The Placebo Effect

For when someone starts talking about miraculous cures  . . . .

Scientists on Creationism.

Still no news of God . .

 "One by one religious conceptions have been placed in the crucible of science, and thus far, nothing but dross has been found. A new world has been discovered by the microscope; everywhere has been found the infinite; in every direction man has investigated and explored and nowhere, in earth or stars, has been found the footstep of any being superior to or independent of nature. Nowhere has been discovered the slightest evidence of any interference from without.

These are the sublime truths that enabled man to throw off the yoke of superstition. These are the splendid facts that snatched the scepter of authority from the hands of priests."

A quote by Robert Ingersoll in 1872. . . Before Einstein, the electron microscope, the Hubble telescope and the Large Hadron Collider. . . .

Where religions come to die . . .

. . . THE INTERNET - death by a thousand cuts!

Degrees of Nonsense

In his article "Is there a God?" Bertrand Russell said:-

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."


This was in answer to those theists who claim the burden is on atheists to prove the non-existence of their deity rather than on theists to prove his existence. This is notwithstanding that theists are fond of claiming their god is ineffable, mysterious, indefinable, beyond the human mind to understand. We would, in fact, be on much safer ground in searching for the elusive teapot. We know what a teapot looks like; its size, its material, its approximate weight. Scientists and engineers could, no doubt, if pushed, design a teapot scanner which, in operation over an indefinite length of time, push the probabililty that there is no orbiting teapot nearer & nearer to certainty.

Supernaturalism

"One reason that belief in the supernatural remains widespread, despite its negligibility, is that, as discussed earlier, it cannot be proven wrong, and the epistemological insulation provided by its inaccessibility is accorded the weight of evidence despite the fact that it carries no evidential weight at all. The supernatural remains logically possible, and thus an option for belief, only because it is not susceptible to confirmation or disconfirmation on the basis of evidence. But this status is permanent--the metaphysical status of supernaturalism as at most a logical possibility will never change. To become more than a logical possibility, supernaturalism must be confirmed with unequivocal empirical evidence, and such confirmation would only demonstrate that this newly verified aspect of reality had all along never been supernatural at all, but rather a natural phenomenon which just awaited an appropriate scientific test. Supernaturalists have not succeeded in providing such a test, but the naturalist has all the time in the world, and is prepared to give the supernaturalist all the time in the world, to make the attempt. In the meantime, the philosophical naturalist can point to the constantly expanding success of science in explaining what once were thought intractable mysteries or fixed categories of experience and reality." ~ Barbara Forrest, "Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection" (2000)

Richard Dawkins accepting the 2012 BHA award

During his acceptance speech for the BHA award of Services to Humanism Richard speaks of his idea for a new degree course with evolution at the centre, branching out into philosophy, economics, engineering, medicine, agriculture, social science, linguistics, physics, cosmology, computer science, and more...

Creationists know nothing . . .

Advanced Circular Reasoning

William Lane Craig's cock-up

Children of the Stars

It sure is enough for me. 

And they call atheists arrogant . . .

Richard Dawkins answers his critics . . .

From "Beautiful Minds", BBC Four.

Stephen Hawking - a graphical life

Created by: Online PhD

"The Universe is in us"

A Universe from Nothing

Just over an hour long, but fascinating.

Evidence & logic

And another problem arises in theological arguments when someone's notion of what constitutes evidence fall far short of your own . . . . 

How the Universe appeared from nothing . . .

. . . explained in just 3 minutes!

'The Universe is just a strange version of nothing"

Richard Dawkins at his best

An interview from the "God Delusion" days that I hadn't previously seen . . . . 

There is no God. There is no Fate