a tippling philosopher

Browsing Archive: June, 2012

I have an internet stalker - and he's a bloody pain in the arse

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Friday, June 29, 2012, In : Books 
So I have a stalker. He's a complete tool with no capacity for intellectual conversation. He started by posting a negative review of my free will book without having read it. He has done it on .com and .co.uk,. He has started reading it now but is so dense that he is making stooopid claims. He is a man of the cloth, it seems - a Father Clifford Stevens.

For example, in Free Will I set out the three positions, talk about their main adherents and then debunk them. However, he quotes me quoting...
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D Rizdek gives an insightful view on writing Gospels

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Saturday, June 23, 2012, In : Religion 
Here is a good post from another blog which I think is worth reposting. I think people forget to think of the Gospel writers as real people actually sitting down and logistically trying to create something so demanding:

It always puzzles me at the idea that someone might assume one person, be he named Matthew or Sam, just sat down one day and decided to write a book called the Gospel according to Matthew from memory or from his own notes. Is this how literary scholars think things got writ...

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The Nativity available now!

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Friday, June 22, 2012, In : Books 
My new book "The Nativity: A Critical Examination" is now through all the distribution channels! It has a foreword written by David Fitzgerald, author of "Nailed". Looking at the infancy narratives in the Bible, it analyses the reports from a historical context to see whether they stand up to scrutiny.

They don't. Check it out in paperback or on Kindle.

 
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Nonstampcollector, sticks and stones - and yes, they will break bones.

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, June 21, 2012, In : Youtube 
Nonstampcollector is always good - this fulfils expectations:


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The Nativity and Herod

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, June 21, 2012, In : Religion 
Whilst some of you may think Christmas has come early, the reality is that I have a new book out which deals with the historicity of the nativity accounts found in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. As if all the other arguments aren’t enough, there’s nothing like topping it all off with a healthy dose of critical historical analysis.

So the book is called The Nativity: A Critical Examination and the more involved in writing and researching it I became, the more amazed I was that anyone a...

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Philosophy and knowing about as much as possible (and my free will talk)

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Sunday, June 17, 2012, In : Philosophy 

So I gave a speech to the Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub group on Thursday night and, if I might say so, it went really well.

 

Here is some of the feedback from the events page:

 

“Amazing talk tonight, I'm still attempting to process everything..so many questions :) Thanks Johno Pearce.”

 

“Fascinating talk on free will tonight by Johno Pearce. Who knew philosophers could be so ... enthusiastic?!”

 

Which is great to hear – I’m glad I did not disappoint. However, to be ...


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Reppert on loving your enemies

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, June 14, 2012,


I was perusing Victor Reppert’s blog in order to catch a feeling of what apologists around are saying. Something that Reppert was talking about over on his blog dangerous idea the other day struck me as slightly nonsensical. Reppert was dealing with Keith Parsons talking about the commandment to love thy enemies, and how far this should be taken. Parsons gives examples of really terrible actions of certain people and Reppert counters that loving these people is “above his pay grade”: ...

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My talk tonight to the Portsmouth Skeptics

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Wednesday, June 13, 2012, In : Philosophy 
i am pretty excited about tonight's talk on free will to the Portsmouth Skpetics in a Pub group. Hopefully there'll be a good turn out. Free will seems to really be on the agenda at the moment. People are talking about it and it features on programmes such as Horizon, Radio 4 and suchlike. There is certainly an appetite fro the debate.

Here are the details:

http://portsmouth.skepticsinthepub.org/ 

I'll let you know how it goes!

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Interesting extra-terrestial impact

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Tuesday, June 12, 2012, In : Science 
New Evidence Supports Theory of Extraterrestrial Impact

ScienceDaily (June 11, 2012) An 18-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara, has discovered melt-glass material in a thin layer of sedimentary rock in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Syria. According to the researchers, the material -- which dates back nearly 13,000 years -- was formed at temperatures of 1,700 to 2,200 degrees Celsius (3,100 to 3,600 degr...

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Heads you win, tails we lose

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Sunday, June 10, 2012, In : Religion 

I would like to investigate in this post the opportunism of the theist. I have been involved in many conversations and debates, and have certainly seen many debates between proponents of most corners of the divides, and there is something which does annoy me. Theists, it seems, like to have their cake and eat it. They seem to enjoy the ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ ethos. There are many arguments where the theist will use the evidence available, in this here world, to support their case. ...


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Valaerie Tarico - I Don’t Believe in a God – What Should I Call Myself?

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Thursday, June 7, 2012, In : Religion 

I Don’t Believe in a God – What Should I Call Myself?


Posted on  


Valerie Tarico


Catholic, Born-Again, Reformed, Jew, Muslim, Shiite, Sunni, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist . . . .  Religions give people labels. The downside can be tribalism, an assumption that insiders are better than outsiders, that they merit more compassion, integrity and generosity or even that violence toward “infidels” is acceptable. But the upside is that religious or spiritual labels offer a way of defining ...


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Craig and The Kalam Cosmological Argument...again

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Wednesday, June 6, 2012, In : Philosophy 

Recently, William Lane Craig has produced a video, based on an essay in a book he and Paul Copan have edited this year “Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics” entitled “Terrible objections to the Kalam Cosmological Argument”. I am yet to read the essay, but I must assume it to broadly follow the line of his video of the lecture “Worst objections to the Kalam Cosmological Argument”.

I have a mild obsession with the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA) and am poten...

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Craig objecting to Kalam objections

Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Sunday, June 3, 2012, In : Philosophy 
As you may have gathered, I object to the Kalam Cosmological Argument. A lot. On my You Tub video about it, a Christian posted something to which i retorted. I then also sent him my extended post rejecting the KCA. He then sent me a video recently taken of Craig refuting objections by internet philosophers of the KCA. 

So far I have only watched 19 minutes of it, but based on those 19 minutes, my opinion is pretty damned low. Craig's problem with the circularity picks on a rather bizarre and i...
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