As I leave the train station in the morning on my way to work I not infrequently find one or two people desperately thrusting towards me a pamphlet with the bold title: AWAKE! Generally I just duck quickly past without making eye contact, but this morning the pamphlet was thrust so effectively in front of my face that my...
I’ve just watched the video of Phil Plait’s “Don’t be a dick” talk at TAM8. This talk has spurred a lot of discussion and a lot of strong feelings around the place. It’s probably spurred varying degrees of reflection by sceptics on our own behaviour. Personally I know it’s made me think more about...
I’m about to do a George Lucas, and start after the beginning (although it’s a race against the clock to get this done before pt 1 publishes as scheduled). I want in this post to talk about the notion that withholding belief does not require justification or evidence – rather, belief does. I want...
There’s battle-lines being drawn … It seems lately there’s a lot of tension and even overt conflict and animosity between religious groups (extreme/fundamentalist ones, at any rate) and some very (increasingly?) vocal atheists – Richard Dawkins springs immediately to mind, as does a moronic article on ABC News today, with an Anglican Priest blaming sectarian...
I had intended that today’s Friday Filosophy would be a further exploration of the theme I began a few weeks back: that of understanding one’s choices (rather than philosophy in fact determining one’s actions). However, Age of Autism have derailed that, by illustrating absolutely perfectly how one should not approach a debate. (Its now...
