Daft Claim: semen-eating anal worms cause gay people
A truly daft claim by a crank asserts that anal worms that eat semen causes gay men and lesbians, and that she has a suppository cure.
Conversion
What persuades people to change their minds about Climate Change?
People can and do cross the divide. People who once promoted a specific stance will be persuaded that they were wrong and cross over to take a quite different stance. A rather obvious example is religious belief. There are many people who today are atheists but were once deeply religious, so quite clearly they have … Read more
The non-conversion of Christopher Hitchens
It is perhaps inevitable that claims of deathbed religious conversions pop up for most well-known people, because religion is basically an emotional experience and not an intellectual one, so an appeal to your emotions that runs along the lines of “Look, here is somebody famous who converted, you should do so as well”. The problem … Read more
Conversion Stories … that don’t actually convince anybody of anything at all
One common strategy that is commonly deployed to convince people to convert is to wheel out a conversion story of somebody impressive. Here is a specific example, it consists of a posting to a Facebook group yesterday … ■■ Quran wins the heart of US Professor Dr. Jeffrey Lang ■■ Dr. Jeffrey Lang is an Associate … Read more
Claim: “atheism is a nonintellectual exercise in self-deception”
I have perhaps been guilty in times past of living inside a religious bubble, and so having now stepped outside, it is always worth pondering the thought that I have just exchanged one bubble for another, hence I often expose myself (intellectually) to things that are clearly not ideas I agree with. Today’s example comes from … Read more
The religious conversion of Bill Maher
OK, so this is not so serious today and concerns the musings of a Christian playing “What if” in response to a satire clip by Bill Maher. I’ll post Bill’s religious conversion clip at the end (it’s a bit of hilarious satire), but first lets take a look at what this lady has been dreaming … Read more