Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Monday, April 30, 2012,
In :
Religion
This is an excellent and informative post from Harry McCall on DC which i thought was interesting enough to post here:
This is the reply I got from the foremost scholar on
Josephus today (apart from Louis Feldman). Steve Mason is editor-in-chief
of EJ Brill’s multi-volume on the works of Josephus:
In a remote corner of the universe, on a small blue planet
gravitating around a humdrum sun in the outer districts of the Milky Way,
organisms arose from the primordial mud and ooze in an epic struggle for
survival that spanned aeons.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Friday, April 27, 2012,
In :
Religion
I am writing a post in reaction
to something about which I was talking with my Christian friend (let’s call him
Colin). We were talking about homosexuality and his approach to it given his
Christian background. Some points were interesting and some I fundamentally
disagreed with. Here are his views:
As according to the Bible, homosexuality is wrong.
This morality is grounded in God.
He is not homophobic and detests that label as it
automatically halts any further informed discu...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, April 26, 2012,
In :
Books
I thought, as I was reading through Free Will? again for a reprint, that it was worth posting this. It is still, to me, a really powerful argument against the sort of God we all know and love....
Normally, there are two
ways of seeing theological determinism. Firstly, the soft type, called soft
theological determinism, allows for humans to have free will, even though God
knows what they are going to do. The hard type means that humans do not have
any free will, and G...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Wednesday, April 25, 2012,
In :
Books
I will soon be writing an extended essay on the Kalam Cosmological Argument as used by William Lane Craig. This has recently been a personal interest of mine as a subject, so it seems obvious that it would be a future choice of subject for a book.
The KCA has been a stalwart defence used by many apologists, particularly Craig. erroneously so, I believe. The essay and book will set out to undermine the KCA in the ways that I have shown already on this blog and in the essay section in my cosmolo... Continue reading ...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Wednesday, April 25, 2012,
In :
Religion
Battles have been raging online over the last month or so
with regards to Ehrman's treatment of mythicism in his last book (Did
Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, cobbled together
from his debates, I believe) which was summed up here in his outspoken Huff
Post article:
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, April 19, 2012,
In :
Philosophy
At our last Tippling Philosophers meeting we threw into the hat the questions that we would most like answered. I compiled them all, and combined a couple (which is why number 6 is missing). What do you think? What questions would you think are the most important questions?
1. What one quality / human characteristic should we want to
prioritise in carrying forward out development / evolution?
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, April 19, 2012,
In :
Science
Can Behavior Be Controlled by Genes? The Case of Honeybee Work Assignments
ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2012) — What worker bees do depends on how old they are. A worker a few days old will become a nurse bee that devotes herself to feeding larvae (brood), secreting beeswax to seal the cells that contain brood and attending to the queen.
After about a week, she will progress to other tasks, such as grooming nest mates, ventilating the nest and packing pollen. Only at the end of her life will she be...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Wednesday, April 18, 2012,
In :
Science
Here is a response I made to Steve, a christian posting on DC, to a popular myth about evolution spread by the likes of Kent Hovind.
OK, Steve has used the :
We all know that dogs give birth to dogs, not zebras, and
ants lay eggs that hatch into ants, not Canada Geese.
approach, which is straight from the book of Hovind.
Firstly, let me remind you of a post I made here at DC about
a year ago about there being no such thing as a species (objectively) -
http://atipplingphilosopher.yolas...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Monday, April 16, 2012,
In :
Religion
I have seen the opening statements of both. I almost burst
out laughing at the poor poor tack taken by Darrel. Firstly, he sets out
deconstructing Avalos' epistemology and morality. This is both a red herring
and a shifting of the burden of proof. It matters not one jot, because that is
not the focus of the debate. The debate is "Is the bible a source of
absolute moral rules for today?" I can only see that Darrel should make a
defensive stance. Avalos could have come out and said "I derive my...
Basically, so that we may be able to take this discussion
further towards a much-needed conclusion, this is what I think faith is:
I am going to flesh out what is essentially the dictionary
definition so that it is more philosophical and robust. But I am essentially
not redefining it too far beyond what is accepted by the majority of the world....
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Friday, April 13, 2012,
In :
Youtube
Here is the video of the talk I did on free will to the South Hampshire Humanists in January of this year. Let me know what you think. The questions got cut off at the end.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, April 12, 2012,
In :
Religion
This is a superb video which I have seen a few times. There is a lot of info in it, and it gathers momentum as it goes on. The case Carrier builds up for internal evidence as to the existence of Jesus, or lack thereof, is fantastic. I am not a mythicist: I am agnostic. But he does build a superb case.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Tuesday, April 10, 2012,
In :
Science
Born Nice? Peoples' Niceness May Reside in Their Genes, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Apr. 10, 2012) — It turns out that the milk of human kindness is evoked by something besides mom's good example. Research by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Irvine, has found that at least part of the reason some people are kind and generous is that their genes nudge them toward it.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Monday, April 9, 2012,
In :
Religion
This is an essay submitted by Sarah Cook, an undergraduate student reading Religious and Theological Studies at Cardiff University. It is a good, concise synopsis on whether Paul defends slavery or doesn't; and whether he does so from a position of historical and cultural context or from his own understanding of the morality of slavery.
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Saturday, April 7, 2012,
In :
Religion
Courtesy of richarddawkins.net:
The Lord’s Army Comes to America’s Public Schools
By KATHERINE STEWART - RICHARDDAWKINS.NET Added: Wednesday, 14 March 2012 at 3:57 PM - An RDFRS Original
“Now that you know the truth, who will you share this with?” asked Ian’s fourth-grade teacher. The setting was a March 2012 meeting of the Good News Club in a Pasadena, California public elementary school. Good News Clubs are afterschool “Bible study” programs with a fundamentalist agenda that are ...
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Tuesday, April 3, 2012,
In :
Philosophy
I am really pleased to announce that I have another speaking engagement booked in Portsmouth, to talk to the Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub about free will.
The Skeptics in a Pub is a growing secular movement around the country, and I must say, I am really looking forward to it!
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Monday, April 2, 2012,
In :
Religion
Burqas are back on the agenda in the UK. This is because there was a
recent furore within the British legal aystem. A Muslim woman was barred from
serving on a jury because she refused to remove her veil. In a controversial
ruling, a judge said she could not sit on an attempted murder trial because her
full face covering (niqab) concealed her expressions.
Knowing this is controversial, I would like to give my
tuppence worth because I am against the wearing of such veils and I will tell
yo...