Liberating Science

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There is some really encouraging news in the Guardian today concerning the highly annoying pay-walls that lock a lot of very interesting things away. In a pre-internet era it all made sense. Various publishers took responsibility for the printing and distribution of credible peer-reviewed journals. That obviously involved costs, so they charge, and of course … Read more

Head-to-Head with Islamic “God did it” claims

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Right now I am having a semi-friendly “discussion” in a Facebook group with a bunch of rather committed Islamic folks. It’s their thing, they have this concept called Da‘wah. That literally means “issuing a summons” or “making an invitation”. If this is not something you are aware of, well think of it as being similar … Read more

Mr Stanley has a daft Telegraph article – In response I’d argue that secular morality is superior

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Tim Stanley writes in the UK’s Telegraph a rather strange religious blog posting entitled “Christianity is neither Left nor Right, but radical and daunting“. I guess this is perhaps the time of year when the religious go into overdrive … here are a few extracts with my thoughts (in red) … I’ve always found Easter … Read more

Gods as Topological Invariants

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A very interesting paper is available from the Cornell University Library entitled “Gods as Topological Invariants“. The abstract reads … We show that the number of gods in a universe must equal the Euler characteristics of its underlying manifold. By incorporating the classical cosmological argument for creation, this result builds a bridge between theology and … Read more

The word “Atheist” is a very odd word

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It strikes me that the word “Atheist” is indeed a rather odd word, because it is used to describe people who do not believe in something quite specific – the reality of a god or gods. There are of course various flavours, for example there is “Implicit and explicit” atheism to differentiate between those who have not … Read more