Fans de Waal is a crucial figure in the research into morality, fairness, reciprocal altruism and suchlike within the realm…
This is brilliant:
I am no fan of the right-wing espouser of nonsense and lies that is the Daily Mail. It is a horrible UK paper. For those across the pond who don’t know, it has a rather chequered history, supporting the Nazis way back when and then continuing in the vein ever since. Not really chequered, ac
++tually. All bad. I have written myself to the Mail about a misrepresentation of statistics once in their headline article which effectively amounted to lies.
Here is another review to my Little Book of Unholy Questions – a 4/5 to add to six 5/5s. Er, buy it! (please… – click on the cover image to access it on amazon)
Wednesday 26th is an important day for the National Union of Teachers here in the UK. We have voted to go out on strike and I am going to do so, foregoing my pay for the day. I don’t take this action lightly, but then nor do I accept hat he government is doing to the education system lightly. I would like to elucidate on this and give the reasons to support my action.
Let me just prime you with this scandalous statistic: 40% of teachers leave the profession within 5 years.
In connection to the rant I made about Randy Everist and his Nazi, unfair and unjustified comment strategy he has on his blog, here is a post from the Popular Science website which a Twitter follower and friend from Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub sent me. Hopefully they won’t mind me posting it here. Some interesting research regarding commenting and negativity bias:
Spoiler: I might swear.
I have a fairly liberal attitude to commenting here, and I don’t particularly police it that much. Dissenting views are utterly vital to being sure that you are warranted in your own beliefs and views.
Well, I got involved in a comment thread on the Possible Worlds blog of Randy Everist. My goodness. I have never seen such comment nazism.
It’s been known since the 19th century that there are striking parallels between the Ark story contained in the Bible and a narrative episode included in the Mesopotamian story of the Epic of King Gilgamesh. In Gilgamesh, a hero Utnapishti is tasked with saving both human and animal life from a destructive flood (for which somewhat surprisingly, no reason is given) by the god Ea. Like Noah, Utnapishti builds a boat, fills it with animals, and finds himself lodged on the top of a mountain. What’s more, just like Noah, Utnapishti sends out birds on three test flights to establish that the flood waters were receding:
The BBC report this fascinating discovery which seems to confirm the start of inflation (I would take issue with the slight implication that the BB is definitely the start of everything coming into being) or the Big Bang:
Scientists say they have extraordinary new evidence to support a Big Bang Theory for the origin of the Universe.
Researchers believe they have found the signal left in the sky by the super-rapid expansion of space that must have occurred just fractions of a second after everything came into being.
Genius http://youtu.be/ld_tg4W7Hf8
Jayman, occasional Christian commenter here has replied to my post, The Problem with Yahweh #2. That itself was a second part…
The Guardian reports, following up from a story which I reposted here:
Experienced headteachers say they recognise ploy outlined in document about alleged Islamic plot to ‘take over’ schools
My last post in this series looked at the idea that Yahweh, as the parochial Jewish God of a particular section of the Middle East in time, bears no resemblance to the God that Christians believe in, and is supposedly that exact same God. The Janus-styled god who appears to flip personality, characteristics and general existence at the turn of the New Testament, is fundamentally different from the present-day Christian God. We are all atheists on this god, except Christians don’t seem to realise it.
I am reposting this one again because it came up in a comment by Shatterface here. This was a…
As a teacher, I cannot tell you how much this worries me. I will be striking later this month in opposition to this government push on ‘free schools’ an academies which is thinly veiled attempt to privatise education and politically liberalise it. I could bore you for hours on the ramifications and implications of such a stupid approach to education, not least adding in the utter stupidity of scrapping a national curriculum and assessment framework whilst neglecting to be organised enough to have something in mind and prepared to replace it. Total idiots. And yes, if I meet Education Secretary Michael Gove in a dark alley…
This has come up recently in conversation so I thought I would post this video I did some time back.
So now it is time to return to the idea of homosexuality and Christianity about which I posted the other day.
Having looked at biblical issues concerning the position of deeming h/s morally wrong, let us now look at what makes people h/s and whether it is fair for an all-loving god to judge them.
…
I would like to give a good synopsis of the current tate of biology and sexual orientation. First of all, it is interesting to note that the drivers for male and female h/s are understood to be often very different. It is not one rule fits all. Furthermore, there are also a whole host of reasons that can lead to h/s – biological, genetic (and epigenetic), and environmental and social.
Let us look firstly at the biological causes and theories.
I am writing a post in reaction to something about which I was talking with my Christian friend (let’s call him Colin). We were talking about homosexuality and his approach to it given his Christian background. Some points were interesting and some I fundamentally disagreed with. Here are his views:
As according to the Bible, homosexuality is wrong.
This morality is grounded in God.
He is not homophobic and detests that label as it automatically halts any further informed discussion.
People can have genetic or environmental variables which help to influence a persons likelihood to homosexuality.
However, to commit to a homosexual act is an act of free will, and thus falls within the moral sphere.
As a result, it is not necessarily the disposition of being homosexual which is wrong, but the decision to act upon it.
He has no ‘problem’ with homosexuals and has / has had homosexual friends.
Hopefully I am not building up a straw man of his position, but it does demand some serious unpicking.
I am co-editing a book of deconversion accounts, recounting personal experiences of leaving religion. We have a good number of…
Many people believe ridiculous things. Most of the time, we eventually shuffle off such beliefs. But some remain. In the case of Christianity, this is the belief in Yahweh. I don’t mean to be overly rhetorical, but the belief in Yahweh is patently ridiculous, much more so than the belief in God.
So, a few dates are in the calendar for some talks. If you are around the south of the UK,…