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.
As the BBC reports: he Earth has entered a new period of extinction, a study by three US universities…
This came into our mailbox here at SIN. It is a medical miracle anecdote, in the same strain as a post from the other day:
I have just returned from a surgical mission trip to the Dominican Republic. Although I am an atheist my schedule was such that it was most convenient for me to travel and work with XXX Ministry XXX, a frankly Christian evangelical organization operating out of Texas.
As the annals of history have it, in the sixth century Emperor Justinian had all the schools of philosophy that competed with Christianity finally closed. This was the last we heard of the Epicurean School, whose tradition had remained culturally vibrant for seven centuries. Epicurus had been among the first to propose the atom—2,300 years ago—the social contract as a foundation for the rule of law, and the possibility of an empirical process of pursuit of happiness: a science of happiness. These progressive schools were oases of tranquility, reason and pleasure known as Gardens, where the ideals of civilized friendship flourished and men, women and even slaves engaged in philosophical discourse as equals.
Faith is a term which is bandied about with carefree abandon, but what does it really mean? As I wrote to Christian apologist David Marshall some years back:
David
Part of the problem is that you are extracting these issues from their real world application and in a sense making them irrelevant. Let’s apply the faith vs reason to real life instances:
Great news for those following the exploits of the first lander to find purchase on a comet (Philae). As the…
I have banned two people here. One was a Catholic priest who dogged me all over the internet, one-starring my…
An occasional commenter here, Ron Murphy (ronmurp), linked to one of his pieces in another thread. It’s a really good piece, with some thought-provoking stuff on the is/ought issue in moral philosophy. See what you think and comment as usual below:
Yet another moral philosopher (another religious one) makes a hash of morality. So I wanted to get this down as a summary of my position on how morality is nothing more than opinion elevated to nobility; a common man made special by simply calling him a lord or a bishop.
I received this email today from an old friend:
Hi mate,
Hope you’re well.
I’m reading your little book of unholy questions at the moment and thought I’d share a prayer story with you. When XXXX was pregnant with YYYY and we had the 12 week scan, the physical measurements and blood factors indicated that YYYY had a strong likelihood (60%+) of having a chromosomal disorder (Down’s syndrome or worse).
Here is my old cover for The Little Book Of Unholy Questions: I thought it wasn’t that good, so I…
Just to let my British readers know… I will be speaking in Bournemouth to the Dorset Humanists, co-presenting an Understanding…
Here is an excerpt from my book, Free Will? An investigation into whether we have free will or whether I was always going to write this book:
Firstly, let us look at whether God himself has free will at his disposal. This is important because one of the primary characteristics of God is that he is perfectly free, not being constrained by the sorts of influences that humans are. It is often said that if God created all things then every thing that he created must have some attribute of his. Man has free will and, therefore, one of God’s attributes must be that of free will. Of course, this might be a circular argument, begging the question of whether we have free will ourselves. The bible is littered with examples of where God supposedly chooses people, things, cities and tribes. Here, in Numbers 16:6-8 God chooses who will be holy:
There is this prevailing ide that God has personhood and that humanity is somehow styled on his image. Atheists believes that the causality here works the other way such that humanity existed and styled God on the image of humanity. But who would want to let minor quibbles like that get in the way of a good god-design? These anthropogenic properties of God manifest themselves in different ways: looks, emotions, rationality and sentience.
The great Gregg Caruso has produced a fascinating looking paper which I can’t wait to read. I have often advocated the…
The present conservative leader of Australia is an utter fruit-loop. Julia Gillard, the Labour ex-PM of the country, a few…
This is always an interesting question because it challenges your own worldview, assuming you are an atheist. It’s the classic line of questioning you get when you are in an interview:
“So, Mr Pearce, what do you think your biggest weakness is?”
Of course, I have no weakness…
Brilliant, form the present thread here: Being a biologist, I usually give people like you the benefit of the doubt…
New findings by the National Centre for Social Research have confirmed the long-term collapse in affiliation with the Church of England and the huge increase in non-belief.
Strikingly, the research also found that there had been a ten-fold increase in those identifying with Islam in the past 32 years. In 1983, Islam represented around half a percentage point of Britain’s population but in 2014 it had reached 5%, the research found.
Is it a poe?
That’s the question. It is written in such a way that it reads to me as a poe. Here is the chang.org petition description which comes in light of Olympic athlete and medal-winner Bruce Jenner’s recent announcement of being trans and having a transition to Caitlyn Jenner. There has been some controversy in this announcement in the way it has been reported by some outlets. There are a whole host of people who have had their introduction to the transgender movement and they are not quite sure how to say thing, whether to take the piss, or whether to treat the story in a more repectable manner. Here is the description:
The classical theistic components of God, his characteristics of being all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing don’t work very well together. This has been something which I have sought to elucidate over the years, so I thought I would compile a synopsis of where we are at with the idea of OmniGod, and what he has created. These are good arguments, I believe, and I would love to see my readers interact with them, and I would love to see theists of all natures take them to task to see if they stand up. Bookmark this page and return to it, if you will – there’s quite a lot here! I would like to see this as a growing compendium.
In light of the recent evolutionary discussions – a Creationist/evolutionist ding dong – over on this post, I thought I would choose one of dozens of evolutionary discoveries in the last few weeks alone to share with you. My question would be: how do deniers explain each and every one of these findings? Here it is:
In a new study, published in Nature this week, a research team led from Uppsala University in Sweden presents the discovery of a new microbe that represents a missing link in the evolution of complex life. The study provides a new understanding of how, billions of years ago, the complex cell types that comprise plants, fungi, but also animals and humans, evolved from simple microbes.