Atheist Climber Prominent People Project

Atheist Climber Blog is turning One year old on October 10! Yay! And I remember like yesterday thinking “Do I have anything to write about? Will anyone care? Will anyone read it?” I just wish I had taken more baby photos!

Well you have all spoken to me by visiting and commenting on my blog. My measure of success has been reflected in the blog stats with over 60,000 page hits, over 100 subscribers, and more than 1500 comments for the 100+ articles and videos I have posted. This far surpasses my expectations and for that I thank you all.

To celebrate, I am in the process of interviewing a selection of prominent figures in humanism, atheism, science and critical thinking. Most of these will be in the form of written interviews, but who knows? I might, down the track, do some video or audio interviews too. This will be dependent on how these interviews are received by my readers.

I don’t want to say too much at this stage, but suffice to say, I already have confirmation from a few very prominent and important people who I’m sure you’d recognise. More information to come. So stay tuned!

The first interview will be published on Atheist Climber Blog’s first birthday, October 10, 2010. So come celebrate with me, and feed your brain with the words of some great thinkers.

Thanks again,
Atheist Climber

Unintelligent Design

The human body is testament to the absence of determinism in the evolutionary path of animals. And there are several vestigial examples of evolutionary leftovers within the human body. Couple this with the imperfect state of the human eyeball (complete with a blind-spot at the back of the retina), and we have plenty of examples of the way that evolution works. Bodies are not redesigned every time an evolutionary change in a species occurs. Adaptations only hold on if they are advantageous, or at a minimum not harmful to the creature or plant.

The recurrent laryngeal nerve is an odd example of evolution that due to the evolutionary path of mammals takes a much longer journey than it should if evolution were about being efficient then things like this would never happen. Humans seem to be much more like a crammed together mess of spare parts than a divinely designed being.

And there are countless other examples of odd evolutionary quirks. Watch Dawkins’ dissection of a giraffe’s neck to reveal the epic journey of the recurrent laryngeal nerve.

Richard Dawkins: An atheist’s call to arms

One of the more entertaining and funny talks by Richard Dawkins, this time from TED talks in 2008. I’d be interested in what you think of this one. I tend to agree with him, though BadAstronomer and Sam Harris don’t seem to be 100% in line with him either. Is there room for all types of discourse? Or should we be looking to find a united voice?