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.
Andrew Brown in the Guardian:
The settled world order is secular, and fanaticism thrives when people feel alienated and threatened for their beliefs.
It’s a commonplace that wars and religions are closely associated. Since about 1945 there has been an increasing tendency for wars to be fought along religious, as well as ethnic, economic and cultural lines, though I don’t think many people realise that the most warlike religion in the modern world, measured by the proportion of countries at war where it has a significant following, is actually Buddhism.
I love renewable energy. It fascinates and excites me in all my geekness. But it needs to be competitive. Is the tide turning (get it?)? Science Daily:
Apr. 24, 2013 — Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have designed a low-cost, long-life battery that could enable solar and wind energy to become major suppliers to the electrical grid.
So Christians dismiss the Problem of Evil, at times, using spurious logic and dodgy grasps of causality. JohnM, regular Creationist commenter here, does this alot.
So I missed this one. What a ridiculous notion! That God, after X billion years of design, creation and evolution, would give a hhist about a football game?!
Christian Post:
Genius. Good ole JREF.
Evidence adds up: three studies of human impact on climate. Three new studies were published today, each looking at a different aspect of the human impact on climate, each carrying a sobering message on the consequences of human activities on our environment. The first says recent warming is unprecedented in 2,000 years. A second reports climate zones are shifting faster due to warming temperatures. The third argues impacts from greenhouse gas emissions are not caused solely by warming temperatures.
The great thing about fossil discoveries is that they fit, and are often predicted. Case in point here. However, as with this find, many questions are raised. Silly people go, “Aha! A question! My, this can only be answered by positing ‘God’!”
Of course, clever people leave it to science. Which is good at coming up trumps and answering stuff…
Jeremiah 19: 19 Thus says the Lord, “Go and buy a potter’s earthenware jar, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the [a]senior…
In the interests of getting a variety of voices and interests here, I would like to offer a Sunday(ish) guest…
This is a great (not in a good way) video posted originally on John Loftus’ Debunking Christianity site here at…
Tom Clark, or the Center For Naturalism, and someone whom I will shortly be interviewing, has created this transcript of…
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.
High Schooler Protests ‘Slut-Shaming’ Abstinence Assembly Despite Alleged Threats From Her Principal
A West Virginia high school student is filing an injunction against her principal, who she claims is threatening to punish her for speaking out against a factually inaccurate abstinence assembly at her school. Katelyn Campbell, who is the student body vice president at George Washington High School, alleges her principal threatened to call the college where she’s been accepted to report that she has “bad character.”
Some research out seems to support an idea that ‘bad decisions’ that we make are as a result of the quality of the information coming in rather than the quality of the systems working on that information. Of course, this may call into question the quality of the systems actually responsible for collecting that data. The chicken and the egg scenario seems to persist here. Science Daily:
Apr. 15, 2013 — Making decisions involves a gradual accumulation of facts that support one choice or another. A person choosing a college might weigh factors such as course selection, institutional reputation and the quality of future job prospects.
The No True Scotsman fallacy is a well-used fallacy in debates about religion with religionists. As wiki defines:
No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.[1] When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule.
…
I thought I’d give you a selection of some jolly nice quotations: The existence of a world without God…
Joe G´s shenanigans continue
I´m skeptical that anyone is still interested in seeing more of Joe G´s shenanigans (if you missed the story, it´s the Cdesign proponentsist that challenged me to a $10,000 bet, lost, and then chickened out ). If you are bored of this guy, leave now ;-).
We are trying to stay ahead of the game, as a network. Thinking about how we could provide our readers with as much content and resources, we have developed a channel here at our SIN headquarters.
So Dr Caleb Lack, a fellow SINner, and I had a chat a few weeks back. It is due to go out as a Skepticule Extra podcast, but since there have been a few delays, I am putting it out here first. It was a really enjoyable chat / interview, covering cognitive biases, atheism and god. We had a great time and hopefully there will be a second part, or Caleb interviewing me. Any excuse for a chinwag.
So, complexity is supposedly a tough one for ‘evolutionists’. Well, it’s not really, if you have ever read around the subject. Incremental steps, such as is evidence with the eye in all its various complexities throughout the natural world, seem to do the trick.