I am reposting this in response to the terror attacks in France last night, resulting in the deaths of over one hundred people. As ever, the internet is awash with right-wing shouts to “kill all Muslims” and refugees, to the left-wing shouts that it is the Imperial West to blame and not Islam or Muslims. Neither of these positions are correct. It is obviously thoroughly complex, indeed involving international politics. However, to deny the Qu’ran, Muhammad and the Hadith causal responsibility in these atrocities is to deny the self-determination of those very terrorists who claim that they are doing these actions in the name of Islam and their god.
I am really happy to have done an interview with Kaveh Mousavi at FTB on his On the Margin of…
I, as you may well know, contribute to the Skepticule podcast by recording a counter-apologetics segment for them, Pearced Off.…
Here is another account in my series of real-life deconversion stories. They are often painful, psychological affairs, as you can see from the various accounts. Void is a frequent poster here, and it is great to get posters involved with the blog as a whole. I thank him for his contribution. The previous accounts can be found here:
There is less than 1 chance in 100,000 that global average temperature over the past 60 years would have been as high without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, our new research shows.
D Rizdek recently posted an interesting comment on one of the threads here which he kindly expanded into a post:…
One of the very first blog pieces on ATP from the early days when we were Skeptic Blogs was The Experience Machine: Would You Live In A Utopian Virtual Reality? I am now going to revisit this a little.
I’m not sure about anyone else, but I find myself aloof at times. It’s easy for me to become so bogged down in this world of abstract thinking that I forget that most people don’t care whether such things as metaphysical nihilism or modal realism are descriptive of reality or not. And I think that I, like many people, need a creative release.
Here at the Skeptic Ink Network, we are pleased to announce that our first anthology of original work has now…
I was reading Kaveh Mousavi’s blog today and came across this short piece: Basically, if you’re not a historian, how…
From the BBC (see Jacques Rousseau’s skeptical view here): If you expose your child to Moses, Muhammad or Matthew the Apostle,…
I really respect and like what Dillahunty said in his closing speech here (the video is linked to the correct…
Someone with whom I once did teacher training is now a fervent Catholic and blogger at his site. We have had many a strong argument on facebook, and recently he alerted me to this blog post to see what I thought. I am now going to critique his piece on abortion and Dawkins.
I have articulated this many, many times, but never yet as a full blog post, so here goes. What is it that differentiates the two major world religions, and how does this translate across to the behaviour of their adherents?
This is a pretty vital question for understanding the state of affairs with world religions and worldviews, especially in present day context…
I am having a massive debate on my facebook page at the moment with someone from the Unbelievable forum, which I have now left (tiring of the time-wasting silliness of some of the posters) about the Roman/Jewish burial practices after crucifixion with regard to Jesus’ death. Here is my latest comment on the thread:
Ok, so here is what I think. First, it is important to note that I take a sort of Bayesian approach; that being, the most plausible hypothesis should be taken to be the most likely to be true, and this involves evidence, prior probability and background knowledge.
This image sums up so much in much of the pro-choice/pro-life debate: H/T Andy Schueler
This meme is pretty powerful because it is so accurate. I can never understand how pro-lifers are very often pro-gun, anti-universal healthcare and so on. There is a disconnect there, for sure.
The Religion Hurts Humanity blog recently posted this on a survey about pro-life attitudes:
Aah, The Daily Mash is brilliant. I’m sure it;s written by the same writers as Viz…: RELIGION is still being…
How a council might protect a town from a dragon attack is among the most unusual requests for information received by England and Wales councils.
One council was asked how many children were micro-chipped, while another was quizzed on whether it had paid for exorcisms on possessed pets.
I was listening to a Reasonable Doubts podcast from a few years ago, and it was, as ever, cracking. This one was about consciousness, its hard problem, dualism, and how it, and neuroscience, are being co-opted as a philosophical area to argue for the “God of the Gaps” style argument in the same vein as evolution in the creationist and intelligent design movements.
The post-Trojan horse shenanigans rumble on. The BHA are riding the secular wave – good on ’em. The BBC reports:…