Interesting discussion between leading atheists  Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris , Ayaan Hirsi Ali A wide-ranging discussion of subtle issues with atheism, including an unusually subtle treatment of why people accept religion - the process of assimilation and the difficulty in freeing people from assimilation. Risks associated with criticizing Islam; When to take the gloves off - being polite to people who have been indoctrinated; Vetting the authorities; How liberal kids get assimilated to radical Islam; Sam Harris speaks eloquently about the powerful meme of Islam; Dawkins doesn't understand that everyone doesn't think like he does; Dennett refers to the "narrative arc" in TV shows and movies, which primes a person for assimilation; The appeal of Islam to intelligent, liberal women; Ali calls Islam a form of madness; Dennett compares crime committed for religious reasons with drunk driving Harris points out that religious delusion is excluded in DSM  Ar...

Roger Penrose is a guy who has a way of asking good questions and providing controversial answers. On page 20 of his monumental survey of applied mathematics, " The Road To Reality"  he explains an interesting theory about three "worlds": R*:The "real", physical world of "stuff" and phenomena, which he (quite reasonably) takes to exist apart from the other two worlds; M:The world of ideas - what I call the "meme space". In principle, this is all the theories, observations, direct or indirect perceptions that could ever be made by the human mind; F:The world of forms, mathematics and logic. While he contends is that each world "maps" completely to the others. In principle at least, each world can be explained in terms of the other.  But he allows us to imagine that the mapping is incomplete. It is the incompleteness that interests me: There may be aspects of reality that are "illogical" or cannot be described by math...