A reader of Andrew Sullivan’s blog brilliantly connects the dots: Part of Sarah Palin’s irresistible appeal to her fundamentalist base is her ability to look at the camera with utter conviction and declare black to be white. The ability to lie well is a valuable part of the fundamentalist psychology. My son isn’t gay, he [...]
in the interview I rather specifically said there were phenomena for which science is not the best tool for examination (although I would also say that there are no phenomena which require something beyond natural mechanisms). Well put, Professor Myers. Click here for the atheist biologist and blogger extraordinaire’s visit to debate religious scientist Dennis [...]
Chris’s reply to part 2 of my series of objections to religious moderates and intellectuals: For the purposes of this post, I will identify two claims which many Christians accept (and which I understand you do not): (1) that the central claims of Christianity are true, and (2) that faith, properly understood, is a justified [...]
No one is immune—the question is whether we cultivate or counteract our natural cognitive fallacies. A professor at the University of Guelph, Prof. Davis has spent the past 20 years paying attention to the use of such seemingly benign phrases: “It was a sign,” “Thank God” and even “Good luck.” To him, such phrases reflect [...]
If they want rain so much, they should just move to New York! Thanks to Atheist Nexus for the link to this video and this summation of the story: “More than 250 people in northern Bangladesh have attended a wedding ceremony between two frogs as part of a ritual to bring rain to the parched [...]
(It should not be necessary for understanding this post, but for the full backstory to this debate see my series on Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellectuals, parts 1, 2, 3, & 4 and my post “On Teleology and Intellectual Virtues and Vices”) Shane writes in reply to my post “On Teleology and Intellectual Virtues [...]
Since May, Valerie Tarico has been writing a six part series of articles called “Christina Belief as a Natural Phenomenon.” Part 5 was just released last night. I highly suggest reading through all the articles and would love your feedback in our comments section. Your ideas from there might lead to future blog posts. So [...]
Cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss on the incompatibility of God and science. The whole piece is worth your time. This succinct statement summing up the article, however, hits the nail on the head: My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel [...]
Related to the issues in my recent posts objecting to religious moderates and intellectuals, here are a few remarks from an excellent piece worth reading in its whole about why science and religion are not compatible from PZ Myers. I encourage you to click the link and read the whole thing, but here are a [...]
Below I quote Shane’s reply to part 4 of my series, “Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellectuals” (for further background to this debate, check out parts 1, 2 & 3) and reply to him. The topic has evolved into questions of teleology and the “point” of life, so little background in previous installments should be [...]
I still have to get to replying to a few outstanding comments but in the meantime, I figured I’d quickly address this question from Evangelos: would you contend that theology departments should not exist at the academic level, even if they were challenging traditional beliefs (I’m thinking of this fellow who appeared on Colbert a [...]
Shane’s reply to this post addressing him (and you can find part 1 which initiated the conversation here): An excellent response! Much more in-depth than my teasing comment probably warranted. Sorry, but my response is a bit rambling. That comes with the blog commenting genre, I think. My earlier point wasn’t about intellectual virtues or [...]
Shane writes in reply to this post, Hi Dan, long time reader first time commenter. Do you have any /empirical/ evidence that religious people are more credulous, more stupid on average than non-religious people of comparable education and similar sociology? If you do, I’d love to see it. But if you don’t have such empirical [...]
Marcus Brigstocke has a rant (which I used to have in this post in video form before it was taken down from YouTube. The end of the rant goes like this: Now I know that most religious folks are moderates and nice and reasonable and wear tidy jumpers and eat cheese like real people. And [...]
In Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part II, section 4 (Parkes translation, Oxford 2006)), we read: Zealously and with much shouting they drove their herd over their bridge: as if to the future there were but one bridge! Verily, these herdsmen thesmelves still belonged among the sheep! Little minds and capacious souls these shepherds had: but, my [...]
