I can’t believe I had forgotten this, or perhaps it never passed my radar. Apparently UKIP aren’t a racist party, even though theor supporters and members are empirically more racist and intolerant than all other main parties, even though it seems that a councillor activist puts their foot in their mouth on a daily basis, and even though their leader was labelled as a “racist”, “fascist” and “neo-fascist” when he was at school. He sang Hitler youth songs, for crying out loud! Here is a Channel 4 News article from September 2013. You MUST read the letter sent by one of the teachers to request Farage not be considered for prefect. It is amazing:
Category Featured
The state of Florida is the region most susceptible to the effects of global warming in this country, according to scientists. Sea-level rise alone threatens 30 percent of the state’s beaches over the next 85 years.
But you would not know that by talking to officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the state agency on the front lines of studying and planning for these changes.
As has been all over the news recently, there is an alleged scrap of the first written Gospel from the Bible, the Gospel of Mark, as found inside of a papier-mache mummy. This has the potential to be a boon for New Testament studies, but there has been significant controversy about how this discovery has been revealed and how it was done. Even the mummy mask that is the source for this scrap of papyrus looks uncomfortable with how things are going.
God is supposed to be omnipotent. You know, all powerful, almighty. The great-making characteristics of such a god are the paragon of abilities. He could achieve anything at the metaphorical click of his fingers.
So what the hell is Satan still doing hanging around? Well, of course, he doesn’t exist either. But supposing you believe that both God and Satan are real entities. Well, then, you’d be making no sense at all.
How many times do we hear Christians claiming that they have had direct experience of God as a self-authenticating inner witness? It is pretty common as a debate closer. William Lane Craig famously uses it, as in here:
Attackers in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka have hacked to death a US-Bangladeshi blogger whose writings on religion angered Islamist hardliners.
Avijit Roy, an atheist who advocated secularism, was attacked as he walked back from a book fair with his wife, who was also hurt in the attack.
A new piece of research has come out which looks to take the landmark Milgram experiments to the next level…
There is a group called Christians Against Dinosaurs. They are clearly nuts. This article is taken from Addicting Info. It makes for disturbing reading:
Most Christians are warm, loving people. Some use their chosen holy book to spew hatred and bigotry. Others…are just insane.
One of my published works, The Little Book Of Unholy Questions, is a romp through the cumulative case against God set out as 501 leading questions, supported by commentary introducing and closing each section. After my section on Hell, I look briefly at the idea of Satan, who is nothing more than a middle management executive working on behalf of God.
I admittedly don’t know an awful lot about the incident at Chapel Hill whereby an atheist gunned down three Muslims. As a skeptic, questions automatically come to mind, such as, given the notion that a lack of belief in a deity isn’t really enough content as a proposition to cause any action other than disbelief, then what really were the extra causal factors and motives behind the killings? There are many similar questions and discussions to be had.
This chap (to whom the series was directed), Scotty M, has replied to some of my points in the series on Free Market Economics. Unfortunately, he would rather rabidly bash away at You Tube than bring a civil discussion here.
The most common issue that Scotty faces is his predilection for straw manning positions by either misunderstanding them or wilfully employing some kind of bait and switch or intended mischaracterisation to fight against an imaginary foe.
Buckle up, this is another sizeable piece…
In this series looking skeptically at libertarian claims of free market capitalism being the holy grail of all of reality, I have come to the section where I cast a skeptical eye over some of the more common claims of libertarians. The claim appears to be that free market economics is responsible for the success of certain countries. I would like to set out here that, whilst this is true to some extent, it is not so obviously the case. Remember from previous posts, I am not advocating some kind of communist collectivism.
Perhaps I should call this article the No True Capitalism Apart From When It Suits ME. As I shall explain.
I have written a previous and lengthy piece to this debunking certain myths and pointing out certain problems with free market economics in its most fundamental ideal. This is all a result of a thread on a You Tube video which involved a somewhat hysterical libertarian who, aside from rude and immature snide remarks or open insults, and who invoked Danth’s Law at every possible moment, made myriad claims about capitalism, free market economics, corporatism and socialism.
Free market economics seems to be the cornerstone of both right-wing and libertarian political ideology, broadly espousing that the companies and corporations and consumers of the world arbitrate supply, price and, in some way it is hoped, moral dimensions of product manufacture and consumption. In this article, I would like to dispel some of the myths perpetuated by libertarians and free marketeers, whilst rebutting some points made against me in a discussion on this topic elsewhere on the web (in part 2).
I have told you before that Reasonable Doubts is my favourite podcast. Well, here is a great RD Extra podcast with Luke Galen, psychologist, looks skeptically at claims of religious people being kinder, more charitable, prosocial. So very worth a listen:
As mentioned in my previous posts, someone in Malawi is about to have a debate on national TV with a Christian about the Resurrection accounts and I have been asked to help provide some ideas for the debate, so here goes.
There are three aspects to the debunking of the Resurrection:
1) The Gospels are not reliable sources of information; they are poor quality evidence
2) The claims of the Resurrection are incredible claims which require very good quality evidence
3) If the Christian claims of the Resurrection are not true, then what, if anything, actually took place, and what hypothesis can better explain the data?
Stephen Fry so articulately nails his answer here. You can feel the emotion.
And now for something completely different. This has come through my friend Julian Haydon, and it a great piece of creative atheology, dripping with deterministic wordsmithying I love it. Let me know what you think.
A interesting quote came in from Marcus Ashes the other day upon which I would like to expand. He said:
I haven’t read the book yet but does anyone know if it talks about the age problem with regards to Christianity?
For example Christopher Hitchens died at the age of 62 and according to christianity is burning in hell now.
This is exactly what the desired outcome was. Brilliant. My last blog entry was a reblogging of my podcast host’s…