This Is Why Science Rocks and Pseudoscience and Mythology Don’t

31Mar07

It looks like dinosaur extinction didn’t make way for mammals after all. This is the conclusion of “a comprehensive study of molecular and fossil data on 4,510 of the 4,554 mammal species known to exist today.” To impress you with numbers, that’s 99% of all mammal species known. The relevant part is this:
Until now, however, [...]

Filed under: science, superstition   |  4 Comments

A Tiny Bit of Metablogging

24Mar07

I’m going away tomorrow for some days, and so I won’t have internet access until thursday, so don’t expect any new posts or response to comments or emails until then. This is supposed to be fun and a break from everyday life, so I wouldn’t want to bring my computer even if there was internet [...]

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Sam Harris, Cut the Crap!

21Mar07

Sam Harris is at it again, in God’s dupes, an op-ed inspired by Pete Stark, the Democrat who amazingly appears to be the first member of the US Congress ever to publicly admit nontheism (that his nontheism is newsworthy shows how far USA has to go; thankfully I don’t live there, but that’s another story). [...]

Filed under: atheism, ethics, religion, respect   |  35 Comments

Some Links

21Mar07

If you haven’t seen it already, the current Carnival of the Godless is at Black Sun Journal, though it’s probably old news already.
If you have children, you might be interested in Parenting Beyond Belief, which like the title says is about parenting without religion:
Parenting Beyond Belief is a book for loving and thoughtful parents who [...]

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Empire State Building, Evolution and Absurdity

20Mar07

Recently, for the umpteenth time, I encountered a common creationist argument that is built on such gross misunderstandings on so many levels that I feel the need for some serious argument-smashing. A combination of the teleological argument (argument from design) and misunderstandings of both evolution and probability theory, it goes something like this:
When we look [...]

Filed under: atheism, bullshit arguments, evolution, intelligent design, science, superstition, theism   |  7 Comments

The In-Group versus the Out-Group

15Mar07

Blaming a single thing in particular for all evils in the world – whether that thing is religion, politics, greed, lust, or something else entirely – is overly simplistic. If there is a name for this, it’s probably “human nature”, if anything can be said to be human nature. Should I be so simplistic as [...]

Filed under: ethics, politics, religion   |  18 Comments

A Classical Case of Appeal to Authority

12Mar07

Via Hell’s Handmaiden I found a post called Religion Irrational? Ask a Preeminent Logician. It’s a classic case of appeal to authority: so-and-so was a great {insert mathematician, scientist or philosopher} and so-and-so believed in God, therefore belief in God is rational.
So if Gödel is such a great logician and supremely committed to rationality, how [...]

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Moral Progress

07Mar07

Or perhaps I should call this “moral change“, having commited myself to subjectivism. Anyway, in The God Delusion Dawkins quotes some prominent thinkers known for being ahead of their time showing that they, too, held views that were common in their day but that we now condemn as immoral. This got me thinking: what views [...]

Filed under: morality, philosophy, value   |  6 Comments

On the Appropriateness of Science as a Tool for Understanding the Nature of Reality

05Mar07

The title is a mouthful, but the topic deserves no less, so bear with me. How appropriate is science as a tool for understanding the nature of reality, and specifically those parts of reality that religion purports to describe? Skeptics like me tend to think that science is the best tool for the job, not [...]

Filed under: atheism, philosophy, religion, science, superstition, theism   |  3 Comments