Via Rich Juzwiak, I came across a video (click on the link to see the video) of people talking about their creationist beliefs. It provides an interesting case study of how, if you create a closed conceptual system, you can convince yourself that it is all consistent and hence true. [Read more…]
I did not watch the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. I have been reading the various reviews and most of them seem to think that Nye had the better of it. It is of course hard to conceive of anyone losing an argument to someone who believes that the Bible is literally true and that the Earth is 6,000 years old but, as I said earlier, in these kinds of debates who emerges as victor or vanquished has little to do with whether they are right or not but more on the quality of the rhetorical tricks employed. [Read more…]
A British judge has dumbfounded legal experts by ordering Thomas S. Monson, the current president of the Mormon Church, to appear in court on March 14 and prove the factual statements that his religion makes. [Read more…]
It is curious how many people there are who think that many atheists are getting it all wrong and feel they must tell us how we should think. Much of this advice comes from fellow atheists ‘and sophisticated theologians’ (i.e., those whose religious beliefs are so rarified that it has almost no overlap with the beliefs of ordinary religious person except that they agree on the fact that the material world is not all there is). [Read more…]
You may recall that following the erection of a monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol in Oklahoma, a Hindu group proposed putting up a statue to their god Hanuman and a Satanic group has proposed one too. Gideon Resnick joined the New York—based Satanic Temple to learn more people behind the latter effort. This group of Satanists seems closer in outlook to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster than to anything occult. [Read more…]
There are two science-religion debates coming up. One is tomorrow (February 4) between ‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye and Answers in Genesis young-Earth creationist Ken Ham. The other is on February 21 between cosmologist Sean Carroll and theologian William Lane Craig. Serious concerns have been expressed by both sides about the usefulness or even the desirability of these debates. [Read more…]
There has been a long running saga in Ohio concerning a science teacher named John Freshwater who was teaching creationism and propagating Christianity in other ways in his eighth grade science classes in a semi-rural community in central Ohio named Mount Vernon. He kept Bibles on his desk and posters of the Ten Commandments and other Christian messages hung on the walls. [Read more…]
What can you say about this news report that a vial of Pope John Paul II’s blood has been stolen from a village church? [Read more…]
Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum, has translated a 3,700-year old Babylonian cuneiform tablet that gives precise and detailed instructions for constructing an ark and, to everyone’s surprise, the shape of the ark is circular, not the regular boat shape that we have grown up with. This ark was designed to be like a giant round basket, 3,600 square meters in area, or about two-thirds the size of a football (i.e., soccer) pitch. That’s pretty big but still would be pretty crowded with all the animals. [Read more…]
The 7 Most Intriguing Philosophical Arguments for the Existence of God was the title of an article and of course I had to click on it. The author George Dvorsky started with disclaimers, emphasizing that these were purely philosophical arguments unsupported by any kind of scientific evidence. He added some other caveats: [Read more…]