a tippling philosopher

Call me a liberal leftie socialist (actually, I wasn't always. When I first studied economics I was pretty conservative) but....

It has become highly newsworthy recently that due to austerity measures in the UK, and due to slashed budgets in the police finances, certain UK police forces are considering outsourcing police work to private companies. 

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but private companies are answerable to stakeholders (shareholders) who demand profit. First and foremost, companies ar...
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As a fan of much of Richard Carrier's work, I am looking forward to watching this debate on whether Jesus was the Son of God or a mere apocalyptic prophet.


 
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Here are some notes I made some time ago on the Fine-Tuning argument. From memory, some of the ideas came from Richard Carrier in Sense and Goodness Without God. The argument looks like this (wiki):

The fine-tuned Universe is the proposition that the conditions that allow life in the Universe can only occur when certain universal fundamental physical constants lie within a very narrow range, so that if any of several fundamental constants were only slightly different, the Universe would be unl...
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I am really quite scared about the future of, well, the world. We are potentially in the hands of big corporations and idiot politicians. What is particularly worrying is the potential presidents of the US: the Republican Party candidate leaders. There were several articles in the Guardian today which scared the bejesus out of me. This was one of them:

 

Attacks paid for by big business are 'driving science into a dark era'

Researchers attending one of the world's major academic conference...

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The existence of a world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection, creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell - Armand Salacrou.

 

I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian. The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher resembling a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat -- which wasn't there. "That may be," said the philosopher: "but a the...

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I was at a place called Monkey Bizness the other day with my two 18 month old twins and my partner. Monkey Bizness is a sort of kids climbing area with ball pits and all sorts. There is a special closed off area with a ball pit for under 2s only. There is a clear sign on the outside of the area and then by the ball pit which says children must be under 2 and cannot be supervised by an older sibling but only an adult.

 

I say this because this place led me to the realisation that I cannot st...

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Here is a post aimed at getting some answers out of William Lane Craig about his inner witness of the Holy Spirit. John Loftus at DC would like him to answer dome pertinent questions, as you can see:

Is William Lane Craig Dishonest With the Facts? I've Drawn a Line in the Sand.

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