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.
To let any local people know, I have three talks sorted out.
Tomorrow night at the Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub, I will be hosting a table in a night of round table discussions. I will table a number of philosophical thought experiments to get people to open up and chat.
Make some time for this one! I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet, but am…
Funny how Republicans want less government, don’t like banning things and Big Brother… until it comes to social engineering and morality when they want stuff they don’t like banned. Silly people.
HuffPo: [H/T Sarah Bee]
http://youtu.be/ctWj-OV4cI0
As you may have noticed, access to SIN has been sketchy at best over the weekend. This was due to…
July 5, 2013 — A study has shown for the first time that starfish use primitive eyes at the tip of their arms to visually navigate their environment. Research headed by Dr. Anders Garm at the Marine Biological Section of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, showed that starfish eyes are image-forming and could be an essential stage in eye evolution.
So sorry to Skepticule podcast for being behind on plugging the podcast! I, as you may well know, contribute to the Skepticule podcast by recording a counter-apologetics segment for them, Pearced Off. My segment is always followed by an interesting discussion of ideas brought up by the ‘panel’ of Pauls.
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:
The longer I have been pursuing philosophy, the more liberal I have become and the less nationalistic. By this i/ mean that I have recognised that my nationality if a mixture of several components over which I have no control:
Check out this fascinating article from Discover. H/T Neil Webber. Your ancestors’ lousy childhoods or excellent adventures might change your…
This is one of my old posts from when I wrote more often at DC:
We have had a resurgence in discussing evolution recently, thanks in no small part to the Creationist mental contortions of Creationbabble over on this thread. what this seems to show, to me at any rate, is that Creationists, and any shade of person who disbelieves the theory of evolution, simply does not understand the philosophy behind it.
Texas state senator Wendy Davis has electrified the pro-choice movement. Not just because of her sheer endurance in a nearly 11-hour filibuster, not just because she stood up to condescension and sexism, and not just because she did it all with aplomb and grace. For pro-choice activists, it has felt far too infrequent that they’ve seen a Democrat – much less one from a deep red state like Texas – unabashedly support reproductive rights without an ounce of ambivalence or calls for elusive common ground.
The best music festival in the world, Glastonbury, is on and the sun is shining. The BBC are showing highlights, and their website is well geared to showing the best of what the festival has to offer. Perhaps overseas viewers may not be able to see it due to licensing laws, I don’t know.
The moment was years in the making. It was 11.45pm Tuesday night, and the Texas Senate was poised to enact perhaps the most restrictive anti-abortion bill in the United States. State senator Wendy Davis had filibustered the bill for 11 hours in a remarkable attempt to run out a 30-day special legislative session.
From the Rationalist Association:
A new YouGov survey suggests the decline of religious belief in Britain will continue for some time
New data published this week by the polling organisation YouGov shows that Britain’s youth are continuing to reject religious belief in large numbers.
Further to my point earlier this week, and to give me another excuse to post stuff about dinosaurs, evolution and fossils, here we have another piece of the evolutionary jigsaw located and fitted. Of course, the only answers they have are silly and ad hoc:
Some think it could be urban legend, but we do think that this actually happened in Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War. The Jews, holding a covenant, a legally binding agreement if you will, with God, decide that God has broken the covenant. After all, how can bad things happen to good people; but not any old good people – God’s chosen people? Surely such preference entitles the Jews to a little safer passage along Earth’s historical timeline, though persecution after persecution? The only logical thing to do, it appeared, was to put God on trial for breaking such an agreement.
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 would like to offer 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:
Watch. Laugh. Cry at its reality. [H/T Stefano S.]
I am going to copy and paste a very normal article from Science Daily here. Nothing special. Just your bog-standard scientific journal publication press release. This one is about a fossilised horse which has had its genome mapped.
What I want people like JohnM, a regular commenter here, to do is to explain all of the aspects of this articles in terms of their Creationist framework. What I mean by this, is they (he) needs to take every claim in this article (most aren’t claims, but are simply givens) and produce a non ad hoc explanation which explains this evidence BETTER than evolution and naturalism. In order to be true, the explanation must have that explanatory power.