Archive for October, 2011

More on anti–atheist bigotry

Oct 30, 2011 Comments Off by

I realise I’ve said a lot recently about anti–atheist bigotry, but there’s one other point I think it worth making about it. Association with atheism is so toxic in some regions attempts to avoid it enhance other forms of bigotry. In recent years a US high school refusing to allow same–sex couples to its prom [...]

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Two new series of posts, on religions’ faults and student atheist et al societies

Oct 30, 2011 Comments Off by

I hereby announce two new series of posts I will be making in the near future. In one, “Faiths in the Firing Squad”, I will go through the world’s extant religions in descending order by size, explaining succinctly (but hopefully without unduly simplifying the issues) why there is more to be critically said about those [...]

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What theists and atheists have in common, even where different types of theists don’t

Oct 30, 2011 Comments Off by

In a previous post I explained ways in which those who seek to exemplify religious tolerance are often still guilty of anti–atheist bigotry. Therein I gave an example of a reason moderates may feel they have more in common with religious extremists than they do with atheists; at least the religious extremists are religious. Anyone [...]

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The stealth bigotry of “religious tolerance”

Oct 30, 2011 Comments Off by

For centuries people have held prejudices against and discriminated against those of other religions or other sects in the same religion. Extremists, fundamentalists, literalists – call them what you will (these terms are not quite synonymous) – are especially liable to do this. There are people who call themselves “religious moderates” who, for all their [...]

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Stop bringing up logical positivism

Oct 30, 2011 Comments Off

In the debate over the veracity or rationality of religious doctrines, the greatest thorn in the theists’ side is our asking what evidence supports their claims. As they can’t answer that challenge, they do all they can to excuse taking umbrage an evidential criteria. It has been said theology is not an effort to justify [...]

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Atheism and autism (and why theists bring it up)

Oct 30, 2011 4 Comments

Before I launch into this post it is only right I acknowledge having Asperger Syndrome, as it makes me an example of the sort of correlation evidence is beginning to uncover (and at this stage could well be wrong about), and which some theists have already become crowing about. There has been an occasional suggestion [...]

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Labelling children

Oct 30, 2011 Comments Off

Richard Dawkins has brought our attention in recent years to how wrong it is to automatically label young children with the religion of their parents. “That is/you are an X” are the two formulations this error takes. The problem is, just as there’s only so young one can be if one can form one’s own [...]

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Creationism moving backwards

Oct 30, 2011 Comments Off

Nicolaus Steno, the only saint to also be a scientist, introduced to geography in the seventeenth century the principle of superposition, which says geological strata that look alike are equally old and those on top are younger than those underneath them. Taxonomy, the systematic classification of living things, began in the eighteenth century with Linnaeus, [...]

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A bad omen

Oct 30, 2011 Comments Off

As I said in a previous post, I’ve been writing while in Spain. Our room had one English channel, BBC News. I turned it on at 5 PM BST on Monday and saw three main stories: the announcement of the liberation of Libya, a Turkish earthquake and Tunisian elections. Libya and Tunisia are both examples [...]

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By their fruits you shall know them

Oct 30, 2011 Comments Off

This is my first article here written while on a holiday in Spain (where limited internet access forced me to take a break from publishing). When in a foreign country I try to know something about its culture, e.g. the role of religion therein. A recent news story quantified the number of Spanish newborns the [...]

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Novelty in the new atheism … or theism

Oct 22, 2011 Comments Off

Post–9/11 atheist works have been characterised as the New Atheism. Many atheists have objected that atheism doesn’t come in strains; you either lack a belief in a god or gods, or you have one. They add that the arguments on both sides haven’t changed much historically either. They concede only one new aspect of atheism, [...]

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The trouble with debates

Oct 21, 2011 1 Comment

William Lane Craig’s request that Richard Dawkins debate him in Oxford was refused on a number of reasonable grounds. Dawkins has a prior engagement that same night in London, considers Craig insignificant and unsophisticated as a religious thinker compared with those Dawkins has debated and those he has had to decline purely on grounds of [...]

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My dinner with Richard Swinburne

Oct 20, 2011 Comments Off

Richard Swinburne is one of the world’s most famous theologians and, amongst those who find any theology at all convincing, one of the world’s most respected to boot, right up there with Alvin Plantinga. The University of Oxford has a student society for atheists, secularists and humanists that has had many atheist and theist speakers, [...]

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Sophisticated my foot

Oct 20, 2011 Comments Off

Certain schools of nonsense – perhaps all of them – have “sophisticated” advocates their critics are told must be countered for said criticisms to count for anything. Religion is a classic example of this at the time of writing. “Sophisticated theologians”, we are told, are the ones we must refute. One point I think needs [...]

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Religion-defending arguments as scientifically bad as religion

Oct 20, 2011 Comments Off

One thing I don’t recall hearing critics of religion ever saying, but which I think should be said, is that the effort by scientifically literate theists, including religious scientists, to render their religious views compatible with science often requires them to adopt views at least as empirically ridiculous as their religious views. (I will in [...]

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The Evolution of Religion

Oct 19, 2011 Comments Off

It is becoming blindingly apparent that if the senior members of the older religions do not move to modernise their institutions’ standpoints, their institutions, and possibly religions, will die out. The major world religions are increasingly under siege from the fair-minded secular who dislike the conservative and sometimes tyrannical views. Religions are expected to keep [...]

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The Return of the Forums

Oct 19, 2011 Comments Off

We’ve removed the old software for the forums, which was a nightmare to manage and distracted from the main site. You can now view the forums on the main site. They are listed on the home page side navigation. You need to be logged in to comment, and you can use the same account for [...]

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Does Our Explanation Of Religion Compromise The Validity Of Its Statements?

Oct 16, 2011 2 Comments

This is something which Peter Atkins once brought up in a debate with William Lane Craig. It is the idea that because we can explain why so many people are religious using evolutionary biology, sociology, and psychology, that therefore there is even less reason to think that religious statements are correct. Certainly the fact that [...]

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Not so finely tuned theist arguments for a god

Oct 13, 2011 Comments Off

I’m a new writer here, and I’m a physicist, and we scientists always react to theists trying to use the findings of our field to argue for a god by noticing their arguments get the science wrong. One of the most popular attempts of that sort nowadays concerns the “fine tuning” of physics, so my [...]

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You’re Offended, So What?

Oct 13, 2011 Comments Off

It is astounding how, even in intellectual debates, the notion is suggested that none of the participants may offend anyone else. Needless to say, it is consistently suggested by the very religious. But nobody has the right to not be offended, for one simple reason, that you can be offended by anything. You could take [...]

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