On banning commenters
I have banned two people here. One was a Catholic priest who dogged me all over the internet, one-starring my books without reading them and slagging me off to anyone who cared to
Jonathan MS Pearce
Moral Facts and Opinions - Ron Murphy
An occasional commenter here, Ron Murphy (ronmurp), linked to one of his pieces in another thread. It's a really good piece, with some thought-provoking stuff on the is/ought issue in moral philosophy. See what you think and comment as usual below: Yet another moral philosopher (another relig
The power of prayer...
I received this email today from an old friend: Hi mate, Hope you're well. I'm reading your little book of unholy questions at the moment and thought I'd share a prayer story with you. When XXXX was pregnant with YYYY and we had the 12 week scan, the physical measurements and blood factors
Does God have a sense of humour?
There is this prevailing ide that God has personhood and that humanity is somehow styled on his image. Atheists believes that the causality here works the other way such that humanity existed and styled God on the image of humanity. But who would want to let minor quibbles like that get in the way o
Free Will Skepticism and Criminal Behavior: A Public Health-Quarantine Model
The great Gregg Caruso has produced a fascinating looking paper which I can't wait to read. I have often advocated the quarantine method in crime and punishment. This paper looks to
Tony Abbott and sexism
The present conservative leader of Australia is an utter fruit-loop. Julia Gillard, the Labour ex-PM of the country, a few years back, let rip. This is great rhetorical stuff:
What do you think is the strongest argument against atheism?
This is always an interesting question because it challenges your own worldview, assuming you are an atheist. It's the classic line of questioning you get when you are in an interview: "So, Mr Pearce, what do you think your biggest weakness is?" Of course, I have no weakness...
Quote of the Day: Andy Schueler vs Creationist
Brilliant, form the present thread here: Being a biologist, I usually give people like you the benefit of the doubt and try to correct their misconceptions about evolution without insulting them personally or
UK: 49% have no religion, Anglican Church collapse continues, Islam increases ten-fold since 1983
New findings by the National Centre for Social Research have confirmed the long-term collapse in affiliation with the Church of England and the huge increase in non-belief. Strikingly, the research also found that there had been a ten-fold increase in those identifying with Islam in the past 32 y
Petition for Jenner to give back medals...
Is it a poe? That's the question. It is written in such a way that it reads to me as a poe. Here is the chang.org petition description which comes in light of Olympic athlete and medal-winner Bruce Jenner's recent announcement of being trans and having a transition to Caitlyn Jenner. There has be
Classical theism: God's characteristics shown as incoherent
The classical theistic components of God, his characteristics of being all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing don't work very well together. This has been something which I have sought to elucidate over the years, so I thought I would compile a synopsis of where we are at with the idea of OmniGod,
Missing link in evolution of complex cells discovered
In light of the recent evolutionary discussions - a Creationist/evolutionist ding dong - over on this post, I thought I would choose one of dozens of evolutionary discoveries in the last few weeks alone to share with you. My question would be: how do deniers explain each and every one of these findi