Fans de Waal is a crucial figure in the research into morality, fairness, reciprocal altruism and suchlike within the realm…
Tomas Rees runs a really interesting blog called [epiphenom] the science of belief and non-belief. Well worth visiting. This article reminded me of an earlier article of mine linking autistic people with a lack of belief. If you are an instinctive thinker, it seems, you are more likely to believe in God:
Late last year some fascinating research revealed that people who take a more deliberative approach to problem solving – rather than just going with their instincts – are also less religious.
Here are some notes I made some time ago, based on various sources, some of which are linked below. Richard Carrier’s book “Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism” provided an excellent backbone to the first set of points.
The methodological and other problems:
I must massively apologise to regular commenters such as Daydreamer1, The Thinker, Honest_John_Law, Peter, Neil, John Grove, Andy Schueler and…
Yonatan Fishman, PhD, Department of Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, wrote a really interesting paper contesting the idea that science and the supernatural do not overlap, and that there is no way to test the supernatural. The paper can be found here and is well worth a read. I hope to give it a greater commentary in the near, not-so-mentally busy future!
Science Daily – July 19, 2013 — If you could hit the reset button on evolution and start over, would essentially the same species appear? Yes, according to a study of Caribbean lizards by researchers at the University of California, Davis, Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts. The work is published July 19 in the journal Science.
Here is sa frightening article from USA Today [H/T Russ Rogers]: Norwegian convicted over rape report issues Gulf caution Interior designer…
If you are interested in psychology, then you might be interested in getting hold of a couple of introductory texts…
So in my post, the Part 2 of why Vincent Torley is a Christian, Vincent called into question some of Counter Apologist’s work undermining William Lane Craig’s use of science and metaphysics to try to show that the A-Theory of time is true or that the B-Theory is false.
Craig’s case is this:
So for those of you who don’t know, I wrote a book a year or so ago for dads of twins, more appropriately for the UK market, called Twins: A Survival Guide For Dads. A I recently sent a review copy of the book to a twins website called Designed For Twins and they have kindly posted a review and a short interview which can be found here. Please check it out.
This is from Stephen’s SIN post. i have posted an excerpt. Check out the rest here.
A while ago the well-known Christian apologist and blogger Randal Rauser posted a very long review of my book Believing Bullshit on his blog. You can find Rauser’s review here.
While making a few nice comments about the book, Rauser was generally very negative. He posted the same review on the amazon page for my book and gave the book just two stars.
July 15, 2013 — Artificial and natural knowledge researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have IQ-tested one of the best available artificial intelligence systems to see how intelligent it really is.
Turns out it’s about as smart as the average 4-year-old, they will report July 17 at the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Conference in Bellevue, Wash.
So, every four years, my life comes to a grinding and formidable halt. People have nervous breakdowns around me. I…
I actually think that the title to this article is misleading, though the article from The Verge is interesting. It looks as though the worms do not regrow their memories but a greater propensity for learning lost skills involved with those memories. Doe this imply epigenetics?
Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True (book and blog), states this insightful piece:
…we justify science rather than faith as a way of finding out stuff not on the basis of first principles, but on the basis of which method actually gives us reliable information about the universe. And by “reliable,” I mean “methods that help us make verified predictions that advance our understanding of the world and produce practical consequences that aren’t possible with other methods”.
I am reposting this article as it is relevant to a recent post on Justin Schieber’s non-God objects argument:
So in a recent post I was talking about how God, prior to creation (at least according to classical interpretations of God based on the Ontological Argument), had ontological perfection. That is to say, he was in a perfect state of being (since this is built into the definition of God). The argument followed that, in creating the world, God would be either lacking something and thus having a need, which is incoherent with ontological perfection, or he was downgrading his perfect state in the process of creating this world.
Here is an argument which I have communicated before here and here. Justin Schieber from Reasonable Doubts has worked on this and it has now made it into the Iron Chariots wiki site:
I recently reviewed Randal Rauser and John Loftus’ debate book entitled God or Godless. I have also responded to Randal’s post on why I am an atheist as well as posting an article critiquing Randal on why he is a Christian. During my review, I noted that I was particularly frustrated at Randal’s prayer chapter.
Last night’s meeting at Portsmouth Skeptics int he Pub was great fun. Rather than have a single speaker, previous speakers…
Brilliant. I heartily chortled! http://youtu.be/mUP7NY6US5A
Ed Babinski has recently kindly written about my book, The Nativity: A Critical Examination. Here is his post. Thanks, Ed!
Jonathan Pearce has composed a book titled, The Nativity: A Critical Examination in which he asks questions like these (to which I have added a few comments myself below–ETB):
In order for the Christian who believes that both accounts are factually true to uphold that faithful decree, the following steps must take place. The believer must: