Discussion Techniques: “Why?” and “How do you know?”

Jul 21, 2012 Comments Off by

When you’re locked in vigorous discussion with someone on the topic of religion or related subjects, I find the temptation is to try and present counter-arguments which describe what you think is correct. However, I don’t think this is the easiest or most effective way to do it. In most arguments, it seems the easiest [...]

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What the Higgs boson shows about rationality

Jul 04, 2012 1 Comment by

A new particle has been discovered, almost certainly the Higgs boson first predicted 48 years ago. If so, then at last the final prediction of the Standard Model has been confirmed. To be sure, there are many questions still to answer, such as how real physics deviates from the Standard Model at very high energies, [...]

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A Business in Charity Clothing

Jun 21, 2012 1 Comment by

It has been frequently remarked that churches show strong similarities to businesses. The evolution of such schemes is obvious: the church is set up so that people can gain better lines of communication to the core of their religion, but the church must be built and renovated, and its many services maintained, so it must [...]

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One Year Today

May 25, 2012 Comments Off by

It’s official, it’s one full year since the website was created! So it seems relevant to cover some of what’s happened in the first twelve months. The website was inaugurated on the 25th May 2011. At the time, the general purpose and direction of the website weren’t clear, only the subject matter. The website looked [...]

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Pascal’s Wager

May 05, 2012 Comments Off

So I’ll start by noting that this won’t be a comprehensive argument against Pascal’s Wager, but I intend to discuss two of my favourite points discrediting it. My motivation on this occasion is from watching too many videos of very stupid people, which is a pass-time I’m sure many of you do too. If you’re new [...]

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Consider Easter

Apr 08, 2012 1 Comment

Critics of Christianity are often well-aware some of its festivals are stolen. The most famous example is that the Northern Hemisphere’s celebrations of the December Solstice, in which days finally get longer again, began as an agricultural festival. The Ancient Egyptians, recognizing the role of the Sun in this occasion, quickly co-opted it for their [...]

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If only religious apologists understood statistics…

Apr 06, 2012 Comments Off

The last time I uploaded many articles in quick succession, I had just returned from on the all-inclusive holiday with my parents in Spain during which I authored said articles. My return to writing for this site after a long recess also involves authorship during such a holiday. This is what is often called a [...]

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Something from nothing

Apr 05, 2012 Comments Off

I haven’t written anything for this site in a few months because my efforts to secure a funded PhD place in the competitive field of quantum gravity have taken up all of my time. Now I’ve been granted such a place in York, I can return to writing here. What makes quantum gravity such a [...]

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Monopoly on Marriage

Apr 03, 2012 Comments Off

Sometimes people wonder why atheists, homosexual or not, take an interest in the equal marriage debate. The response is simple: the opposition to equal marriage frequently originates from religious beliefs. The argument which presently seems to dominate the debate is over who has the right to define marriage. This word ‘define’ is not one we [...]

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The Next Confusing Word: Fundamentalism

Mar 14, 2012 Comments Off

Recently there was another religion-based debate on The Big Questions which discussed one question: whether fundamentalism undermines faith. The show itself was thoroughly interesting, as it often is, even if this episode was an exercise in how many mad people you can get into one room; it was more interesting to simply marvel at the ridiculousness of [...]

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How To Design The Perfect Religion

Jan 16, 2012 1 Comment

The idea of designing a religion is a fascinating one, due partly to the selection of motivations for doing so. One could hope to design a religion that would become widely popular and financially benefit its inventor. One could design a religion for the purposes of making a point: to tear apart the fabrication once [...]

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Why Doesn’t Personal Experience Count As Evidence?

Jan 10, 2012 Comments Off

I dislike categorising people into only two groups, but the conclusions I will draw in this article I find to be independent of this particular distinction, hence let us consider the assuredly religious and the decidedly non-religious. Of the many traits that separate the two groups, one which appears to be crucial, and which arises [...]

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More Ambiguity On Belief

Dec 23, 2011 1 Comment

A while ago, there was an article on this website called The Dangers Of The Word Belief. In the article, it was noted that the word “belief” is inconveniently ambiguous because in common speech it ascribes to a different meaning to in religious debate. But there is another obstacle which much be traversed to deal [...]

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The Bible Is Not The World’s Best-Selling Book

Dec 20, 2011 4 Comments

Whenever religious debates near the topic of the bible, often when considering it as a piece of literature, some advocates are quick to announce that the bible is the best-selling book in the world, of all time. Whilst it is not explicitly said, the insinuation with this is that because so many people have purchased [...]

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Free Will in Quantum Mechanics

Dec 19, 2011 Comments Off

The natural laws as they were understood more than one hundred years ago were significantly different to how we know them today. The classical laws of motion described by Newton were, at the time, the ultimate guide to the future of the universe. In Newton’s universe, everything was determinable; if you knew the precise position and [...]

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Science Is Not The New Religion

Dec 19, 2011 Comments Off

There have been two significant potential discoveries in the world of physics in recent months. Firstly that neutrinos, a type of subatomic particle, seem to have been observed travelling faster than the speed of light, the universal speed limit. And secondly that the Higg’s Boson, another subatomic particle, which is responsible for the mass property [...]

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RIP Christopher Hitchens

Dec 16, 2011 Comments Off

People are sometimes asked where they were when a tragic event happened or when they first heard of it. The answers are often pretty unimpressive (e.g. I learned of the 9/11 attacks when I met someone off a bus coming home from school). In my opinion, the best way to learn of them is in [...]

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He’s Dead. It’s Been Two-Thousand Years. Haven’t We Improved?

Nov 28, 2011 Comments Off

It is staggering that after two thousand years since his messages first emanated into the world, millions of people still consider the teachings of Jesus to be some of the most relevent and sublime that can be found. In the last two thousand years the human race has seen greater objective advancement than any other time [...]

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“A Clever and Important Person is Religious, Therefore We All Should Be”

Nov 28, 2011 Comments Off

This title is somewhat biased. It can often be heard that because some person widely considered to be very intelligent is theist or atheist, that this counts in favour of a that particular opinion. It is lines such as “there are many religious scientists” coated with the tone that because religious scientists exist then religion must [...]

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On miracles: how religious people don’t understand their own concept

Nov 22, 2011 Comments Off

In September 2011 neutrinos were apparently spotted exceeding the speed of light. This week we received confirmation a second experiment had apparently spotted the same thing. We’re far from having enough evidence to confidently say whether or not neutrinos really have broken the light speed limit, though physicists highly doubt they have because so much [...]

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