Thursday, 28 February 2013

Peter Millican on the KCA


Peter Millican is Gilbert Ryle Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, University of Oxford. His primary interests include the philosophy of David Hume, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, epistemology, and moral philosophy.

(Interesting side-note
In 2008 and 2009 some Republican commentators advanced claims that US President Barack Obama's autobiography, Dreams from My Father was written or ghost-written by Bill Ayers. In a series of articles in American Thinker and WorldNetDaily, author Jack Cashill claimed that his own analysis of the book showed Ayers' writing style, and backed this up citing analyses by American researchers using Millican's Signature software. In late October 2008, shortly before the US Presidential election, US Congressman Chris Cannon and his brother-in-law attempted to hire Millican to prove Ayers' authorship using computer analysis. Millican refused after they would not assure him in advance that his results would be published regardless of the outcome.After some analysis Millican later criticized the claim, saying variously that he had "found no evidence for Cashill's ghostwriting hypothesis", that it was "unlikely"and that he felt "totally confident that it is false".)

WLC - Artful Dodger

Sunday, 24 February 2013

Awkward questions for Theists - No.6

If in 100 billion years the Universe is cold, dark, lifeless what would this say about God? Is this his boredom limit? Was this the only cosmology model that would produce beings "in his image"? Or did he just get the fine-tuning slightly wrong? 

Supplementary question:- Is a God that can be bored, constrained in his creative abilities or error prone still a God?

Awkward questions for Theists - No.5

Saturday, 23 February 2013

£250 prize for a Secular TftD

The ongoing irritation at the BBC's exclusion of secular voices from The Thought for the Day slot has spurred one the previous presidents of the National Secular Society, David Tribe, to sponsor a prize of £250 for the best secular Thought for the Day.

Further details:-
http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2013/02/win-gbp250--just-write-an-uplifting-secular-thought-for-the-day

'Silence in the House of God'



The film explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.

Sunday, 17 February 2013

Awkward questions for Theists - No.5

How are the rites of Mass or the Eucharist and various other religious practices distinguishable from those of witchcraft or voodoo?

Awkward question for Theists - No.1
Awkward question for Theists - No.2
Awkward question for Theists - No.3
Awkward question for Theists - No.4