‘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.’
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) raised eyebrows Monday when he told GQ he couldn’t answer a question about the age of the earth because “I’m not a scientist, man.”
Having a top prospect for the 2016 presidential nomination say the age of the planet is “one of the great mysteries” comes at an awkward time for a party attempting to rebuild from its Nov. 6 drubbing at the hands of voters turned off by the GOP’s embrace of social conservatives. But Rubio is hardly alone among potential Republican presidential contenders. Other big names for 2016 have weighed in publicly at various times over the years to position themselves as supportive of creationism proponents.
I find this amazing. Language. I can have a 45 minute conversation with a friend. Neither of us consciously think up individual words. Our word choices (even as I am typing this) are non-consciously chosen. At 150 words a minute, that’s a lot of words decided upon non-consciously. I generally appear to be listening to my own words when they come out.
So, check this interesting visual out from a Creationist website:
Oh dear.
Fifth graders in some state-sponsored schools in Louisiana study both creationism and evolution as competing theories. “Fact or Theory?”
In their FAQ, the Discovery Institute write in response to the question “Is intelligent design theory the same as creationism?”:
“No. Intelligent design theory is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the “apparent design” in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism is focused on defending a literal reading of the Genesis account, usually including the creation of the earth by the Biblical God a few thousand years ago. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design is agnostic regarding the source of design and has no commitment to defending Genesis, the Bible or any other sacred text. Honest critics of intelligent design acknowledge the difference between intelligent design and creationism.”
Well, I am an “honest critic” and I will acknowledge the difference between ID and the restrictive definition of Creationism that they choose to use but I will not acknowledge the difference between ID and Creationism in general. Creationism is the belief that some being outside nature (as we know it) created everything, as opposed to everything arising naturally without any causal agent or intervention. This totally encompasses ID.
Among the dozens of Facebook groups spawned by the Syrian uprising, a page supporting women’s rights has suddenly received a wave of attention, because of an image posted there by one of its followers. The picture was of 21-year-old Dana Bakdounis, without the veil she had grown up wearing – and it polarised opinion.
Here is another account in my series of real-life deconversion stories. They are often painful, psychological affairs. John’s account is fascinating. Happy reading. The previous account can be found here.
This is a really interesting article from the Irish Times. The religious often claim things of atheism which muddy the waters of what atheism really is, and what secular values one can come to.
So there has been some debate on my meaning of life essay with JohnM, a YEC. He seems to think the…
The general synod of the Church of England has voted against the appointment of women as bishops.
The decision came at the end of a day of debate by supporters and opponents – and a 12-year legislative process.
The measure was passed by the synod’s houses of bishops and clergy but was rejected by the house of laity.
Controversy had centred on the provisions for parishes opposed to women bishops to request supervision by a stand-in male bishop.
Here is an essay that is a few years old now, on the meaning and purpose of life. I’m sorry, setting out the html codes for footnotes is an incredible ball-ache. Hope it does not put you off! As ever, let me know what you think.
I get annoyed at apologists and theists that trot “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” out as if it is some kind of unbreakable law. Nonsense. Not only is it the basis of a gazillion court cases, as well as carefully constructed scientific experiments, it is very useful to boot. It CAN be a fallacy when formulated as an Argument from Ignorance, but it is not strictly synonymous. John D. Cook, mathematician and statistician, sums it up well. Also, Carrier in Proving History deals really well with it as not being a fallacy in historical analyses. JohnM has recently being claiming this mantra incorrectly.
This excellent letter by Isaac Asimov was brought to my attention by Andy Schueler in this thread. Enjoy, it’s a…
So you may have heard that the Arab Spring has not been too kind to Egypt. You may have heard that the shit might hit the fan if the Muslim Brotherhood and hardline Islamists get their way. In case you thought it might be propaganda with an agenda, think again. This sort of stuff makes me want to cry. Check the video and transcript below. Religion sucks.
A video I did some time ago shows that the probability of naturalism as explaining anything and everything is higher…
An interesting article from the BBC looking at damage done to the suupersymmetry theory in particle physics. Popular physics…
So, with the release of The Nativity: A Critical Examination this year, I have several speaking events arranged in the local area, with another potential date in the pipeline too. I will be delivering a talk on the reliability of the nativity accounts to the Association of Humanist Societies at Southampton University. The Atheist Society have kindly asked me to talk during a conference they are putting on for other student atheist societies (on how to run them effectively). The talk is penciled in for the afternoon of Saturday 1st December at 3pm at Southampton University, though it is not only for students – the general public can get in on the action too!
Growing up in heathen headquarters (aka central Europe), I never met anyone in meatspace who thinks that a fertilized human egg is a “fully human person”. I’ve met many Catholics in my life so far, but none of them would agree with the notion of a zygote having full personhood (disagreeing with the majority of official Church doctrines is quite common for Catholics in first world countries). Since this view is virtually non-existent where I live, I never had to debate it with anyone and, to be honest, I never really thought about this issue until recently. The first time I participated in a discussion on this issue was on JW Wartick´s blog (Jonathan already mentioned the discussion that ensued on his blog in this post). While Jonathan was mostly raising philosophical issues in this discussion, I was focused on whether the personhood-starts-at-conception position is defensible based on a 21st century understanding of Biology, especially Embryology. I think that this position is necessarily incoherent, and I want to summarize my argument for that here.
Scientists believe that prior to the advent of DNA as Earth’s primary genetic material, early forms of life used RNA to encode genetic instructions. What sort of genetic molecules did life rely on before RNA?
Er, this is the worst piece of audio I have heard in an awful long time. It has been around for some time, and the Huffington Post reported it here. It won’t be news to some people, but to others, it will be an absolute shocker. Here is an excerpt of what he says: