Graham McAleer: This book should put to rest the canard that atheism is free thinking, and oh so much more broad-minded and gentle than what is on offer from the dull and cramped-spirited God-fearing types.
Culture
Was philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn “evil”
Postmodernism is to science what rabies is to dogs. That is, it will lead to post-science as surely as rabies leads to post-dogs. But by all means, let them fight in the meantime.
Biologist responds to fretting over “denialism” at Nature
Why should we trust “authority,” when it has been publicly embarrassed over and over?
What? Oumuamua was just a comet? After all the ET hype?
Yeah. Sure. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that it was orthodox science media (Scientific American, we are looking at you… ) who were marketing the space alien thing, not some crackpot in a tinfoil hat. And yet the same people have the nerve to sponsor reams of stuff on why “people” believe in pseudoscience.
Study: Oddly, it’s not media but researchers who pile on hype
Most of the article is just establishment hand wringing. The main reason so many people don’t “trust science” is the same one that causes people not to trust used car dealers.
Rob Sheldon responds to demand to get rid of elderly scientists
Sheldon: If they had actually done their homework, instead of rebelling against their parents, they would have learned what we knew by 2011: The average age for great discoverings is older now.
Why has a historic medical publication gone weird?
A science writer asks, citing several distinctly odd viewpoints aired in the journal that was founded in 1823, including This year, the weirdness continued. A paper in The Lancet argued that certain food experts should be banned from food policy discussions. (Of course, the experts that should be banned are any that are associated with […]
Logic & First Principles, 14: Are beauty, truth, knowledge, goodness and justice merely matters of subjective opinions? (Preliminary thoughts.)
We live in a Kant-haunted age, where the “ugly gulch” between our inner world of appearances and judgements and the world of things in themselves is often seen as unbridgeable. Of course, there are many other streams of thought that lead to widespread relativism and subjectivism, but the ugly gulch concept is in some ways […]
What drives the trend toward astrology today?
As a cultural studies prof explains, it’s whatever you want it to be – everything, anything, and nothing.
Would you know if a robot was writing the news about ID? How?
It’s not that robots are really thinking up new things so much as that so much of what passes for news coverage doesn’t require much thought.
The academic study of stupidity has turned up some interesting findings
As Michael Egnor tells us, scientism is not a cure for stupidity. But never mind, quite a few science savants have rushed in fearlessly: Evolutionary biologist David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute, told Nautilus, “Stupidity is using a rule where adding more data doesn’t improve your chances of getting [a problem] right. In […]
How did Stephen Hawking get to be “world’s smartest scientist”?
Top People need a multiverse. The rewards go to those who can conjure one. Hawking did his best within the boundaries of science and is to be commended for going no further. We have heard and will hear plenty from those who show no such qualms.
French author muses on why Darwinism never dies
In an essay on Paul Gosselin ’s Flight from the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West, Volume II, we are told, Over two and a half decades have passed since Phillip E. Johnson kick-started the intelligent design (ID) movement in America with the publication of his path-breaking book, Darwin on Trial (1991). In this […]
If you need a benevolent god, look no further than Netflix
No sermons, no tithing, but there is a price to be paid.
Guy pretending to be atheist enrages real atheists
The Onion has identified a possible cause: Lack of activism. Some of us are not sure how well Onionized activism would work for them.