Fans de Waal is a crucial figure in the research into morality, fairness, reciprocal altruism and suchlike within the realm…
The British Humanist Association has produced this gem of a useful chart in the context of the UK elections coming…
The Problem of Evil (why is there so much suffering in the world given an OmniGod?) is sometimes answered by theists that suffering has to exist so that people have a working knowledge of what bad or evil is in order to know what good is, or indeed that pleasure cannot exist without pain.
we would have a philosophically erudite population! I like this; it appealed to my geekery.
This video is pretty good at pointing out that Creationists with PhDs are essentially for show. Using Dr. Russell Humphreys as an example, he shows that the journal/paper writing and citation frequency is far below other scientists, and so such people don’t advance science in any meaningful way, and the application of their PhDs is very limited indeed.
I own a small publishing house which has several imprints, the main one being Onus Books which is predominantly a skeptical and philosophical enterprise. On the books are three other authors at the moment:
I was trying to work out what is going on in Syria, and what the implications of rebel victory were, as well as who, exactly, the rebels were in light of media bias.
I came across this article from an interesting source called EA WorldView (based in the University of Birmingham, UK).
Dan Fincke, blogger and philosopher over at the Patheos atheist channel at Camels With Hammers is always producing great content. With his permission, I am reblogging a really good piece on the term “objective” which gets bandied around with wild abandon. I am not a fan of it since, as a conceptual nominalist, mind independent abstract ideas beg for a Platonic realm of sorts, such that objective rather begs the question.
Just a reminder of this fantastic Google Hangout that Counter Apologist, Justin Schieber and myself had on the Evidential Problem…
I did a podcast segment for the Skepticule podcast (my regular counter-apologetics segment called Pearced Off) on the self-authenticating inner witness of the Holy Spirit. Something that William Lane Craig often uses to argue for God from a personal point of view that has the handy characteristic of trumping all evidence. See my previous post on this or the podcast to understand further.
The Guardian reports this extremely interesting set of British attitudinal survey results. Check the ones on religion out: Religion Which…
What it says on the tin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L5XbuxKNI8 A massive frustration in the lack of defining the terms led to a…
The flagship BBC religion, ethics and politics show, The Big Questions, this week featured a whole hour on free will. I was asked to attend ass a front row guest on the subject in York for the pre-recorded show last Sunday. Here are my thoughts on the actual content of what was discussed.
I have been having a long-standing argument with a relative newcomer to our pub philosophy group (The Tippling Philosophers) over free will. He believes in libertarian free will, though it does appear to be largely based on an argument from wishful thinking and being unwilling to confront the ramifications of not having it, rather than a robust understanding of the philosophical debate.
It’s just so accurate. This is literally the time frames and activities which take place in my shower. Yes, I…
I am compiling an anthology of atheist and humanist called Filling the Void which presently has a foreword to be written by the British Humanist Association’s Executive Andrew Copson. I am about a third of the way through the collection, as far as content goes, and need to continue the search for quality poetry which fits into the mould.
Fellow Feather is an atheist (whom I converse with over email) who has posted a series of adverts directly and confrontationally aimed at and asking questions of Christians. The adverts have been in different publications of varying sizes, but have always been fascinating, as this one was which I post before. FF has now compiled these into an almost coffee table-sized book which feels and looks great.
It finally came to pass as the producers liked the cut of my jib when they phoned me to ask me about my views on free will; a sort of a test run to see if I sounded OK. I passed.
As a determinist who believes that free will is an illusion, the argument over whether we have libertarian free will or not is somewhat passé. The interesting debates happen over whether we have moral responsibility or not, what any ramifications of this would be, and what approaches we should have to crime and punishment.
The weekly BBC programme dealing with religion, morality, ethics etc., called The Big Questions and hosted by Nicky Campbell, have…
Having posted the Philpapers survey results, the biggest ever survey of philosophers conducted in 2009, several readers were not aware of it (the reason for re-communicating it) and were unsure as to what some of the questions meant. I offered to do a series on them, so here it is – Philosophy 101 (Philpapers induced). I will go down the questions in order. I will explain the terms and the question, whilst also giving some context within the discipline of Philosophy of Religion.