religion

Fallacy of the week: “They” (ISIS) are not “True” Muslims

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The “No true Scotsman” ploy is an informal fallacy that is commonly deployed in order to maintain a specific position. For example … Person A – Islam is a religion of peace Person B – But what about ISIS? Person A – Ah but they are not “true” Muslims. Who first pointed out that “no true scotsman” was … Read more

Too stupid to be educated

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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

Barney Frank could not talk about his atheism while in Congress – why?

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Barney Frank is a Democrat who served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromMassachusetts from 1981 to 2013. In 1987 he came out as gay, and to the great credit of the majority of the public this had little impact on his electoral prospects, and so he was returned to office again and again as the most prominent gay … Read more

Sometimes Satire really is the best form of criticism

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Lurking out there are people who hold some very extreme and completely insane views. This ranges right across the diversity of belief and includes weirdness such as: Westboro Baptist church protesting outside a department store in their home town because it just happened to sell Swedish made vacuum cleaners. Apparently the Swedish government had rebuked … Read more

Does religious belief imply stupidity?

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Does being religious justify being labelled “stupid?”. The short simple answer is – No, there are plenty of very smart highly intelligent humans who are also religious, in fact some of the most famous thinkers, philosophers, and scientists in history have been religious. Ah, so that might imply some truth then? Actually no, not at … Read more

Meriam Ibrahim not being released

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News has been circulating in the media that Meriam Ibrahim, the woman under sentence of death in Sudan for marrying a Christian, is to be released. For example … BBC here Guardian here Sadly this is not true, her lawyer has advised Channel 4 as follows … Ms Ibrahim’s lawyer Elshareef Ali Elshareef Mohammed told Channel 4 … Read more