‘Rationality is useless if it is not sound. This is what Martin Luther meant when he called reason a “whore”. Pick the wrong premises, and rationality is utterly screwed. Therefore, merely that someone is “rational” means absolutely nothing about whether that person is well-connected to reality.’
A Tel Aviv University Press Release has built on work hinted at in Israel Finkelstein’s The Bible Unearthed which claimed that camels were not domesticated in the Ancient Near East to long after they are claimed to be existent and members of a goodly number of biblical stories. In other words, these anachronisms strongly suggest that the claims of the Bible are made up. Here is the story:
William Lane Craig is ubiquitous in conversations about theistic and Christian apologetics. Being the foremost modern philosopher/theologian still operating, he is often called upon or used as a source for theistic and Christian arguments, winning many debates in the process (on technique and rhetoric, in the main). I have part critiqued his Reasonable Faith book here.
This is something that has been a long time in the making from local friends of mine whom I met through Transition Fareham, part of the Transition Network, which seeks to tackle the peak oil problem on a local level. Kate and Paul are visionaries who have gone out there and done things make the world a better place.
Go on, you know you want to: Tweets by ATipplingPhilo or @ATipplingPhilo
Another fascinating video from skydivephil, the pair whom I interviewed here (well worth checking out). This time, the ‘before the Big Bang’ idea is investigated in interviewing Sir Roger Penrose with regard to the cyclical universe.
The end is Nye!
Sorry, made that joke last time, but now it seems better suited.
So last night was the much-trafficked debate between Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and AiG founder Ken Ham. Now, I am obviously biased towards the scientific consensus; evidence tends to do that. However, I have to say that I was pessimistic about how the debate would go. I didn’t figure either side would really win, but rather it seemed there would be a lot of talking past each other. And while that happened to an extend, overall I think Nye handled things rather well.
Well, without having yet finished, it seems open and closed. Don’t get me wrong, both were assured and neither will shift the other’s position, obviously. But you simply can’t argue against such robust and predictive science.
Richard Carrier plugs a book I have just edited and published, a book by Aaron Adair, contributor here. The…
As The BBC reports:
Senior Conservative MP Tim Yeo has lost his fight against being deselected by party activists.
The former environment minister demanded the secret ballot by Tory members in South Suffolk after the association’s committee voted not to re-adopt him as a candidate.
Paper.li is a cool way of disseminating information, blogs, articles and what have you. I have signed the Skeptic Ink…
that my efforts are not wasted. Received a nice email the other day from a Canadian: I’ve recently bought and…
Daniel Dennett has finally responded (it has been long-awaited) to Sam Harris’s short treatise Free Will. The review can be found at the Center for Naturalism, here. I am going to look at what Dennett says, and what Harris’s idea of free will is compared to Dennett. Essentially, whilst there is lots to like about what Dennett says, there is also much I disagree with.
This blog post is very much a timely piece as there is much newsworthiness concerning the Atheist Assembly and secular gatherings in general. It needs to be read so share away! Simon Clare is organiser of Horsham and Brighton Skeptics in the Pubs and one-time atheist street-preacher. Check out his website at http://www.simonclare.co.uk/ (and will soon feature new blog posts once again!).
Love, hate it or ignore it, the Sunday Assembly project has been successful enough to warrant a serious discussion about how it should be run.
We had a Tippling Philosophers night the other night on beauty, and these are the quick notes I sent to someone who was unable to be there. Let me know what you think:
My belief is that:
Beauty is a word which all too often means “I like that”.
The year 2013 is nearly over, and it has been quite a good one for me. I’ve finished the research and been awarded my PhD in physics, I’m in the prospects for a new job to continue my research in physics education, and I published my first book on the Star of Bethlehem. And that last point I have seen get around in the news, thanks to the holiday interests of many media outlets.
So 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 were. 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.
Ack, the Republicans are at it again. Maybe she saw my post on autism meaning that God is unfair.
As HuffPo reports:
“I am not in favor of abortions, I am not in favor of gay rights,” Atanus, who has staged two previous unsuccessful runs for Congress, said during a videotaped portion of the interview, before going into more detail with the paper.
Some time back I posted an argument on mentalizing deficits with regard to God being unfair. This broadly stated that certain autistic type people who have an inability to empathise are less likely to believe in God, presumably because the intersubjectivity of empathy allows an agent to see the,selves from somebody else’s point of view. This means that they are less able to suppose what God would think about them whilst doing any given moral action, and such like. The abstract, to the paper looked at in the post, reads:
I don’t know why, but Christians seem to be posting a few comments just now on some old videos of…
http://youtu.be/PjbYr1xTQlE