Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
I stumbled across a Facebook page today called “Against Anti Islamic Groups and Anti Islamic Content on FB”. Basically, the sole purpose of this group is to encourage other Muslims to report any other Facebook group or page as a hate group if they dare to insult Islam or their Prophet.
The guidance they give says …
Anti Islamic Groups to be removed no more insult of Islam in the Name of freedom of Speech
The UK’s Guardian reports today that many parishes in Dublin are close to financial collapse due to child abuse compensation payments. Their source for this is a leaked internal report from the Council of Priests that was published in this week’s edition of the Irish Catholic newspaper. The Guardian article says …
The Skeptic’s Dictionary is a fabulous collection of cross-referenced skeptical essays written by a really smart chap called Bob Carroll. He has published it all on his website, skepdic.com, and also made it available as a book. If you have never seen it, then you really should go check it out, I highly recommend it. The site itself started in 1994, but it was not until 2003 that the book came out. Is it popular? Well, according to the back cover of the book, the on-line version receives approximately 500,000 hits per month, so he must be doing something right.
So what is it all about? Basically he tackles all flavors of woo including: alternative medicine, cryptozoology, UFOs, new age beliefs, the paranormal, the supernatural, etc… Is this another of those “balanced” works that present all views? Thankfully no, instead he opts for truth and rips into all the silly claims (quite right too).
I’ve cut and pasted the following article written by Sadie Crabtree from here …
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Wednesday night at 10:00pm (9:00pm Central), ABC’s Primetime Nightline will air a one-hour special on psychic abilities.
James Randi, along with JREF President D.J. Grothe, JREF’s Million Dollar Challenge Director Banachek, and advisor Jamy Ian Swiss, worked with Nightline producers on two of the segments and participated in three days of taping, including the JREF’s first-ever open Million Dollar Challenge event where hundreds of New York City psychics were invited to take our tests.
Watch ABC’s 30-second teaser for the show here, click “Read More” for behind-the-scenes photos, and make sure to watch Wednesday night!
Belief is a very powerful tool for gathering wealth, and because of this some of the wealthiest organisations around are religious groups that also often attract followers that are quite poor. Here now are some interesting statistics that list where some of the main players get their wealth from, how much they have, and what they spend it on. I confess that some of this was a surprise to me.
Looking down the list, if I was to vote which were the slimiest scumbags around, its really difficult to decide between Scientology, Catholicism, and Televangelism.
There exists a modern claim that the Qu’ran contains verses that describe things known only to modern science, but since it was all written 1400 years ago when such things were unknown then “Allah did it”. Challenge this and ask for the best example and you usually are given a poetical phrase which has been quote-mined and twisted out of context to enable some modern thinking to be retro fitted in.