Memetics

The secret life of misquotes

• Misquoted Martin Luther King Jr.
  • “Anatomy of a Fake Quotation” by Megan McArdle (The Atlantic; 2011.05.03) – http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/
    Yesterday, I saw a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. fly across my Twitter feed: “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr”. I was about to retweet it, but I hesitated. It didn’t sound right. After some Googling, I determined that it was probably fake, which I blogged about last night.
  • “Out of Osama’s Death, a Fake Quotation Is Born” by Megan McArdle (2011.05.02) – http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fake-quotation-is-born/238220/
  • “The (Shy) Woman Whose Words Accidentally Became Martin Luther King’s” by Alexis Madrigal (The Atlantic; 2011.05.03) – http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/the-shy-woman-whose-words-accidentally-became-martin-luther-kings/238309/
  • “fake MLK quotes, real MLK sentiment” (L’Hote blog; 2011.05.02) – http://lhote.blogspot.com/2011/05/fake-mlk-quotes-real-mlk-sentiment.html
• “Faux Marx” by Megan McArdle (The Atlantic; 2011.01.14) – http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/01/faux-marx/4565/
  … Laura of 11D says this quote is making the rounds of Wall Street: “Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.” – Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867 …
• “Notable Quotables” – Is there anything that is not a quotation? by Louis Menand (The New Yorker; 2007.02.19) – http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/02/19/070219crbo_books_menand
• Library of questionable quotes at Snopes – http://www.snopes.com/quotes/quotes.asp

Various

• “Investigating the Relative Influence of Genes and Memes in Healthcare” by Alistair Sutcliffe and Di Wang (Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 15 (2) 1; 2012.03.31) – http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/15/2/1.html
  Abstract: The process by which genes and memes influence behaviour is poorly understood. Genes generally may have a strong influence as predispositions directing individuals towards certain behaviours; whereas memes may have a less direct influence as information inputs to cognitive processes determining behaviour. In certain areas of medical science, knowledge has progressed towards approximate quantification of genetic influences, while social psychology can provide models of mimetic influence as the spread of attitudes. This paper describes a computational model integration of genetic and mimetic influences in a healthcare domain. It models mimetic influences of advertising and health awareness messages in populations with genetic predispositions towards obesity; environmental variables influence both gene expression and mimetic force. Sensitivity analysis using the model with different population network structures is used to investigate the relative force of meme spread and influence.
  Keywords: Agent Models, Network Simulations, Health Informatics, Bayesian Models
• “I Can Has Degree? Academia Takes On Internet Memes” by Megan Gibson (Time; 2011.09.20) – http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/20/i-can-has-degree-academia-takes-on-internet-memes/
  The Independent reports that studying memes and their cultural impact has now become a legitimate area of research for some institutions of higher learning.
• Time’s news collections on memes
• “Memes: Take a look at miaow” (The Independent; 2011.09.19)- http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/memes-take-a-look-at-miaow-2356797.html
  What links silly cat pictures and Richard Dawkins? Jean Hannah Edelstein meets the academics trying to understand our love of internet ‘memes’
• “This Woman Getting a Master’s Degree In LolCats Will Be Richer Than You” (Gawker; 2011.09.19) – http://gawker.com/5841779/this-woman-getting-a-masters-degree-in-lolcats-will-be-richer-than-you
• “US Intelligence Agency to Compile Mountain of Metaphors” (SlashDot; 2011.05.24) – http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=21171184
  coondoggie writes “Researchers with the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity want to build a repository of metaphors. You read that right. Not just American/English metaphors mind you but those of Iranian Farsi, Mexican Spanish and Russian speakers. Why metaphors? ‘Metaphors have been known since Aristotle as poetic or rhetorical devices that are unique, creative instances of language artistry (for example: The world is a stage; Time is money). Over the last 30 years, metaphors have been shown to be pervasive in everyday language and to reveal how people in a culture define and understand the world around them,’ IARPA says.”
  • “Apple of my eye? US fancies a huge metaphor repository” by Layer 8 (Network World; 2011.05.23) – http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/apple-my-eye-us-fancies-huge-metaphor-reposit
    Metaphor Program:
    • Shape how people think about complex topics and can influence beliefs;
    • Reduce the complexity of meaning associated with a topic by capturing or expressing patterns;
    • Show uncovered inferred meanings and worldviews of particular groups or individuals: Characterization of disparities in social issues and contrasting political goals; exposure of inclusion and exclusion of social and political groups and understanding of psychological problems and conflicts.

• “Under the Influence: How the Group Changes What We Think – Researchers Study What Gives Social Norms Their Power” by Shirley S. Wang (Wall Street Journal; 2011.05.03) – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704436004576298962165925364.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
  
• Social Contagion in The Middle East (Psychology Today; 2011.02.24) – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-therapy/201102/social-contagion-in-the-middle-east
• The “Godwin’s Law” is an example of memetic attractor.
  • Goodwin’s Law (Wikipedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
    Godwin’s law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies)[1][2] is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990[2] which has become an Internet adage. It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”[3][2] In other words, Godwin put forth the hyperbolic observation that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably criticizes some point made in the discussion by comparing it to beliefs held by Hitler and the Nazis.
  • Reductio ad Hitlerum (Wikipedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
  • “Meme, Counter-meme” by Mike Godwin (Wired 2.10; 1994.10) – http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if.html
  • Several corolaries of the Goodwin’s law, by Mike Godwin (1995.01.15) – http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/godwins.law
  • How to post about Nazis and get away with it – the Godwin’s Law FAQ – http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/
• “What is your Love Story?” By Robert Sternberg (Psychology Today; 2000.07.01) – http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/22102
  • “What is your Love Story? By Robert Sternberg” (Susan Sayler’s blog; 2010.07.18) – http://susansayler.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/what-is-your-love-story-by-robert-sternberg/
• Thomas Jefferson quote (on the virulence and the inexhaustiveness of replication of ideas):
  If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
  
  That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
  

  Sources:

  • “Economics Of Abundance Getting Some Well Deserved Attention” by Mike Masnick (TechDirt; 2006.10.26) – http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061026/102329.shtml
  • “The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Free” by Mike Masnick (TechDirt; 2007.05.03) – http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070503/012939.shtml
• alt.memetics bibliography – March 19, 2002 – http://www.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/faq.html
• Memetics section and KultureZone: http://www.evolutionzone.com/kulturezone/memetics/
• Selfless Memes, Johan J. Bolhuis, DOI: 10.1126/science.1181554, Science Vol. 326. no. 5956, p. 1063, 2009/11/20 – http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1181554
  As he has done in earlier books, de Waal gives a lively and colorful account of the behavior of our closest living relatives, the great apes. He also reports the exploits of other species, including his pet cat and, indeed, himself. The Age of Empathy is not a dry scholarly monograph but an appealing mixture of scientific findings, anecdotes, and his personal views of human behavior.
  • The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society, by Frans de Waal – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307407764?ie=UTF8&tag=complexes-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0307407764
• An attempt to define a meme in simple terms – http://www.bunkersofism.com/2009/12/whats-meme-by-definition-meme-is.html
• Most Valuable Memes of The Singularity Summit ’09 – http://www.bunkersofism.com/2009/10/most-valuable-memes-of-singularity.html
• Dominator Culture by Mark S. Bilk (msb@netcom.com), March 20, 1995 – http://web.archive.org/web/19960101-re_/http:/www.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/dominator.html
• alt.memetics – http://www.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/index.html
• Memetics – http://aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Memetics/
• Meme Central – http://www.memecentral.com/
• A collection of memetics-related writing – http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/liane/
• Anders Transhuman Pages: Memetics – http://aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Memetics/
• C-Realm – http://www.c-realm.com/
• Christianity Meme – http://www.christianitymeme.org/
• Colorless Green Homunculi by William L. Benzon – http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/benzon.html
• Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology – http://www.culturalsoftware.com
• Ecology of Intentions, The: How to Make Memes and Influence People: Culturology – http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/ecointen.htm
• Eliezer S. Yudkowsky – http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
• Germs and Ideas – http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/Germs_and_Ideas/
• Hans-Cees Speel’s Memetics Page – http://www.sepa.tudelft.nl/webstaf/hanss/hanss.htm
• How can we die if we are not alive? – http://home.ntelos.net/~write/memes.html
• Internet Mind Virus Antidote – http://www.memecentral.com/antidote.htm
• “Journal of Memetics” by Bruce Edmonds – http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/, http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/
  • A Memetic Analysis of Policy Making – http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/1997/vol1/speel_h-c.html
• Meme Central by Richard Brodie – http://www.memecentral.com/
• Meme Streets by Cade Metz (2003.12.30, PCMagazine) – http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1402907,00.asp
• MemeSpace – http://www.memes.org/
• Memecloud – Memes running around Alex Barnett’s cloud – http://www.memecloud.com
• Memento – http://www.memento.org
• Memes – Susan Blackmore – http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/
  • Susan Blackmore on memes and “temes” (TED talk) – http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html
• Memes Page – http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/formerly-hyper-weird/memetics.html
• Memes: Introduction – http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMIN.html
• Memes: Self-Replicants or Mysticism? – http://hotwired.wired.com/braintennis/96/43/index0a.html
• Memesis Symposium – http://web.aec.at/meme/symp/
• Memetic Lexicon – http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Memetics/meme_lex.html
• Memetics – http://memetics.chielens.net/
• Memetics – http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMES.html
• Memetics Publications on the Web – http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Memetics/index.html
• Memetics and Synthetic Intelligence Discussion Corner – http://databank.oxydex.com/m2.html
• Memetics: A Systems Metabiology – http://www.apocalypse.org/pub/u/rwhe/memetics.html
• Mind viruses in Russia – http://www.ussr.to/All/virus_star/index.html
• Neobiology & Ethetics – http://neobiology.earthsociety.org/
• Persistence of Memes – http://www.geocities.com/persistentmemes/articles.html
• Social Evolution – http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SOCEVOL.html
• Street Memes – http://www.streetmemes.com/
• Structure of Memes – http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMSTRUC.html
• The Church of Virus – http://www.lucifer.com/virus
• The Electric Meme – http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~rva20/EMeme.html
• The Generosity Virus – http://www.generosity.org/
• The Lucifer Principle – http://www.bookworld.com/lucifer/
• Toxic Memes (Plausibly Surreal – Scenarios and Anticipations) at /WorldChanging: Another World Is Here/ – http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000757.html
• Toxic Memes – http://www.sjgames.com/transhuman/toxicmemes/“
• UK Memes Central – http://www.memes.org.uk/
• Unleashing the Ideavirus – http://www.ideavirus.com/
• Richard Dawkins – http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/
  • Essay “Viruses of the Mind” – http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html
    – Text taken from Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind, ed. Bo Dalhbom (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993).
  • What is a meme? – http://maxwell.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/what.is.html
  • Chapter 11 from Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene – http://www.rubinghscience.org/memetics/dawkinsmemes.html – First published 1976; 1989 edition: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-286092-5 (paperback)
• alt.memetics resources – http://maxwell.lucifer.com/virus/alt.memetics/
• Jim Doran (1998) ‘Simulating Collective Misbelief’ – http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/1/1/3.html
  • It appears that what the agents in a multiple agent system believe is typically partial, often wrong and often inconsistent, but that this may not be damaging to the system as a whole. Beliefs which are demonstrably wrong I call misbeliefs. Experiments are reported which have been designed to investigate the phenomenon of collective misbelief in artificial societies, and it is suggested that their results help us to understand important human social phenomena, notably ideologies.
• James Dow (2008) ‘Is Religion an Evolutionary Adaptation?’ – http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/2/2.html (Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 11, no. 2 2)
  • Religious people talk about things that cannot be seen, stories that cannot be verified, and beings and forces beyond the ordinary. Perhaps their gods are truly at work, or perhaps in human nature there is an impulse to proclaim religious knowledge. If so, it would have to have arisen by natural selection. It is hard to imagine how natural selection could have produced such an impulse. There is a debate among evolutionary scientists about whether or not there is any adaptive advantage to religion at all (Bulbulia 2004a; Atran and Norenzayan 2004). Some believe that it has no adaptive value itself and that it is just a hodge podge of of behaviors that have evolved because they are adaptive in other non-religious contexts. The agent-based simulation described in this article shows that a central unifying feature of religion, a belief in an unverifiable world, could have evolved along side of verifiable knowledge. The simulation makes use of an agent-based communication model with two types of information: verifiable information (real information) about a real world and unverifiable information (unreal information) about about an imaginary world. It examines the conditions necessary for the communication of unreal information to have evolved along side the communication of real information. It offers support for the theory that religion is an adaptive complex and it disputes the theory that religion is a byproduct of unrelated adaptive processes.
    
  • EvoGod – SciLab program to simulate the evolution of religion – http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/11/2/2/sim4.sce.html
• Michael Doebeli, Iaroslav Ispolatov: “A model for the evolutionary diversification of religions” (2008.10.01) – http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/0810.0296
  • We address the problem of diversification in religions by studying selection on cultural memes that colonize humans hosts. In analogy to studying the evolution of pathogens or symbionts colonizing animal hosts, we use models for host-pathogen dynamics known from theoretical epidemiology. In these models, religious memes colonize individual humans. Rates of transmission of memes between humans, i.e., transmission of cultural content, and rates of loss of memes (loss of faith) are determined by the phenotype of the cultural memes, and by interactions between hosts carrying different memes. In particular, based on the notion that religion can lead to oppression of lower classes once a religious society has reached a certain size, we assume that the rate of loss increases as the number of humans colonized by a particular meme phenotype increases. This generates frequency-dependent selection on cultural memes, and we use evolutionary theory to show that this frequency dependence can generate the emergence of coexisting clusters of different meme types. The different clusters correspond to different religions, and hence our model describes the emergence of distinct descendent religions from single ancestral religions.
• “6 Insane Foreign Memes That Put Lolcats To Shame” by S. Peter Davis (Cracked.com; 2010.09.13) – http://www.cracked.com/article_18735_6-insane-foreign-memes-that-put-lolcats-to-shame.html
• “The 9 Most Obnoxious Memes to Ever Escape the Web” by David Knight (Cracked.com; 2008.05.15) – http://www.cracked.com/article_16248_9-most-obnoxious-memes-ever-escape-web.html
• Memetics (Wikipedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
• “How Problem Solving and Neurotransmission in the Upper Paleolithic led to The Emergence and Maintenance of Memetic Equilibrium in Contemporary World Religions” – http://www.politicsandculture.org/2010/04/27/how-problem-solving-and-neurotransmission-in-the-upper-paleolithic-led-to-the-emergence-and-maintenance-of-memetic-equilibrium-in-contemporary-world-religions/
• “Two early meme papers of historical interest (1a)” (at memetics discussion list at http://cfpm.org/~majordom/memetics/) – http://cfpm.org/~majordom/memetics/2000/16177.html

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More: Memetic diseases – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/memetic-diseases/

Atheism, Secularism, Critical Thinking, etc

General

• “The Four Horseman – Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennet, Harris [2007]” (YouTube; 2012.07.23) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7IHU28aR2E
• “Christopher Hitchens & Richard Dawkins – We’d be better off without religion” (YouTube; 2013.08.30) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWOZi_OUQL8

Richard Dawkins

• http://www.richarddawkins.net/
• The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science – http://richarddawkinsfoundation.org/
• “Dr. Richard Dawkins On Education, ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ and Rep. Paul Broun” (SlashDot interview; 2012.10.25):
  • Part 1 – http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/10/24/2357245/dr-richard-dawkins-on-education-innocence-of-muslims-and-rep-paul-broun?sdsrc=popbyskid
  • Part 2 – http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/10/26/0230247/dr-richard-dawkins-on-why-disagreeing-with-religion-isnt-insulting?sdsrc=popbyskid
• Richard Dawkins: Militant atheism (TEDTalk 2002.02) – http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html
• “Mystical comfort from Richard Dawkins” by Derek K Miller (Pennmachine; 2007.01.12) – http://penmachine-bu.appspot.com/2007/01/mystical-comfort-from-richard-dawkins.html
• “Why There Almost Certainly Is No God” (the Huffington Post; ) – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-dawkins/why-there-almost-certainl_b_32164.html
• Richard Dawkins (WikiPedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

Daniel Dennett

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett
• Daniel Dennett:
  • Dan Dennett’s response to Rick Warren (TED talks; 2006) – http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_warren.html
    Philosopher Dan Dennett calls for religion — all religion — to be taught in schools, so we can understand its nature as a natural phenomenon. Then he takes on The Purpose-Driven Life, disputing its claim that, to be moral, one must deny evolution.
• Daniel Dennett at Edge (http://www.edge.org/):
  • “THE NORMAL WELL-TEMPERED MIND” – a conversation with Daniel C. Dennett (2013.01.08) – http://www.edge.org/conversation/normal-well-tempered-mind
  • “Darwin and the Evolution of Reasons” – a talk by Daniel C. Dennett (2009.09.30) – http://www.edge.org/conversation/darwin-and-the-evolution-of-reasons
  • “THANK GOODNESS!” (2006.11.02) – http://www.edge.org/conversation/thank-goodness
  • “SHOW ME THE SCIENCE” (2005.08.28) – http://www.edge.org/conversation/show-me-the-science
  • “The Bright Stuff ” (2003.07.22) – http://www.edge.org/conversation/the-bright-stuff
  • “THE COMPUTATIONAL PERSPECTIVE” – a talk with Daniel C. Dennett (2001.11.17) – http://www.edge.org/conversation/the-computational-perspective
  • “DENNETT’S DEAL” – http://www.edge.org/conversation/dennetts-deal
  • “The Evolution of Culture” – http://www.edge.org/conversation/the-evolution-of-culture
  • “Chapter 10 ”INTUITION PUMPS”” – http://www.edge.org/conversation/intuition-pumps

Christopher Hitchens

• The Christopher Hitchens Web – http://www.hitchensweb.com/
• Christopher Hitchens home page – http://www.buildupthatwall.com/
• Christopher Hitchens (WikiPedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens
• Christopher Hitchens on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/fdafdafdafadfddfffwe
• “Those damned angry atheists” by Derek K. Miller (at his blog Penmachine; 2009.06.02) –
• articles by Christopher Hitchens (at Mirror.co.uk) – http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/hitchens/
• articles by Christopher Hitchens (at The Atlantic) – http://www.theatlantic.com/christopher-hitchens
• articles by Christopher Hitchens (at Slate) – http://www.slate.com/?id=3944&qp=28709
• articles on Christopher Hitchens (at Vannity Fair) – http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/christopher-hitchens
  • “Christopher Hitchens Still Doesn’t Believe in the Afterlife” by Walter Owen (Vannity Fair; 2010.09.17) – http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/09/christopher-hitchens-still-doesnt-believe-in-the-afterlife.html
  • “Thou Shalt Watch this Video” – http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/04/hitchens-commandments-video-201004
    Three millennia or so after God dictated the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai, Christopher Hitchens believes it’s high time for an update. Luckily for Hitchens, broadcast technology has advanced a bit in the meantime—instead of unwieldy stone tablets, the resolute atheist delivers his own Decalogue on streaming video.

Various

• blog “The Gospel According to the Romans – a non-believer’s view” – http://robinhl.com/
• “Science and religion: God didn’t make man; man made gods” by J. Anderson Thomson and Clare Aukofer (The Los Angeles Time; 2011.07.18) – http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/18/opinion/la-oe-thompson-atheism-20110718
  Among the psychological adaptations related to religion are our need for reciprocity, our tendency to attribute unknown events to human agency, our capacity for romantic love, our fierce “out-group” hatreds and just as fierce loyalties to the in groups of kin and allies. Religion hijacks these traits. The rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, for example, or the doctrinal battles between Protestant and Catholic reflect our “groupish” tendencies.
• List of notable atheists (WikiPedia) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists
• Atheism – http://atheism.weebly.com/ – a free online book on religion(s) and atheism
• The Agnostic & Atheism section of the About.com web site: http://atheism.about.com/ – has a good collection of articles and links on and about atheism, good advocacy talking points etc. Some good pages are:
  • Atheism for Beginners (What Atheism Is and Is Not) – http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutatheism/a/BeginnersBasics.htm
  • “Atheism & Foxholes: There Are No Atheists in Foxholes (Danger Causes Atheists to Cry Out to God, Find Jesus)” by Austin Cline e – http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/AtheistsFoxhole.htm
• Council for Secular Humanism: secularhumanism.org
  • Free Inquiry journal: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=index
• Center for Inquiry: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/
  • Point of Inquiry podcast: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/
• CSI (A Center for Inquiry Affiliate): http://www.csicop.org/
• Free Inquiry: freeinquiry.com – The Humanist and Skeptic Website of Steven Schafersman
• The New England Skeptical Society: http://www.theness.com/ | The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe (podcast) – http://www.theskepticsguide.org/ | Forum – http://sguforums.com/ | SGU 5×5 (The Skeptics’ Guide 5X5) podcast – http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcast.aspx?mid=2
• NeuroLogicaBlog daily blog: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/
• The Rogues Gallery group blog: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/
• Science-Based Medicine blog: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/
• FIG (Free Inquiry Group): http://www.gofigger.org/
• Freedom from Religion Foundation – http://www.ffrf.org/
• Friendly Atheist blog – http://friendlyatheist.com/
• Dogma Free America podcast: http://dogmafreeamerica.libsyn.com/
• The Brights: http://www.the-brights.net/
• The Secular Web: http://www.infidels.org/
• Scott Klarr’s collections of links: http://www.scottklarr.com/tag/atheism/
• Humanist chaplaincy at Harvard: http://harvardhumanist.org/
• IAmAnAtheist blog – http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/
• http://lolgod.blogspot.com/
• Proud Atheists blog – http://proudatheists.wordpress.com/
• Reddit: Atheism – http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/
• “Possitive Atheism” – positiveatheism.org
• Secular Wiki – colbadhombre.net/SecularWiki – an online reference and information site for the godless, a group of people that includes Humanists, Agnostics, Atheists, Free Thinkers, Ethical Culturists, Objectivists, naturalists, rationalists, non-theists, doubters, skeptics and many others, defined and undefined.
• FreeThoughtFilter Wiki –
  freethoughtfilter.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
• Council for Secular Humanism – secularhumanism.org
• the Secular web – infidels.org
• Quackwatch – quackwatch.org – Your Guide to Quackery, Health Fraud, and Intelligent Decisions; Operated by Stephen Barrett, M.D.
• The Skeptic Society – skeptic.com
• The Skeptic blog – skepticblog.org (… SkepticBlog is a collaboration among some of the most recognized names in promoting science, critical thinking, and skepticism. It also features the cast and producers of The Skeptologists, a pilot skeptical reality show. …)
• http://www.skeptologists.com/
• atheistalliance.org
• prometheusbooks.com
• michigan.camp-quest.com
• msu.edu/~msufa
• http://skeptoid.com/
• James Randi Education Foundation – http://www.randi.org/site/ (… the foundation’s aim is to promote critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas so widespread in our society today. … )
• Great Lakes Humanist Society – glhumanist.org
• CSICOP – Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal – csicop.org
• American Atheists – atheists.org
• American Humanist Association – americanhumanist.org
• Americans United for Separation of Church and State – http://www.au.org/site/PageServer
• Council for Secular Humanism – http://www.secularhumanism.org/default.htm
• People for the American Way – pfaw.org/pfaw/general
• ffrf.org
• National Center for Science Education – natcenscied.org
• Mitchigan Citizens for Science – http://www.michigancitizensforscience.org/pn/index.php
• Michigan Scientific Evolution Education Initiative – web.grcc.cc.mi.us/mseei
• ACLU Michigan – www.aclumich.org
• The North Texas Skeptics – www.ntskeptics.org
• Universism – universist.org
• MAAF (Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers) – http://www.maaf.info/
• Blog: “Ex Exclusive Brethren Agnostic/Atheists thoughts” – http://yobeauty.wordpress.com/
• Blog: “Truelogic’s Weblog” – http://truelogic.wordpress.com/
• Blog: “The Wall of Separation” by Rob Preston – http://blog.au.org/ – on separation of state and church
• Blog: “Our Humanity, Naturally” by Dave Niose – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally | RSS – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/feed
• At this blog: Bertrand Russell – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/bertrand-russell/

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Articles

• “How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion” (MIT Technology Review) – http://www.technologyreview.com/view/526111/how-the-internet-is-taking-away-americas-religion/
  • Using the Internet can destroy your faith. That’s the conclusion of a study showing that the dramatic drop in religious affiliation in the U.S. since 1990 is closely mirrored by the increase in Internet use.
• “Religious affiliation, education and Internet use” by Allen B. Downey (arXiv: arXiv:1403.5534v1 [stat.AP]; 2014.03.21) – http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.5534
  • Using data from the General Social Survey, we measure the effect of education and Internet use on religious affiliation. We find that Internet use is associated with decreased probability of religious affiliation; for moderate use (2 or more hours per week) the odds ratio is 0.82 (CI 0.69–0.98, p=0.01). For heavier use (7 or more hours per week) the odds ratio is 0.58 (CI 0.41–0.81, p<0.001). In the 2010 U.S. population, Internet use could account for 5.1 million people with no religious affiliation, or 20% of the observed decrease in affiliation relative to the 1980s. Increases in college graduation between the 1980s and 2000s could account for an additional 5% of the decrease.
• “Is Atheism Irrational?” by Gary Gutting (NY Times; 2014.02.09) – http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/is-atheism-irrational/
• “‘Spiritual but Not Religious’: A Rising, Misunderstood Voting Bloc” by Steven Barrie-Anthony (The Atlantic; 2014.01.14) – http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/spiritual-but-not-religious-a-rising-misunderstood-voting-bloc/283000/
  • No, they’re not just atheists.
• ” New Atheism’s big mistake: Debating creationists solves nothing” by Sean McElwee and Abigail Salvatore – http://www.salon.com/2014/02/01/new_atheisms_big_mistake_debating_creationists_solves_nothing/
  • Fundamentalism isn’t really about the Bible; it’s about politics. So attacking religion doesn’t fix the problem
• “Bill Nye’s Debate Of Creationist Ken Ham Has Some Scientists Bothered (VIDEO)” – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/03/bill-nye-debate-creationist-ken-ham-video_n_4714370.html
• “Richard Leakey: Evolution Debate Soon Will Be History” by FRANK ELTMAN (HuffPost > Science; 2012.05.26) – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/27/richard-leakey-evolution-debate_n_1548766.html
• “Atheists flying ad campaign meets strong resistance” (CNN; 2011.06.30) – http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/30/atheists-flying-ad-campaign-meets-strong-resistance/
• “Is it time to counter religious bullying? – Religious Right bombards NBC over Pledge wording” by Dave Niose (Psychology Today > Our Humanity, Naturally; 2011.06.23) – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201106/is-it-time-counter-religious-bullying
• “Physics and the Immortality of the Soul” by Sean Carroll (Cosmic Variance blog at Discover; 2011.05.23) – http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/05/23/physics-and-the-immortality-of-the-soul/
• “Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ” by Elizabeth Landau, (CNN; 2011.02.27) – http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-26/health/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence_1_sexual-behaviors-liberalism-exclusivity
  … Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. …
• “Ayn Rand: The GOP’s Godless Philosopher” by Amy Sullivan (Time; 2011.05.13) – http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/13/the-gops-godless-philosopher/
• “Is Your Religion Your Financial Destiny?” by David Leonhardt (NY Times; 2011.05.11) – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/magazine/is-your-religion-your-financial-destiny.html
• “Study links willingness to cheat, viewpoint on God” by Nomi Morris (Los Angeles Times; 2011.04.30) – http://articles.latimes.com/print/2011/apr/30/local/la-me-beliefs-morals-20110430 – The study found no difference in the ethical behavior of believers and nonbelievers. But participants who saw God as compassionate were more likely to cheat than those who believed in an angry, punitive God.
• “The Myth of Militant Atheism” by Dave Niose (Psychology Today; 2011.02.17) – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201102/the-myth-militant-atheism – Why are atheists vilified? What is a militant atheist?
• “Why do Americans still dislike atheists?” by Gregory Pauland and Phil Zuckerman (the Washington Post; 2011.04.29) – http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-americans-still-dislike-atheists/2011/02/18/AFqgnwGF_story.html
  …A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious. …
• “Atheists Seek Chaplain Role in the Military” by James Dao (New York Times; 2011.04.26) – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/us/27atheists.html
• Ricky Gervais:
  • “An (Atheist) Easter Message from Ricky Gervais” (World Street Journal; 2011.04.14) – http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/04/14/an-easter-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-excellent-christian/
  • “Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist” (World Street Journal; 2010.12.19) – http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/19/a-holiday-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-atheist/
  • Ricky Gervais home page – http://www.rickygervais.com/thissideofthetruth.php
• “Religion and obesity: Can church make you fat?” by Julie Deardorff (Chicago Tribune; 2011.03.24) – http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/tribu/julieshealth/chi-religion-and-obesity-can-church-make-you-fat-20110324,0,4939382.story
• “Letter to the Six Billionth World Citizen” by Salman Rushdie (at Aaron Crossen’s blog) – http://www.aaroncrossen.com/?p=39 – Salman Rushdie’s letter to the six-billionth citizen
• “Questionable Quiz: Why The Military’s ‘Spiritual Fitness’ Test Flunks” by Rob Boston (The Wall of Separation; 2011.01.10) – http://blog.au.org/2011/01/10/questionable-quiz-why-the-military%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98spiritual-fitness%E2%80%99-test-flunks/
• “Walking Santa, Talking Christ” – Why do Americans claim to be more religious than they are?; by Shankar VedantamPosted (Slate; 2010.12.23) – http://www.slate.com/id/2278923/
• “Why I Am Not a Christian (An Examination of the God-Idea and Christianity)”
  by Bertrand Russell (1927.03.06) – positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm
• “No Atheists Need Apply” by Wendy Kaminer [http://www.theatlantic.com/wendy-kaminer] (The Atlantic; 2010.01.13) – http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/01/no-atheists-need-apply/33460/
• “Science and Belief in Turin” by Nina Burleigh (The Huffington Post, 2010.04.11) – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nina-burleigh/science-and-belief-in-tur_b_533207.html
  What some people call the clash of civilizations is not a fight between Islam and the West but between science and faith. The religious rightists in America may want us to believe that they are different from the theocrats of Iran and the fundamentalist of Al Qaeda who teach their suicide bombers that they are targeting “infidel” Christians or Jews, but in fact, the dogmatically religious have more in common with each other than with non-believers.
  
  We live in an age of intense materialism in which scientists are on the verge of understanding how the universe was formed, but we also live at a time of resurgent faith that remains as hostile to science as when Galileo was locked up for observing the centrality of the sun…
• “The Importance of Unbelief” by Stephen Fry: http://bigthink.com/ideas/17864
  …If you assume there’s no afterlife, Stephen Fry says, you’ll likely have a fuller, more interesting life. …
• “Food for The Eagle” by Adam Savage: http://www.boingboing.net/features/savage.html
  • MythBusters to Receive Harvard Humanism Award: http://harvardhumanist.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=102:drawing-inspiration-from-the-arts&catid=6:lastest-news&Itemid=38
• “The Atheists are Doing it Wrong” by Fruzsina Eordogh (2010.07.26) – http://trueslant.com/fruzsinaeordogh/2010/07/26/the-atheists-are-doing-it-wrong/
  … If the fundamentalist Christians are pushing for Creationism to be taught in public schools (despite it violating the First Amendment), then the Atheists should be willing to compromise by pushing for more faith based studies – because, how can religious folk say no to more religious education? …
  
  …Atheists will not be able to dispel the notion of God from our collective minds for a long long time (Religion has dominated human minds for thousands of years) – so Atheists should instead be pushing for more tolerance of various different viewpoints, of various different religions. Because that is the real problem Athiests have with the Religious. The religious fundamentals lack critical thinking skills, are narrow minded, possess various prejudices in spades, don’t care about love or this planet, and cannot even defend why they are part of the faith they are in – its like they are indoctrinated, much like a cult. …
• Top Ten Myths of Popular Psychology – http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-09-01/

  • Myth #1: We Only Use 10% of our Brains
  • Myth #2: It’s Better to Express Anger Than to Hold it in
  • Myth #3: Low Self-Esteem is a Major Cause of Psychological Problems
  • Myth #4: Human Memory Works like a Video Camera
  • Myth #5: Hypnosis is a Unique “Trance” State Differing in Kind from Wakefulness
  • Myth #6: The Polygraph Test is an Accurate Means of Detecting Lies
  • Myth #7: Opposites Attract
  • Myth #8: People with Schizophrenia Have Multiple Personalities
  • Myth #9: Full Moons Cause Crimes and Craziness
  • Myth #10: A Large Proportion of Criminals Successfully Use the Insanity Defense

• “The Origin of Superstition, Magical Thinking, and Paranormal Beliefs (an integrative model)” by Marjaana Lindeman & Kia Aarnio (Skeptic; 2010.09.08) – http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-09-08/#feature
• an humorous discussion on “Open-Source religion” – http://www.metafilter.com/82405/Open-Source-Religion – religion as programming code, i.e. an implementation of memes.
• Bertrand Russell‘s Ten Commandments for Atheists – http://timf.anansi-web.com/serendipity/:

  • Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
  • Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
  • Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
  • When you meet with opposition, even if it is from your family, endeavor to overcome it with argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
  • Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
  • Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do, the opinions will suppress you.
  • Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
  • Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
  • Be scrupulously truthful even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
  • Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.
    
• “Morals Without God?” by Frans De Wall (The New York Times; 2010.10.17) – http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/morals-without-god/?src=me&ref=general
• “Morality: ‘We can send religion to the scrap heap'” (New Scientist, issue 2782; 2010.10.20) – http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827822.100-morality-we-can-send-religion-to-the-scrap-heap.html?full=true&print=true – an interview with Sam Harris.
• “Why atheism will replace religion” by Nigel Barber (2010.05.18) – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201005/why-atheism-will-replace-religion … Atheists are heavily concentrated in economically developed countries, particularly the social democracies of Europe. In underdeveloped countries, there are virtually no atheists. …
• “Obama Touches the Untouchables: Non-Believers” by Steven Waldman (The Huffington Post; 2009.01.20) – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-waldman/obama-touches-the-untouch_b_159538.html

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Here at this blog: Bertrand Russell – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/bertrand-russell/.