‘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.’
I love Skydivephil. He/She/They have had some properly good ding-dongs with our favourite apologist, William Lane Craig, most recently on…
Tour comes amid division over how to stem flow of believers, particularly from poor communities, towards evangelism
When Pope Francis returns to his home continent on Monday as the first Latin American pontiff, the world’s attention is likely to focus on the adoration of more than a million worshippers expected at a giant open-air mass on Copacobana beach.
But it is during a lower-key visit to a small favela community on Thursday in the north of Rio de Janeiro that he will address the biggest threat to the pre-eminence of the Catholic church in the region: the exodus of believers to US-style evangelical preachers.
I am on holiday now, but if anyone with a critical mind wants to analyse these claims for consistent rigorousness, I would be interested to see what you find out!:
From here.
Two royal public buildings, the likes of which have not previously been found in the Kingdom of Judah of the tenth century BCE, were uncovered this past year by researchers of the Hebrew University and the Israel Antiquities Authority at Khirbet Qeiyafa – a fortified city in Judah dating to the time of King David and identified with the biblical city of Shaarayim.
A video of my face for your… er… pleasure? Maybe not, but the words are alright. Aren’t they?
Over at the website Closer To Truth, which is a site about an agnostic who goes around interviewing philosophers and scientists to try to find answers to the biggest and deepest mysteries of the meaning of existence and the universe, there is a profile of William Lane Craig. In it, they summarize his arguments against the tenseless theory of time. I want to quickly address them here.
Craig’s done his homework to try to put this theory to rest, but I think he ultimately fails. I’m not going to go into detail here, but I will add a few thoughts how I think each of his refutations are ultimately baseless.
As I am on holiday, I have scheduled a number of easy news repost for your delectation. From the Guardian:
Court-ordered release of documents reveal what Catholic orders knew of sexual abuse by priests, brothers and nuns
In therapy sessions, the priest confessed to shocking details he’d kept hidden for years: he had molested more than 100 boys, including his 5-year-old brother, had sex with male prostitutes, and frequented gay strip clubs.
Science Daily: Aug. 1, 2013 — The planet is undergoing one of the largest changes in climate since the dinosaurs went…
I am off on hols for a week, so will not be posting too frequently (if at all) bar some…
You must must watch this. Hopefully I can embed the video. Watch it from 2.12pm onwards. This is why I love this country. Discussing philosophy fairly and squarely within the confines of our Parliamentary system (even if the House of Lords is our non-elected part).
If I can’t get it to embed, check it out here:
Here is my talk to the Dorset Humanists given this last week. It was really well received and got great feedback from audience and organisers alike. The video is of good quality though you may need to turn it up to hear some of the questions a little more clearly. The chops are out and looking mighty bushy, so all seems to have gone well.
I give regular counter-apologetic podcast segments to the Skepticule podcast and my last one has provoked some interesting debate online…
Well, the Pope is shaking those old cloisters up! The BBC: Pope Francis: Who am I to judge gay people?…
I have a comment to answer on the original blog post Libertarian Free Will Defeats the Kalam Cosmological Argument and I thought I would not lose all the work to a comment forgotten in the annals of blog history. So here is the original post almost in full to remind you:
Everything which begins to exist has a cause for its existence
The universe began to exist
Therefore the universe had a cause (for its existence)
Here are some notes I made from Tim Callahan’s “The Secret origin of the Bible” some 5 years ago. Excuse the note form and any spelling / syntax errors. It’s still interesting reading and shows how clearly the account is mythological. Samson makes no sense as a stand alone tale, and has no allegorical or symbolic meaning at all, begging the question as to why it’s in the bible at all, if not a story lifted from a nearby culture and adopted to Yahweh.
After having looked at Randal Rauser’s reasons for being a Christian, and having had my reasons and his defences intensely debated on his blog, I have in a previous post offered Dr Vincent Torley’s account. Some readers may know Vincent from the Uncommon Descent website which attempts to refute evolution. I have argued with him at length when I used to write for John Loftus more often at Debunking Christianity. Here is his bio:
This essay sets out to dispel the myth that the soul can be the originator for free will. I will start the essay by establishing the Cartesian idea of what the body is and showing that Descartes and modern biology indicate that the body is a biological machine. After indicating how Descartes (and others) use the soul as the originator for free will / volition, I will show that in order for the soul to be labelled and identified as a soul, it must have the format and properties of a soul. These must be adhered to in order to designate the soul with coherent and consistent properties. To conclude, I will maintain that if a soul must adhere to rules and laws to remain being a soul, then it must operate within a deterministic framework.
This hit the news yesterday on radio and TV. Fascinating stuff. This reported from Science Daily:
July 25, 2013 — The phenomenon of false memory has been well-documented: In many court cases, defendants have been found guilty based on testimony from witnesses and victims who were sure of their recollections, but DNA evidence later overturned the conviction.
I gave my first talk of this name this week to Dorset Humanists, covering five different arguments (4 against God…
Those of you across the pond may not have heard about the Church of England’s broadside against the seedy world of payday loans. More ‘reputable’ companies have sprung up offering ridiculously high interest and low security loans to desperate people in need. The whole business is spurious and morally dubious at best.
It comes with some great surprise and sadness that John Loftus has decided to leave the Skeptic Ink Network, a platform which he co-founded with Ed Clint for which we are all exceptionally grateful. As you surely know, John is the author of some superb books, one of which I am due to soon review (The Outsider Test For Faith, which is excellent).