Fans de Waal is a crucial figure in the research into morality, fairness, reciprocal altruism and suchlike within the realm…
I have an analogy which I hope will illustrate why at least a lot of examples of alleged successful prayer or interventions of God take place.
A former Seventh Day Adventist pastor who pledged to live 2014 god-free in order to test his faith, now says he is contemplating leaving religion for good.
You’ve not seen a baby Jesus in the manger quite like it. His eyes are bruised and glaring, his face slashed with scars and his teeth protrude from his mouth like rotting vampires’ fangs.
Apologies for being otherwise engaged with lifey type things, but a very Merry Christmas to all of my readers here,…
A few days ago I responded to Jason Engwer of Triablogue as he critiqued some posts I had made, and my book, on the nativity. I responded here. This post is the second in the series. It might go on for some time as he has responded here to my first response.
One approach to the growing evidence, and immutable logical philosophy, for the fact of (adequate) determinism and free will as an illusion of the mind is that of the illusionist.
Triablogue’s Jason Engwer has written a criticism of some of my recent posts (as well as my book The Nativity: A Critical Examination) on the Nativity accounts in Matthew (and Luke). Here, I will respond to him and his points.
This is the advert that someone I know took out in the newspaper, The South Bend Tribune,which is in South Bend,…
In my post on Herod, epicurus brought up a great point with regard to the news of the Messianic prophecy which shook Jerusalem at the arrival of the MAgi:
In the same way that the resurrection story tosses out a verse that should cause a revolution, then moves on as if no big deal (the dead coming out of their graves and walking around the city -Matt 27:52-3), the assertion that Herod and all of Jerusalem being “troubled” at the wise men following a star to come worship the new King of The Jews (Matt 2:3) doesn’t seem to mean much for a fair size city.
This is a nice little watch. I have a lot of time for the quarantine approach to which Caruso refers.…
I love this xkcd comic: Which shows the pragmatic problem with pulling apart folk notions of causation. Your world starts…
It’s that time of year when those nativity accounts get brought up. And summarily debunked. My book, The Nativity: A Critical Examination, hopefully does a good job of dealing with the many attempts to harmonise the contradictory accounts in Matthew and Luke.
A few years ago, around the time of the release of my book The Nativity: A Critical Examination, Reasonable Doubts…
Here is a guest post from someone (a South American who wants to remain anonymous) who contacted me by email asking for help in dealing with the topic of homosexuality and genetics after he read my two posts on homosexuality and Christianity. It seems that there is a prominent Christian author pairing whose work seems to be a concerted effort to minimise the importance of genetic determinism in producing homosexuality. Over to the guest poster:
I was recently having a debate on You Tube, of all places, with a UKIP supported who refused to take on board any of my points unless the solutions I provided were free market centred. A selection of his comments will follow, this first one was after I pointed out that UKIP are science deniers (and I won’t post you the full nonsense he replied on his attempted philosophy of science, eg “People who use the word “consensus” in science can f*ck off out of science. That is a socialist/collectivist idea.”):
Australia was the worst performing industrial country in terms of climate change in 2014, a new report has said.
The report by two non-government organisations said the poor ranking was due in part to policy changes made by the current coalition government.
So the Christmas season is upon us, and people are thinking of the birth of the baby Jesus. Or should be. Cover sized
Shouldn’t they?
Well, that depends.
Despite the fact that most scientific skeptics do not find themselves formerly associated with a religion, this time of year tends to nonetheless bring out the giving spirit in many of us. Although Tom Flynn wouldn’t approve, many of us celebrate (in a secular fashion) Christmas, or Kwanza, or Festivus, or the Solstice, or Hanukkah, or just like to give presents because it’s fun.
One of the core tenets of the United States established by the Founding Fathers was the separation of Church and State — but an expanding Christian Right wants to turn the U.S. into a religious state, where ideology trumps law — and they just succeeded in Michigan.
Enough said: