Archive for People

Something from nothing

Apr 05, 2012 Comments Off by

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 [...]

Articles, People, Physics and Cosmology, Religions and other Belief Systems, Richard Dawkins, Sciences Read more

RIP Christopher Hitchens

Dec 16, 2011 Comments Off by

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 [...]

Articles, Christopher Hitchens, Humanities, News, People, Politics, UK, US Read more

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

Nov 22, 2011 Comments Off by

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 [...]

Biology, Neurology, and Medicine, Christianity, News, People, Physics and Cosmology, Religions and other Belief Systems, Sciences, World Read more

My dinner with Richard Swinburne

Oct 20, 2011 Comments Off by

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, [...]

Christianity, People, Religions and other Belief Systems Read more

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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