Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Wednesday, December 28, 2011,
In :
Science
This is a fantastic article which I read a year or so ago and have subsequently dug up, written by Mark Henderson, Science Editor of The Times. It details how media organisations falsely promote balance when reporting science, and end up doing science a gross disservice.
Dear BBC: balance isn't everything
By Mark Henderson
At the end of September 2009, a 14-year-old girl collapsed
and died at her school in Coventry.
Natalie Morton, an autopsy showed, was killed by a large chest tumour that had
n...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, December 22, 2011,
In :
Religion
Craig, in the video above, cements the sort of views which I
posted in the previous blog entry. Thanks to GearHead Ed who linked this video
in the last blog post. Watch this video, and read the last blog post, and you
shall see that one can conclude the following about Craig’s views:
1)The
Witness of the Holy Spirit / subjective experience of God trumps every other
type of evidence / proof.
2)As
such, there is no contrary evidence whatsoever that would invalidate a bel...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Monday, December 19, 2011,
In :
Religion
Craig has recently posted a Q&A that beggars belief. I'm not sure I need to explain it - I'll let the man talk for himself:
"This is because the resurrection of Jesus is essential to the truth of Christianity. So if Jesus did not rise from the dead, Christianity would be false. So if the bones of Jesus were discovered, that would entail that he did not rise from the dead and so Christianity would be falsified. ...
"So, yes, if the bones of Jesus were to be found, then he did not rise and Chr... Continue reading ...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Sunday, December 18, 2011,
In :
Philosophy
Quite often, theists posit arguments, but when they are met with difficulties, they necessitate extra premises. This is the case in Glenn Peoples' Moral argument, as pointed out by
Stephen Law on his blog.
Here is what he had to say about what this does for the likelihood of the argument then being true:
Glenn Peoples' blog has been interesting me lately. He has just out up his version of a moral argument for the existence of God.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Friday, December 16, 2011,
In :
Philosophy
When people claim things like free will is an illusion, as i do, then critics often hit back with "Why expect something so obvious to be false? Why not accept it on face value as you do most everything else int eh world?" etc. etc. This is an appeal to intuition as being a form of (reliable) knowledge.
The issue here is that many, many things in our world are not as they seem. Our interpretation of reality is exactly that an interpretation - and there is no guaranteeing its accuracy. Let me re... Continue reading ...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Wednesday, December 14, 2011,
In :
Books
Ho ho ho, it's Christmas. Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Or do they?
My next book, which has been on the back-burner for some time now, is tentatively called "25 Reasons to Disbelieve the Nativity". It will be a cumulative debunking of the Nativity of Jesus, Although there will be 25 points eventually, here below are 27 points, in note form, and the mental stretching and gerrymandering one has to do to accept them as coherent truth.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Monday, December 12, 2011,
In :
Philosophy
If a theist or God declares that I ought to do something, say A (such that it is good and I would get
to heaven, but which is supposedly intrin, out of intrinsic duty, then this
scenario seems to render that divinely inspired ought as meaningless:
If I want to go to
hell, then in what sense of the word can it be said that I ought to do A? The
duty to do good is circular so that I cannot say I ought to do good in order to
do good, since this is tautologous. I ought to put oil in the car so...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Sunday, December 11, 2011,
In :
Religion
The statistics for miscarriages are notoriously difficult to
assess completely accurately. This is partly due to the fact that many
miscarriages go unreported (those after 6 weeks of gestation, which are known
as spontaneous clinical abortions). However, the greater reason is that early
pregnancy losses – those that happen during the first 6 weeks of pregnancy,
generally tend too happen without the mother even knowing.
So why am I writing about this? Well, because statistically,
it mean...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Sunday, December 4, 2011,
In :
Anthropology
Following an online argument which you can see here (where I think I safely refute the other guy's points fairly comprehensively. He's a dolt who couldn't argue his way out of a paper bag), I thought it would be interesting to post an article dealing with Steven Pinker's latest critically acclaimed book:
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Friday, December 2, 2011,
In :
Philosophy
During William Lane Craig’s recent Reasonable Faith tour to
the UK
where he debated philosophers such as Stephen Law and Peter Millican, Craig
received a vast amount of publicity for having Dawkins refuse to debate him.
However, what was more important to me was either a severe case of
philosophical amnesia, or Craig has dropped the Kalam Cosmological Argument,
which has been a standard part of his three / four / five pronged attack for
decades. Why, I wonder. Well, let me explain.
Most Christians accept that a large part of the bible is a
metaphor, analogy or parable; whatever you call it, a lot is not meant to be
taken literally. In some parts of the gospels, Jesus spells out that he's
telling a parable - e.g. the prodigal son, good Samaritan etc. but in
others we have to hear the priest or minister explain that the story should be
interpreted as a story that teaches us something. One major example is
the story of creation which is only a...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, December 1, 2011,
In :
Politics
I was speaking to a friend last night at Transition Fareham’s
Green Drinks. This is a fathering of like-minded people who want to make our
local town more sustainable. My friend Fiona has started writing articles for a
local magazine and we were wondering if we could shoehorn Transition Fareham
into the article. One idea was writing an article about the 10 ways you, as an
individual, could change the world. I like this idea, so I have decided to
start a list of my own. Perhaps you could a...