Worcester News have published a follow-up letter to the Bishop’s fooly comments.
The unedited text is below.
Are the employees of Worcester Cathedral hell-bent on spinning research?
Last week the Bishop of Worcester propagated dodgy statistics about religious belief (Bishop’s Diary, 1st April). Now the Dean, Rev Peter Atkinson (Dean’s Diary, 9th April) is grossly dismissive of legitimate […]
The Pakistan parliament on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution condemning the internet release of Fitna, and the reprinting of the Muhammed cartoons which followed the plot to murder the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.
Calling both the film and the cartoons acts of defamations, the country’s information minister Sheri Rehman, claimed that not only do they hurt the […]
New Yahoo! Mail ad. Dumbest thing I’ve seen in a while.
Have a look at this video about Christine Castillo Comer who was forced to resign as the Texas Education Agency’s director of science - her crime was to forward an e-mail message on a talk about evolution and creationism.
This video is a part of the exposure of the creationist propaganda documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
The […]
MediaWatchWatch has picked up a particularly idiotic quote from Hans-Gert Pottering, the President of the European Parliament who is:
against any cartoons that could instigate violence.
Pottering goes on to say:
We are committed to the freedom of the press but I am against publishing cartoons that hurt the feelings of others. As a Catholic, I would feel […]
The hottest new movie this season will certainly be Expelled.
You probably haven’t heard of the movie unless you’ve stayed up late enough to see the ads. But you’ve probably heard of the narrator, former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein. You probably remember the quiz show Win Ben Stein’s Money, and despite the faster than the […]
More than 99% of all the species which have ever lived on this planet are now extinct. Sometimes this resulted from sudden environmental changes. For example extinction of the dinosaurs is thought to have resulted from abrupt changes caused by collision of a comet with the earth. In most cases extinction was probably the […]
Or skepticism for you but not for me.
Over at the LA Times, noted Skeptic Michael Shermer and F.I.R.E. president Greg Lukianoff are battling each other over the scourge of Left Wing Indoctrinators ruling the classrooms in modern academia.
It’s not exactly the battle I expected. After all, F.I.R.E.’s notoriety comes largely from defending the conservatives […]
Bob’s post has coincided with my reinstallation as an occasional writer, so just to test that everything is working, I’ll offer up this quote, from one of my favorite philosophers of science:
In the enterprise of grasping the facts, [judgement] relies on whatever concept or combination of concepts looks most promising, yet it stands ready to […]
Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. - attributed to Richard Feynman
But perhaps philosophy of science might come in a little handy for scientists and the rest of us when we’re trying to respond to believers a bit more than “I’m not very […]
What is the simplest code of conduct imaginable that could be applied by everyone? Encourage desires that tend to fulfill other desires and discourage desires that tend to thwart other desires.Thats it? That is really all you need to know but I am sur…
The poll is closed, and so I will be posting artwork now every Monday. (And for the couple of people who voted for bunnies, over the next few weeks, I’ll have something special for you. Wink, wink!)The artwork I post on Mondays will likely be a mix of …
Once lead this people into war and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance - Woodrow Wilson
Orwell’s 1984 recognizes that a permanent state of war can keep the incumbent party in power. But if the incumbent’s party is energized by intolerance, then opposing the incumbent party becomes exponenially […]
No kidding?I know.I haven’t posted in quite some time. Work has buried me under two upcoming trials that start this week, so I have had neither the time nor the inspiration to write anything, although I have continued cruising the atheosphere and enjoy…
Apologies about the unannounced hiatus. Blogging will resume shortly.
I have just watched “Science and the God Delusion: A conversation with Richard Dawkins.” This shows Dawkins at his best (despite problems with his voice) working for the public understanding of science. I highly recommend it.
The presentation is an interview and discussion in the Eden Court Theatre, earlier this month. Professor Dawkins was interviewed on […]
Tubby [Hayes] is a very fine musician. He knows what he’s doing. He’s definitely had a wealth of experience, because to sit in with the band and do such a commendable job he had to be excellent. After all, he must have been under some sort of a strain. We have about the worst book–so […]
Austrian Christians, determined to show that no religious group has a monopoly when it comes to irrational threats, have whipped themselves into a frenzy of outrage over a black and white etching by Alfred Hrdlicka which was displayed at an Archdiocese of Vienna museum.
According to Bernhard Boehler, the director of the museum: “The protests came primarily out of fundamentalist Christian circles in the USA and Germany. There is a long dialogue between art and the church. For the church, the quality is decisive - not the piety of the artwork.”
Not any more, it appears. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, ordered the offending artwork to be removed. It has now been moved to the private Ernst Hilger gallery.
Yasukuni is a documentary by Chinese film-maker Li Ying about Japan’s Yasukuni shrine. The shrine, where Japan honours its war dead – including a number or war criminals – has seen its share of controversy in the past and, inevitably, some of that has affected reactions to the film.
Japanese MPs have called the film “anti-Japanese” […]
The Muslim Canadian Congress has expressed (via) shock and disappointment at the move by Islamic countries to bulldoze the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) into approving a resolution curtailing freedom of speech under the guise of protecting religion.
The MCC is also calling on the Canadian government to follow Britain’s example and repeal the country’s blasphemy laws. They rightly point out that these laws exist purely for the benefit of the Church of England and have no place in pluralistic societies guaranteeing freedom of belief and conscience.
You’ve probably heard of Lawrence King, the boy who was murdered in his school because he was too effeminate for a few of his classmates.
That kind of thing is over! Please join us in observing theNational Day of Silence : April 25, 2008 Click that link and find out how you can […]
There’s a lot of reasons to like Senator Clinton. Anybody who can raise a kid who turned out as well as Chelsea did has got to have something going for her.
There are far better reasons for thinking she’d be the better candidate and the better president. One reason I’m going for Clinton […]
I know I said that I wasn’t going to blog about atheism and religion, or atheism versus religion, etc.; but I think it’s important to sometimes reflect on the difficult soul-searching that goes on inside the “souls” of those who were raised in some typ…
A proposition is meaningful only if it is verifiable.
A proposition is verifiable only if it can be proved or disproved or can be deduced from other propositions which are verifiable.
Statements that are not verifiable are cognitively meaningless although they may possess emotive meaning. - Krus’s summary of Mach’s logical positivism
That’s kind of a neat site […]
I was recently approached by Stacy Schlicht from the firm Rogers & Cowan who are the publicity agent for the film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” Stacey offered me the chance to interview one of the filmmakers Ben Stein. I accepted the offer, which quickly became a “teleconference” open only to an “exclusive” group selected on […]
