Atheists are often accused of not being nice, for a variety of reasons. One is, we have no outside moral guidance such as scripture, so we obviously have no morals – like morality is this unintuitive concept (hey, some people assume you are as godawful stupid as they are.) Mostly, however, it’s from the idea that we don’t let people slide on concepts like special pleading, arguments
Category: Reference
Apply directly to forehead
Philosophy is a very curious thing, and I’ve been working out my feelings towards it for the past couple of years now. What I think I’ve finally settled on is that it has its uses, but about 10% of what it is usually given credit for.
Most agree that it was born in Greece a few millennia ago – or at least, that this was the period in time that it was structured and recorded. If
Does science lead to atheism?
Update September 2012 – This was one of the sample posts chosen for the podcasting experiment click below to listen, if you like (it is identical to the text):
Walkabout podcast – Does science lead to atheism?
The title question is actually an interesting one it is hard for me to say how many people ask it, or assume to already know the answer. It bears some examination
No flag at the summit
In working on an earlier post, a particular observation suddenly leapt out at me, making me wonder if skeptics and critical-thinkers need to put a little more emphasis on a different approach. Whether it is sufficient to increase the number of people reached will remain to be seen.
Some of us mix it up on forums, websites, bulletin boards, and whatever, addressing the various flaws of religious belief
That’s where I draw the line
There have been some interesting discussions coming up of late within skeptical circles, largely based on a survey report regarding religiosity in select populations of the US. The critical thinker in me starts asking these sneaky little questions, as usual, but in this case the answers may not be evident without a lot of examination. Bear with me a moment, here.
The census report in question is
Conformity
Walkabout podcast – Conformity
Secular humanism is the concept that, put simply, human beings can be good without god – no religious or scriptural moral guidelines are necessary, since we have the ability to recognize “good” and “bad” without cribsheets. We’re not abject idiots, in other words.
People actually study this?
In the wake of several threads regarding the study of theology on other blogs, such as Why Evolution Is True and EvolutionBlog, I feel compelled
Evolution issues
A little previously, I’d made an offhand comment in a post about the religious issues with evolution, and since this is something that’s been apparent in the background of countless forum discussions for years, I thought I’d examine it a little closer.
It comes as no surprise, I suspect, to say that evolution is the single biggest contention to religious folk, at the very least
But how? Part four: Religious belief
Walkabout podcast – But how? Part 4
For this topic of the series, I’m going out on a limb, because this is largely personal speculation, and I’m the first to admit I have no educational background in any of this. There are writers out there who have examined
But how? Part three: Complexity
Walkabout podcast – But how? Part 3
For the next part of this series, we take a look at one of the more interesting aspects of the religion/evolution debate, that of complexity. This one is much more the victim of misunderstanding (and intentional misinformation) than the previous two, which require the effort to see things from a different perspective more than anything else.
While the concept