‘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.’
Evolution, often perceived as a series of random changes, might in fact be driven by a simple and repeated genetic solution to an environmental pressure that a broad range of specieshappen to share, according to new research.
Princeton University research published in the journal Science suggests that knowledge of a species’ genes—and how certain external conditions affect the proteins encoded by those genes—could be used to determine a predictable evolutionary pattern driven by outside factors. Scientists could then pinpoint how the diversity of adaptations seen in the natural world developed even in distantly related animals.
Here is an interesting little piece from Skeptic Money. I have written on abortion before and am enjoying some vociferous…
On 15 October, a group of theologians, philosophers and physicists came together for two days in Geneva to talk about the Big Bang.
So what happened when people of such different – very different – views of the Universe came together to discuss how it all began?
“I realised there was a need to discuss this,” says Rolf Heuer, Cern’s director general.
“There’s a need for us, as naive scientists, to discuss with philosophers and theologians the time before or around the Big Bang.”
I am hoping to run a series of real deconversion stories. I find the whole process very psychologically fascinating, especially since they can be both sad and desperately difficult for a myriad of reasons. Personally, I have never experienced anything like this myself and can only empathise from afar. These cases can be very cathartic for the authors.
I really appreciate the time and effort dedicated to writing these pieces and hope the process is of benefit to the authors. If you want to submit your own, then please contact me using the contact page above. Again, I thank the contributor here for a deeply personal and inspiring read – a small glimpse into the mind of an ex-Christian. If you want to ask Lorna a question, please comment below and I will forward any communication with her:
For those who have not seen this, enjoy the sheer hilarity of bad taste spewing forth from the mouths of…
In a Tuesday night debate with his Democratic rival and a Libertarian candidate for one of Indiana’s U.S. Senate seats, Republican candidate Richard Mourdock suggested that pregnancies resulting from rape are “something that God intended to happen,” despite the “horrible situation” from which they derived.
A BBC World Service opinion poll has found sharply higher overseas approval ratings for US President Barack Obama than Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
An average of 50% favoured Mr Obama, with 9% for Mr Romney, in the survey of 21,797 people in 21 countries.
Only Pakistan’s respondents said they would prefer to see Mr Romney win November’s election.
Experts working on proto-Elamite hope they are on the point of ‘a breakthrough’
The world’s oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.
This international research project is already casting light on a lost bronze age middle eastern society where enslaved workers lived on rations close to the starvation level.
“I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough,” says Jacob Dahl, fellow ofWolfsonCollege,Oxfordand director of the Ancient World Research Cluster.
Since about a quarter of people in the US and even more in some countries in Western Europe continue to believe in the powers of astrological prediction, it makes sense to some degree that the blog website Patheos would start up an astrology section in their spirituality section. And since, according to one post there, Saturn the teacher is moving into Scorpio today, I’ll talk a bit about this.
First off, the planet Saturn is currently not in the constellation of Scorpio today, tomorrow, or any time soon. It’s really not, go check for yourself.Right now it is in Virgo, which isn’t even adjacent to Scorpio in the Zodiac. So why this astronomically wrong statement? …
So, on to the rebuttals. Craig pointed out in several of his rebuttals that Law has not, and did not seem to want to, critique the cosmological argument. Craig does have some beef here as Law seemed to want to debate Craig’s version of God rather than the more fundamental argument over A God’s existence. Thus in true debate point-scoring, Law would take a hit here. However, as Law plainly stated, and I think this was a wise move, this would have broadened the scope too far and wasn’t important for discussing the moral character of Craig’s version of God (thus allowing Law to wedge in his evil God thesis).
What was one of my favourite moments, and it met with a good round of applause from the secularists in the audience (a clear minority), was when Law, whilst talking about his non-answering of Craig’s first (cosmological) argument, declared himself not to be an expert, and to say something like, “I don’t know, I mean I don’t know the answer to the question why the universe exist.”
This is an interesting article from the New York Times. I like it – it is well written and thoughtful, making us ponder the reality of the selfish gene, and the idea that we could, at any time, be being manipulated by other organisms, unbeknownst to our humuncular selves.
A local boy to me (Winchester in Hampshire) is becoming fairly well-known on the alternative folk circuit. This is a…
Time for some light relief. And relief it is. It is, in fact, one of the funniest things i have seen in recent times. So Obama and Romney debated again recently. Thankfully, Obama did himself more justice. But the best thing to come out of this debate is below, by the genius who does bad lip-reading.
Why I am Writing a Philosophical Fiction Book on Zombies (but not Necessarily Philosophical Zombies)
Season 3 of the Walking Dead is hitting our screens any time soon or now depending on where you live. It’s a great show about an apocalyptic pandemic which turns humanity into zombies and sees the survivors pick up the pieces of their lives and society and figure out how to continue to survive and start up a new society.
What an awesome vehicle for philosophy. The series itself contains some juicy examples of moral dilemmas – enough to get any philosopher hooked. I love the idea of writing my own. So I am.
I thought I’d resurrect this old chestnut. This was reported by the Secular Outpost some time ago:
“As reported by Christianity Today (see here), New Testament scholar Michael Licona has apparently lost both his job as research professor of New Testament at Southern Evangelical Seminary and been ousted as apologetics coordinator for the North America Mission Board (NAMB).
…
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Your problem here is that it is not a mantra designed to be talking about primary evidence. Primary evidence is the best evidence (usually, assuming sound of mind and not hallucinating etc). Your analogy fails because you are saying “If you could see both things with your bear eyes, then you would see they are both true.” However, this is a false analogy since we are talking about the standards of secondary and tertiary evidence.
So the whole Jesus’ wife thing has been doing the rounds, and it seems that it is a fake. This article, from The Guardian, confirms through textual analysis that it is indeed so. It appears to rely on a modern typo:
Disqus has now finished migrating. Woo hoo! Hopefully, you will prefer the commenting system. Let me know what you think.…
I know there are some mammoth debates going on just now. I am moving to DISQUS to improve the readability…
Ever heard of the “Committee on Science, Space and Technology” of the United States Congress ? This committee has jurisdiction over: “all energy research, development, and demonstration, and projects therefor, and all federally owned or operated non-military energy laboratories”.
http://science.house.gov/jurisdiction
So… you would expect the members of this committee to be well educated, right ? Or at the very least you would expect them to have at least a rudimentary understanding of science, wouldn´t you ?
They are sending missionaries to eastern Germany. A recent study called Beliefs About God Across Time and Countries found that 52.1% of people asked whether they believed in God identified themselves as atheists. This compared with only 10.3% in western Germany. Indeed, the survey was unable to find a single person under the age of 28 in eastern Germany who believed in God. Obviously there are some – I think I may have even met some once – but the survey was unable to find them. On the face of it this is an extraordinary finding and it is something that needs some careful explanation.