Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Beliefs that are rather obviously not true at all thrive, and so we should perhaps ponder over the question – why it is like this? The geneticist Steve Jones (pictured above) makes a rather interesting observation regarding beliefs and identifies one good reason. While speaking about this at the Hay Literary Festival, a reporter thought, “Hey … Read more
Claim: Westboro Baptist church plans to picket the funeral of their founder Fred Phelps Status: False … the Twitter account @MargieJPhelps once really did belong to the daughter of the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., but no, the tweets were created by @Grampscramps as satire If you had previously seen the claim, then you might indeed have been tempted … Read more
The Washington Post has published a rather detailed breakdown of religion in the US … alas statistics, so yes it can indeed be potentially quite dull stuff, I’ll skip a lot of details and cut to the chase of what it is of interest – non-belief is rapidly increasing. (There, that’s it, so you can skip … Read more
dprjones has another great YouTube clip. As an aside, I highly recommend his YouTube channel, he has lots of great stuff … and no, he has not paid me to plug it, I do not personally know him. OK, so the specific set of clips I’m highlighting today revolves around a book by Andy Thomson. … Read more
In today’s UK Guardian, we have an insanely silly article by Joseph Harker. Now please do not misunderstand me, this is not an attack upon Mr Harker, but is instead criticism of the quite popular and completely mythological view that religion acts as a force for good. I remain confident that Mr Harker is indeed … Read more
There was a debate at NYU’s Skirball Center that was part of the Intelligence Squared debate series, “Resolved: The World Would Be Better Off Without Religion”. Supporting the atheist side were Matthew Chapman and A.C. Grayling, while Dinesh D’Souza and David Wolpe were arguing on behalf of religion. You can read the NYT’s recap or … Read more