A reminder to all local skeptics and philosophiles:
I am pretty excited that my biggest talk to date will take place later this month on Thursday 29th May in the Spiegeltent for Philosophy Hour at the Brighton Fringe Festival, one of the biggest fringe/arts festival in the world.
Kaveh over at On the Margin of Error on Freethought Blogs has read Beyond an Absence of Faith and has given a great review. Here is an excerpt. Check it the full review over at FTB:
Beyond an Absence of Faith is an anthology of 16 accounts of atheists talking about their deconversion and struggle with religion. It’s been co-edited by Jonathan MS Pearce (who writes the blog The Tippling Philosopher) and Tristan Vick (who writes Advocatus Atheist) and our own Jeremy Beahan (of Reasonable Doubts) wrote a foreword to it. It also happens to be my number one favorite atheist book that I have ever read. In this review I want to explain why.
I have posted this some time back. If you don’t mind Aussie swearing, then watch this diamond piece of comedy:…
I have recently had a conversation on facebook that left me truly flabbergasted. I think it qualifies as the most jaw-dropping conversation I have had. It was with someone whom I did teacher-training with (though who chose not to finish the course). Now I wouldn’t normally go into detail about personal matters when evaluating somebody’s claims and positions, but I think it explains so much in terms of cognitive dissonance, and is so relevant to the topic, that it does need mentioning. The person in question has certain tendencies which are deemed sinful to the Catholic Church. He lives in Brighton, ironically a city in Britain known for its diversity and sense of equality.
This has been an ongoing saga which is nothing short of depressing. As the Guardian reports:
Amnesty International joins condemnation of death penalty for Sudanese doctor found guilty of ‘apostasy’ for marrying Christian
President Omar al-Bashir, an Islamist who seized power in a 1989 coup in Sudan
President Omar al-Bashir, an Islamist who seized power in a 1989 coup. The imposition of sharia law was one cause of Sudan’s civil war. Photo: Abd Raouf/AP
A Sudanese doctor who married a Christian man and who was convicted earlier this week on charges of apostasy was sentenced to death on Thursday, judicial officials said.
Brilliant:
The new book that I have co-edited with Tristan Vick called Beyond an Absence of Faith: Stories About the Loss of Faith and the Discovery of Self has been really favourably reviewed by those who have read it, and hopefully some of those reviews will filter trough the internet.
“Christianity teaches the sublime message that man can know his Creator. It does not teach that man can fathom his…
A few weeks ago on the History Channel’s sister station, H2, the astronomy-based series The Universe went on a quest to solve an ancient mystery. Previous episodes in the previous few weeks had covered the construction and purpose of the pyramids (which was pretty good), Stonehenge, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The first two certainly have an astronomical connection, such as the solstice alignment of Stonehenge, but explaining Sodom’s ruin via astronomical body begs the very serious question: was this simply a theological story or etiological myth? Apparently that skepticism couldn’t find its way to the heart of the show.
I really enjoyed being a guest on the Skeptic Canary Show podcast where we covered lots of issues and philosophy,…
This great quote came from Reddit where a commenter was reacting to my piece on the Carroll/Novella vs Alexander/Moody debate. It’s spot on:
It’s always a false dichotomy with these guys. Either the materialist explanation of consciousness has to describe absolutely everything in its entirety down to the atom, or else magic is true! “
Here is an email on the back channels from fellow SINner David, who runs a great blog at SIN at…
I really enjoyed watching the debate that is the talk of the town just now. Eben Alecxander, author of bestseller Proof of Heaven with team mate Ray Moody were arguing that death is not final, that there is an afterlife.
Finally, it is here. Well, I am awaiting a proof copy. But the zeroes and ones are winging themselves about over at Kobo, Nook, Kindle and iTunes such that the anthology of deconversion accounts named Beyond An Absence of Faith: Stories About the Loss of Faith And the Discovery of Self will be available to purchase at those outlets soon.
Listening to the Reasonable Doubts criticism of the dreadful sounding film God’s Not Dead, Justin Schieber referred to a point made by Wes Morriston.
The Holy Trinity has had a problematic history, partly evidenced by point of fact that theologians still don’t agree on how it works, and partly seen from its ex post facto evolution, shoehorned into the scant evidence of the biblical texts. From Ignatius of Antioch onwards we see development of the idea in early church thinking, until it is codified at the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century CE. There will be more talk later on what was creedally set out.
Some of you may have heard news reports like this one from Yahoo News about a church being ‘knocked down by the Communists’. This is how they report it:
Causality. It is a funny thing. Or not so funny.
A few years back, I took my class, as a teacher, on a class trip to the Historic Dockyard in the naval city of Portsmouth, UK. My school is some 45 minutes walk and a short ferry ride from there. With the cost of coaches, it is important to be able to walk to such places to keep the costs down for parents.
This article is taken from the excellent podcast Reasonable Doubts which itself borrows from source material and commentary from Tom Rees’ superb…
Some fellow tippling philosophers and myself are having an email exchange about psychology. It started with one of us writing an email lauding Daniel Kahneman’s work Thinking Fast and Slow (the bold is where he is quoting someone else).