Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
If you attend a University lecture there is an expectation that you are both willing and able to learn. You may of course encounter ideas that are challenging and perhaps find difficult to grasp, so when that happens the right thing to do is to simply get up and walk out because ignorance and stupidity … Read more
Pat Robertson is perhaps seen by many as an incarnation of complete and utter lunacy and so you are more or less granted an iron-clad guarantee that anything and everything he ever says will be either weird, bizarre or utterly absurd. But hey … that thought turns out to be wrong, because he has in fact said … Read more
I managed to slip away from work early enough last night to take advantage of the fact that I had the car with me on this trip to Manchester and so I drove to Hebdon Bridge … no not to see the sights, but rather to listen to PZ Myers give a fabalous talk about … Read more
When several well-known individuals were asked to comment on specific issues today (on other topics I’ll not get into now), a response I heard several times was, “Well, I’m feeling very pessimistic about the current outlook for that” (or similar). Upon hearing that, and the associated justification for the opinion, I did think to myself, “actually, … Read more
This weekend, the world Humanist Conference is taking place in Oxford, so if you like meeting lots of very interesting people then that is the place that you need to be in. Apparently this only happens every three years, and each time it takes place in a different country, so if you will be missing … 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