Stop that! June 25, 2007
Posted by Joe in Christianity, agnosticism, atheism, belief, church state separation, creationism, fallacy, freethought, god, morality, religion, theism.17 comments
To my fellow atheists/agnostics etc…:
Stop blaming all, the majority of, or any tragedies of the past on religion! (more…)
And then there are the Christian terrorists June 19, 2007
Posted by Joe in Christianity, belief, freethought, god, immorality, morality, religion, theism.add a comment
Festivities include a “Reenactment of 7-29-1994″.
Someone tell me that’s a hoax.
The Demon-Haunted World June 18, 2007
Posted by Joe in NASA, agnosticism, atheism, belief, books, creationism, ethics, evolution, fallacy, freethought, god, language, life, media, politics, psychology, reading, religion, science, skepticism, space exploration, theism.add a comment
It’s been more than I decade since Carl Sagan wrote A Demon-haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, But even as I reread it today its message is as timely as ever. The survival of our way of life depends entirely our scientific knowledge and how we apply it. Yet we have created a society where the vast majority have no knowledge of the methods or findings of science and no knowledge of how the technology they use everyday actually works.
Furthermore we have media and politicians that present everyday anti-science attitudes, watered down and pop-culture simplifications of science, and present pseudo-science uncritically.
Everyone should read this book; theist or atheist; “evolutionist” or creationist. Whatever your stripe you will get something out of it and enjoy the trip.
Carl Sagan explains what makes science the best way we have to know what is:
Some people consider science arrogant, nevertheless, I maintain that science is part and parcel humility. Scientists do not seek to impose their needs and wants on Nature, but instead humbly interrogate Nature and take seriously what they find. We understand human imperfection. We insist on independent and to the extent possible, quantitative verification of proposed tenets of belief. We are constantly prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs.
Free Will vs. Omniscience June 14, 2007
Posted by Joe in agnosticism, atheism, belief, freethought, god, omniscience, religion, theism.10 comments
Many theists believe in these two ideas simultaneously. That is, they believe that there is an omniscient being that knows everything, even things that have not yet occurred, and they believe that there are a bunch of non-omniscient beings running around exercising their free will.
I have heard it argued by many atheists (and others) that this is an impossible situation. They argue that free will is not possible if someone already knows every decision you will make and everything that you will do for your entire lifetime before you are even born. If your decision has already known, how can you be considered free to make it?
Is god alive? June 12, 2007
Posted by Joe in agnosticism, atheism, belief, creationism, evolution, god, religion, skepticism, theism.14 comments
When discussing evolution with creationists one of their complaints is that evolution assumes that it is possible to produce life from nonliving material. My response is twofold; first, if that is not possible then life must have existed forever; second, creationism makes the same assumption, but simply adds that god did it.
However, if god were a living thing it would fix both of those. Living things would have existed forever and no abiogenesis (creation of life from the nonliving) would be necessary.
So do theists consider their god to be alive?
