Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Adam Ericksen, the Education Director for The Raven Foundation a religious group that promotes non-violence, has recently blogged the rather common claim that God is not part of this universe. My intent here is not to specifically criticise Mr Ericksen nor the Raven Foundation, but to instead highlight it because it is simply one example of … Read more
An article by Will M. Gervais and Ara Norenzayan that was published in Science back in 2012 suggested that Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief, and if curious to see the precise details of that paper then you will find the full PDF for it here. So let’s dig into this a bit and see what it is all … Read more
While being interviewed back in 1989 Carl Sagan was asked “Are you a Socialist?” You can almost hear Ted Turner treating the word “socialist” as an almost derogatory term, and so this was perhaps tossed at him as if he was being asked if he was a child molester. The answer Carl gives reflects his character and … Read more
I often trip up over some rather strange claims being promoted by people who are in reality both decent, reasonable, and intelligent. This week’s example comes from a piece written by Jerry Fogltance, a retired Air Force chaplain and lieutenant colonel. Within his column he writes … Atheists take pride in claiming that what they believe … Read more
Since we are deep into the working week, I’ll lighten up a bit today and have a bit of fun. Humans generally tend to not simply take what we find asis, but also often can’t resist the urge to tweak and improve things, and apparently the Nigerian 419 guys are not immune to that urge. To … Read more
The very short TL;DR; summary is perhaps “yikes”. So I sat down to enjoy the latest episode of Real Time with Bill maher, and was totally floored when he wheeled on Charlie Sheen’s HIV Quack, “Dr.” Samir Chachoua, and then proceeds to interview him. What then emerged were some totally unfounded claims, and so here … Read more