells you these things are ok.