‘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.’
This is a post from Paul Jenkins, a friend of mine form Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub who has a blog Notes from an Evil Burnee, and who also runs the Skepticule podcast on which I do a counter-apologetics segment. Recently I had written on my experience with Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Paul has also posted on this. I repost his offering with kind permission:
Science Daily: Mar. 3, 2013 — Researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have applied a recently developed technique to directly measure for the first time the polarization states of light. Their work both overcomes some important challenges of Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle and also is applicable to qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory.
Here is another account in my series of real-life deconversion stories. They are often painful, psychological affairs. Mike’s account is centred around his involvement with Youth Group. Happy reading. The previous accounts can be found here:
It’s finally happened. I have extolled the virtue of giving people ample chance and opportunity to be well-behaved. In this case, the chances and opportunities were not taken up. But this story goes much further back, to about a year ago, and to what I declare as a form of libel.
Burqas are back on the agenda in the UK. This is because there was a recent furore within the British legal aystem. A Muslim woman was barred from serving on a jury because she refused to remove her veil. In a controversial ruling, a judge said she could not sit on an attempted murder trial because her full face covering (niqab) concealed her expressions.
The new kid on the counter-apologetic blogging block, the aptly named Counter Apologist, is continuing to produce some great videos. They are really good because they are clean, clear and concise; easy to digest and a good introduction to interesting topics. Here, I/ will embed this particular offering on the meaning of life. Check out his website, which embeds the YT videos alongside a useful transcript of the videos.
Wow. This is mind blowing. Determinists, or near-determinists (such that quantum indeterminism may be true, but that it does not affect the macro level, and certainly not free will issues), will find this Science Daily article particularly interesting. Rats, and even pairs over thousands of miles distance, have had their brains directly linked in communication to solve puzzles. This really does gie the impression that brains are simply very complex biological computers (do you like that oxymoron?).
Joseph of Arimathea used to be used by William Lane Craig as a pillar of his truth claims for the Resurrection, itself one of the four cornerstones of his apology. Richard Carrier, amongst others, has provided some very interesting viewpoints on the historicity of this figure (or lack thereof). Craig no longer seems to reference J of A, quite possibly the result of the weakness of any positive evidence and the strength of negative evidence for his historicity.
No intro needed. Just pretty funny! And while you’re here, this is sheer genius: And more genius (Jesus…
Jerry Coyne, over at Why Evolution Is True (a great blog), has talked about a real gem of a hoax, based on the original Sokal hoax. The Sokal affair was famous int he academic world and is summed up by wiki as follows:
This is Part 2 of a critical examination of the MMEL hypothesis of the Star of Bethlehem. Go to the index here.
In Part 1 of this critical overview of the Star of Bethlehem film and its version of history (which I have called the MMEL hypothesis), I looked at the reasons scholars can say we know Herod died no later than 4 BCE given the information we have from Josephus as well as what we can connect with other accounts. The information from Josephus seemed to be overwhelmingly in favor of a 5/4 BCE date for Herod’s death, which would then contradict the time frame needed for the conjunctions of Jupiter and Venus as the MMEL hypothesis requires. However, there is another argument that is focused on, though not detailed, in the documentary, and it concerns the text that we have of Josephus.
I have had several arguments online about parapsychology research, from Rupert Sheldrake to Dean Radin. The people who defend parapsychology as well-evidenced and real are very adamant of the validity of the research to the point of being highly emotionally charged, often. I have even seen theists argue supernaturalism from this body of research.
It’s been a few months since my radio debate with Randal Rauser on the subject of the reliability of the nativity accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. You can listen to the debate by following the link from here. If you have not listened to it, please let me know what you think.
So there I was, stark bollock naked, having just had a shower. Not probably what you were expecting from this…
Recently, I wrote a post which concluded that God was unfair due to not having a level playing field with regard to people having the same access to his love by point of fact that autistic people are less likely to be able to believe in a personal God, as well as men, compared to women, and so on.
As ever, divesting the news from Science Daily for your perusal: Feb. 19, 2013 — Understanding how and why diversification occurs…
Well, I was just about to produce a big post on how the explosive, moving, powerful, revealing documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa, was behind the resignation of the Pope, as many have said. Well, the Guardian (reporting La Rupubblica) think otherwise. It’s not “the paedophiles”, it’s “the gays”!
One shitstorm to another.
Good news on the speaking front, for me (not that any of you will particularly care!). I have been booked…
vAs Katherine Don reports here.
This month at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a select group of students will show their humanitarian spirit by participating in the Bleedin’ Heathens Blood Drive. On February 12, they will eat cake to celebrate Darwin Day, and earlier this year, they performed “de-baptism” ceremonies to celebrate Blasphemy Day, attended a War on Christmas Party, and set up Hug An Atheist and Ask An Atheist booths in the campus quad.
So John Loftus, of Debunking Christianity, and who wrote what is still the finest book deconstructing the Christian position (Why I Became An Atheist whose second edition is now out) has a few books due out soon. I am excited about both, but particularly The Outsider Test For Faith (OTF), based on an argument which he has made his own. The OTF can be summed up as: The only way to rationally test one’s culturally adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider, with the same level of reasonable skepticism believers already use when examining the other religious faiths they reject.