About
My name is Ian and this is my Blog. I am a fourth-year university student studying Engineering Physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. I maintain this blog to write about what I do in my life. A lot of it has to do with my views on religion, atheism, politics, and school. It should only take you a post or two before you figure out my positions.
My current commitments, which will get written about (from Future Posts):
Summer Research in Ultrafast Spectroscopy- President of Engineering Physics Club
- President of Buffalo Club
- Founding President of UofA Atheists and Agnostics
- Campus Ambassador Team Facilitator
- MUGs Leader
- My girlfriend
Potentially volunteering for Science FUNdamentals- as much as I’d want to do this, it will be unlikely for me to have the time, I will promote it through the EngPhys club though
- Class work will fit in there somewhere (Phil 265, EE 231, Phys 397, Phys 461)
- and likely a few more things as they arise
An overview of what I’ve written on is available here, and summarizes the first 100 posts of my blog.
~Ian
Email me at ian.bushfield (at) ece.ualberta.ca
I found your site while looking at the blasphemy challenge on YouTube.
I have looked at a number of atheist/freethought/skeptic websites and find the same logical errors being committed by newcomers. May I suggest you concentrate your efforts on your field of speciality, which is physics.
The field of quantum physics has been used by anti-rationalists to promote the paranormal for almost a century now. I am not sure how much of this material you are familiar with, but you could try googling “quantum consciousness” as a start.
I am not a scientist and depend on science popularizers to help me refute the New Age wuwu queens. One example would be Victor Stenger, who recently wrote “God: The Failed Hypothesis”. His web site is here http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/. In particular, check out his sections on Physics and Metaphysics, Physics and the paranormal, and Science and Religion.
Another excellent resource would be the Committe for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal http://www.csicop.org/
I would be particularly interested in what you think of “Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search For Unity”, by Peter Woit.
Don’t forget to check out Enlightenment 2.0 http://thesciencenetwork.org/BeyondBelief2/
Ian:
Greetings. This is Ron Brown. I write at The Frame Problem (http://theframeproblem.wordpress.com), and am a Toronto-based member of the Freethought Association of Canada and CFI. I read about the great success of your Atheists and Agnostics group at U of A on Friendly Atheist. That’s great, man! Really happy for you guys. And your spoof of Expelled was outstanding. I linked it on my blog.
Keep up the good work and let me know if/when you guys are having events out there and I can do my small part in helping to promote it at TFP. I’ll throw up a link to your campus group on my Blog & Org Roll.
Best,
Ron
One more thing: I’m curious to hear about how many hits the U of A A & A Blog has gotten since releasing the Expelled spoof.