Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
So I attended a great talk last night that took place at Reading Skeptics in the Pub by Matt Parker, a mathematician, stand-up comedian, and skeptic. It sounded fun, and even if the maths went zooming over the heads of all, the standup comedy would still make it worth attending. It was indeed great fun, and Matt … Read more
Yesterday, when I posted some of the rather strange claims being made by Pat Robertson on US TV, I had convinced myself that perhaps that was as weird as it gets. Well, it turns out that I was quite wrong about this because a friend shared something even more eccentric. A Saudi cleric has popped up … Read more
Was Darwin a racist? A claim often asserted by some is that not only does Evolution endorse and promote racism, but also that Charles Darwin himself was a racist and openly labelled native Africans and Australians, as a savage, sub-species. In fact, some have even attempted to incarnate this belief within law. In 2001 , US State … Read more
In response to various stories that criticise belief I’ve seen the moral argument pop up. For example, David Quinn writes in the Irish Independent a response to Stephen Fry’s observation that the God of the bible is quite immoral.. But matter cannot produce a moral law. It cannot produce ‘justice’. If matter and its emanations … Read more
Today’s BBC Big Questions has three – ‘Are the rich paying their fair share?’, ‘Should the NHS fund homeopathy?’ and ‘Are women taking over religion?’ Oh this is easy … “No”, “No”, and “Nobody cares (except a few religious folks)”, ah but getting there will be fun, because as I start to write this prior … Read more
Now this is interesting, it’s a TED talk, but in a format I’ve never seen before – they have animated it, and also it is a duo, not a single individual. The TED site describes it as follows … In a time when irrationality seems to rule both politics and culture, has reasoned thinking finally … Read more