Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Francesca Stavrakopoulou is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion in the Theology and Religion department at Exeter University, but she is also perhaps better known for the BBC series that she has done. She presented a three-part BBC documentary series about the Bible and archaeology, called Bible’s Buried Secrets, broadcast in the UK on BBC 2 in March 2011. Here … Read more
Most of us tend to engage in on-line discussions these days, and the rather common pattern you will often observe in that context is as follows: Somebody posts something, and a vigorous debate ensues within the comments, usually one it which people are speaking over each other’s heads and not really engaging at all. At the end, nobody … Read more
A Christian believer in South Africa writes on News24 about his encounter with a friend who used to believe but changed his mind and was now an atheist. It is of course an article that is not really about that specific encounter, but is actually a posting that is an attempt to convince others and perhaps … Read more
Cognitive Dissonance is of course the term used to describe the mental stress that will arise when an existing belief is confronted with information that conflicts with the belief. It is perhaps logical and rational to assume that things should play out like this … For example somebody declares … “The world will end tomorrow“ When tomorrow … Read more
Well I’m back from my travels in the wilderness, so let’s begin slowly with an easy question – Who is the one person that is most probably going to fool you? You can most probably guess the right answer, but let me illustrate it anyway. One evening I just happened to by in a town … Read more
The following picture of a hunter posing next to his latest kill was posted to Facebook. In it you can see that some poor animal has been slaughtered to the great delight of the hunter … Yes yes, I know, it is satire, what you can rapidly discern (I hope) is that this is photo of … Read more