Episode 69 of the Mindcast is up!

Download it here.

Take the God of the Gaps Mindcast Challenge!

Theme = Star Trek TNG by Dennis McCarthy.

You’ve heard it before. From Creationists. From career contrarians. From unapologetic apologeticists. And from well-meaning religious folks lookin’ to justify and trustify. It goes like this: Any gaps in our scientific knowledge are instantaneously filled with the actions of your favorite deity. Is there evidence for their claim? Nope - that’s why it is considered a logical fallacy known as an argument from ignorance, aka argumentum ad ignorantiam. Positive evidence lacking, a mere hypothesis is often elevated above plausible theories that have at least some evidence. The persistence of these gaps, and thus the promotion of the explanations given for them depends on us remaining ignorant of what happened in those gaps. As science expands its scope and sensitivity, these gaps shrink, and what once was used as justification for one’s personal beliefs, vanishes like a quantum fluctuation of a vacuum.

We find these gaps everywhere. From the details of the origin of life, to the origin of specific genes and biochemical pathways. From the formation of our solar system, to the details about our Universe’s beginning. There are gaps almost everywhere, such as the gaps in the Mindcast. Read More…

Previously, I mused about my recent busy activities. As if on cue, Jorge Cham of Ph.D. Comics just sketched out what that was like for me.

The Vicious Cycle:

How do they capture grad student life so well and on a daily basis?