Religion:
This is just embarrassing. Here's a representative of Parliament in the ALP, which I have noted before is increasingly pandering to religious interests: LABOR MP James Bidgood, the first-time MP under investigation for selling pictures of a protester attempting...
Posted on December 4, 2008 6:47 PM • 4 Comments •
The only problem with Queensland, apart from the occasional severe storm, is that they filled it with Queenslanders. Here's a bunch of northern bigots protesting a Muslim school being built on the Gold Coast "because they won't integrate" with...
Posted on December 2, 2008 8:21 PM • 15 Comments •
... to his doctors. Here. Late Note: Ronan in the comments points out this was in 2006. I think I was sleeping that year......
Posted on November 28, 2008 9:15 AM • 1 Comments •
We had a little storm here yesterday. It left my brother's flat wet inside and out, destroying their mattresses, and giving my motorcycle a jet blast clean. It's clean for the first time since I bought it four years...
Read on »
Posted on November 17, 2008 2:03 AM • 16 Comments •
I used to think that Jews in general were able to avoid the confusion of biblical literalism with their rich tradition of allegorical and other forms of interpretation and commentary, but it seems that there are some - haredim...
Posted on November 1, 2008 10:47 PM • 13 Comments •
As I feared, the internet filtering issue has now been taken up by special interests. The conservative Christian political party Family First, run largely by the Hillsong evangelical denomination, has one senator, but the balance of power is so...
Posted on October 28, 2008 10:36 AM • 9 Comments •
In my recent talk on secularism, I declared that there will always be religion, and a secularist ought to get used to that fact. Secularists have assumed that a secular society will cause religion to wither away and die,...
Posted on October 23, 2008 8:19 PM • 27 Comments •
So, as many of my readers and all of my friends know, I am a moral vacuum. I routinely brush those earnest young folk aside who seek my signature on their morally worthy petitions with that statement - they...
Read on »
Posted on October 20, 2008 9:49 PM • 6 Comments •
It occurred to me that some readers may be interested in the grant project, so I put the details beneath the fold. I am funded for an Australian Postdoctoral (APD) research fellowship for three years....
Read on »
Posted on October 16, 2008 4:54 AM • 30 Comments •
As some of you may have figured out by now, my overarching Evil Plan is to get people thinking about their basic assumptions. Even when those people are the "good guys" and free thinkers. So in service of that...
Read on »
Posted on October 9, 2008 9:34 PM • 30 Comments •
But, allowing that we were to take the operations of one part of nature upon another, for the foundation of our judgement concerning the origin of the whole, (which never can be admitted,) yet why select so minute, so...
Posted on October 6, 2008 3:25 AM • 4 Comments •
Okay, so in the AM I am off to drizzly Melbourne, my old home town, to address a conference on the implications of the project of naturalising religion, especially in terms of evolution, to an audience that may, or...
Posted on September 18, 2008 6:35 AM • 19 Comments •
In response to the unwarranted flap over the education director of the Royal Society making comments that of course the media and the creationists spun to suit themselves, Richard Dawkins had this to say: Although I disagree with Michael...
Read on »
Posted on September 16, 2008 8:19 PM • 156 Comments •
The hyperborean John Pieret, notes that my love for the "social glue" theory of religion (I henceforth steal that name, John; sue me. Oh, wait, you're a lawyer aren't you? Never mind) has been backed up by two ASU...
Posted on September 14, 2008 12:16 PM • 17 Comments •
In addition to Fuller's Science versus Religion, I also received my copy of Phil Dowe's Galileo, Darwin and Hawking last week, and today arrives Roy Davies' The Darwin Conspiracy (thanks, Roy; I will be as even handed as I...
Posted on August 25, 2008 1:33 AM • 5 Comments •
This is naughty, but very funny.......
Posted on August 23, 2008 10:39 PM • 4 Comments •
In my Fun with Christians and worldviews piece, I made a passing comment: Some views are just not amenable to a good life. I think Christianity is one, and not because I have some well-worked alternative I'd like to...
Read on »
Posted on August 22, 2008 9:56 PM • 38 Comments •
The local evangelical students society had me along last night to talk about "Is belief in the Christian God rational?" I was on the negative, although I did ask them which side they wanted me to argue for. It...
Read on »
Posted on August 20, 2008 4:44 AM • 39 Comments •
One of my claims is that religion proper arose along with the settlement in sedentary townships made possible by agriculture. The reason why this is religion, and not, say, the shamanic "religions" of nomadic tribes, in my view, is...
Read on »
Posted on August 19, 2008 12:25 AM • 13 Comments •
It's always a Bad Idea to critique a paper on the basis of summaries, but I just can't seem to make Proceedings of the Royal Society let me download this article. Randy Thornhill and Corey Fincher have proposed another...
Read on »
Posted on August 14, 2008 10:10 AM • 7 Comments •
As I sit here, dying slowly and loudly from a dose of gastro and probably 'flu (Australian male: we don't do sick well), trying to distract myself from the efforts of my lower intestines to escape to Jamaica, I...
Posted on August 14, 2008 3:59 AM • 17 Comments •
I get a lot of Google alerts about various things, including species concepts, obviously. I have noticed a pattern: media from the so-called "developed" or "first world" almost never put much in the way of actual facts or knowledge...
Posted on August 5, 2008 4:08 AM • 8 Comments •
Every so often we start a discussion somewhere about who is and who isn't an atheist. PZ Mackers has the poster shown below up on his blog: I want to look at the term and associated meanings of "atheist"...
Read on »
Posted on August 1, 2008 6:18 AM • 107 Comments •
Those who are getting very agitated, missing out on their Usenet fix of the group talk.origins, which has been dormant for the past few days, should know that Steps Are Being Taken. Stop emailing me. I don't know any...
Posted on July 28, 2008 8:28 PM • 4 Comments •
Once upon a time, a Roman author named Quintus Ennius wrote: "how like us is that very ugly beast, the ape!" It was quoted by Cicero, and from him Bacon, Montaigne and various others. But always it was thought...
Read on »
Posted on July 23, 2008 4:05 AM • 53 Comments •
When does a person's religious beliefs constrain someone who is not religious? What sorts of redress can a religious person expect in a secular society? These questions arise from the recent to-do about PZ Myers defense of the stealing...
Read on »
Posted on July 12, 2008 12:11 AM • 132 Comments •
Hi folks. It's conference time again, and of course we have organised to have the Australasian Association of Philosophy/Australasian Association for the History Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAP/AAHPSSS) conferences in the coldest place on the mainland -...
Read on »
Posted on July 3, 2008 4:38 AM • 17 Comments •
Readers may know I have a passing interest in the works of Terry Pratchett. Oh, okay then, I'm a fanboy. Have been for well over fifteen years, since a coworker shoved Good Omens into my hands and mind. So...
Posted on June 27, 2008 8:58 PM • 11 Comments •
On the one hand we have James Dobson declaring that Barack Obama isn't really Christian, because he distorts the Bible. Funny, I thought the Bible had some things to say about that [Matt 5:22, 7:1, Luke 6:37, Rom 2:1,...
Posted on June 26, 2008 4:57 AM • 2 Comments •
From the Enough Rope series by the inestimable Andrew Denton, interviewing Sir David Attenborough, in the course of which, this segment on creationism, below the fold. Humane thoughts of a great humanist....
Read on »
Posted on June 16, 2008 8:14 AM • 7 Comments •
History is one of those things that the venal mine to serve their special interests, with no concern for truth or accuracy. But it takes real stupid to say this: Contrary to popular belief, as historian David Barton points...
Read on »
Posted on June 11, 2008 9:10 PM • 17 Comments •
Peter Bebergal has a lovely, lyrical and wistful piece on Nextbook, on how scriptural literalism and creationism destroys what is best in religious imagination. Go read it....
Posted on May 25, 2008 10:56 PM • 31 Comments •
In a piece reported on in New Scientist, Maurice Bloch has proposed another basis for religion: imagination. Because we can project ourselves and imagine the "transcendental" relation in social and personal relationships, we can imagine that there are agents...
Posted on May 5, 2008 10:04 PM • 11 Comments •
The Australian government, still in the period of meeting its election promises, has legitimised the relations between homosexual couples so that they now have the same rights as defacto couples, which is long overdue. But they didn't quite get...
Posted on April 29, 2008 10:21 PM • 24 Comments •
The Nays won, narrowly, and the debate, between Daniel Dennett and Lord Robert Winston, will be available as a podcast here. A summary is here. One thing that I find interesting in these debates, which let's face it are...
Posted on April 27, 2008 6:10 AM • 33 Comments •
Or, "Ive been a baaaddd boy, Abbott" The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!Here is how you matched up against all the levels:LevelScorePurgatory (Repenting Believers)Very LowLevel 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)ModerateLevel 2 (Lustful)Very...
Posted on April 23, 2008 1:20 AM • 17 Comments •
While it's always nice to see a scientists step up to argue that intelligent design or creationism ought not to be taught as science because they aren't science, this worries me somewhat: Scientists have failed to explain the limits...
Read on »
Posted on April 7, 2008 2:27 AM • 90 Comments •
I once sat across the table from Alex Rosenberg, a well known philosopher, who argued persuasively that one cannot be both a Christian and accept natural selection. I think Alex intended this as a reductio for Christianity, as natural...
Read on »
Posted on March 24, 2008 7:03 PM • 77 Comments •
This is a nice review in New Scientist, obviously "framed" more in sorrow and confusion than in anger, which ends with Throughout the entire experience, Maggie and I couldn't help feeling that the polarised audience in the theater was...
Posted on March 24, 2008 5:23 PM • 0 Comments •
So here's a neo-Thomist talking about species, and not getting it due to (i) prior metaphysical commitments, and (ii) not understanding Aristotle - dude, he never called anything a species, not in the biological sense. Eidos and genos were...
Posted on March 24, 2008 4:26 AM • 35 Comments •
I (and apparently Jim Lippard) went to see Dawkins' talk based on his The God Delusion, which I have critiqued before. I was impressed at the technique. It was definitely the very best Revivalist Sermon I have seen. I...
Posted on March 7, 2008 1:12 AM • 211 Comments •
Chaim Potok, I think, once wrote that people either love the Jews too much or hate them too much. I hope I do neither, but I found this particular point of view by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman a brilliant example...
Posted on February 27, 2008 8:54 PM • 27 Comments •
One of the more curious episodes in recent cultural history is the adoption, word for word, by Islamists particularly in Turkey of the American Christian fundamentalist antievolution schtick. Nobody knows more about this than Taner Edis, whose book An...
Posted on February 21, 2008 7:51 PM • 4 Comments •
Language Log recently took apart the speech and interview by the Archbishop of Canterbury that the media are, inaccurately, reporting as advocating the introduction of Sharia law into British and by implication other common law jurisdictions. Its conclusion was...
Read on »
Posted on February 12, 2008 10:46 PM • 23 Comments •
Here's a comment that represents a widely held misconception about the evolution of religion: Whenever there is an discussion about religions and changes in religions someone always pulls out the argument that religions evolve. I am very sorry but...
Read on »
Posted on February 2, 2008 8:42 PM • 20 Comments •
A rather cute article at the Catholic News Service says this: In commentaries, papal speeches, scientific conferences and philosophical exchanges, the Vatican has been focusing more and more on the relationship between God and evolution. From the outside, this...
Read on »
Posted on February 1, 2008 11:08 PM • 21 Comments •
Shelley at Restrospectacle gives a poem she learned in school, an excellent piece by A. E. Housman, So I got to thinking - what poem sticks with me? Is it the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by Eliot,...
Read on »
Posted on January 17, 2008 9:13 AM • 42 Comments •
This isn't something I would often write, but I think that the recent protest against the Pope speaking at the secular university La Sapienza in Rome is misplaced. Critics say that the Pope, when he was of more humble...
Read on »
Posted on January 17, 2008 2:47 AM • 59 Comments •
In an article on the Catholic or otherwise virtues of Harry Potter (didn't we do all this a while back), L'Osservatore Romano has an article claiming that Harry Potter is the wrong kind of hero. Why is that? Not,...
Read on »
Posted on January 15, 2008 4:53 AM • 17 Comments •
Lawyers shouldn't determine who gets to read what. Religions shouldn't determine who gets to think what. But the worst combination is when religions use lawyers to stop criticism of their actions and beliefs. Scientology, the money making scam purveyed...
Posted on January 13, 2008 3:33 AM • 1 Comments •
Larry Arnhart has a post up on how Huck Finn's moral quandary about turning in Jim, the escaped slave, as good religion said he should (at the time), when he has come to know and admire Jim as a...
Read on »
Posted on January 6, 2008 2:25 AM • 36 Comments •
The Grauniad has a puff piece on what has changed the minds of "the intellectual elite". It seems Alan Alda is one of them in virtue of his screen roles... still I have to like his comment: Until I...
Posted on January 1, 2008 2:46 AM • 11 Comments •
Henry Gee reviews the Golden Compass, and comes up with largely the same conclusions I would have had I been as insightful as he. A quote: It’s a long time since I read the book, The Northern Lights, on...
Posted on December 29, 2007 11:05 PM • 14 Comments •
Just to demonstrate that it is not only the Christians who have their religious fundamentalists opposing science, here's a piece that claims that the Vedas are the source of all true scientific knowledge. OK, guys, inventing zero was cool,...
Posted on December 28, 2007 3:42 AM • 25 Comments •
Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated, probably by Islamist extremists. While no saint, she clearly stood for democratisation in Pakistan, and all hell is likely to break out there now. Today, I saw The Golden Compass, after reading the book...
Posted on December 27, 2007 10:08 AM • 24 Comments •
OK, so today is Christmas day, December 25. On this day* a man was born who changed the world. He affected a growing tradition that has left no part of the world untouched, for good or ill. He revealed...
Read on »
Posted on December 24, 2007 6:14 PM • 18 Comments •
Okay, so the Eighth Day Inventism calendar as rolled around to coincide our Holy day with one of yours. We Inventists are open minded people and often try to reach out to you heathen irreligious puppy grinding moral monsters....
Read on »
Posted on December 22, 2007 9:07 PM • 34 Comments •
As I mentioned earlier, I love a good book review if it excoriates a stupid book. Norman Levitt, of Rutgers University, has an absolutely lovely piece of critical invective for Steve Fuller's defense of Intelligent Design here. Fuller is...
Posted on December 19, 2007 7:09 PM • 5 Comments •
PZ Murghl has challenged me to explain why there are theology departments in universities. Of course, most universities lack theology departments, and some, like the Princeton Theological Seminary, have been hived off their home institution. Back when I actually...
Read on »
Posted on December 18, 2007 9:34 PM • 52 Comments •
Just to head off the obvious: Do people kill because their religion or ideology tells them that nonbelievers are subhuman? Yes. Do people go to war because their religion or ideology tells them it is their patriotic duty? Yes....
Posted on December 10, 2007 4:51 AM • 20 Comments •
John, hear me. What? Who said that? It is I, God. Oh come on. PZ, is that you? I'm not buying it. It is I, God. Look, I'll prove it. [Clouds in the sky form the letters "Yep, It's...
Posted on December 8, 2007 9:54 AM • 14 Comments •
This paragraph: This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal,...
Read on »
Posted on November 26, 2007 2:40 AM • 17 Comments •
I have always enjoyed reading the work of Frans de Waal, a primatologist who focuses on the social structure and psychology of apes, particularly the two chimp species, and monkeys. His previous books, Good Natured: The Origins of Right...
Read on »
Posted on November 18, 2007 1:20 AM • 6 Comments •
The saying that "man is a wolf to man" comes from a saying of Erasmus of Rotterdam, but it is incomplete. The Latin is Homo homini aut deus aut lupus or "Man is either a god or a wolf...
Read on »
Posted on November 6, 2007 10:04 PM • 15 Comments •
Sorry about that pun - it's been around for a while since Antony Flew, quandam philosopher and "Darwinian", announced he was converting to a kind of deism. Jon Pieret, who often comments on this blog when he should be...
Posted on November 3, 2007 10:02 PM • 0 Comments •
To summarise: so far we have three general kinds of explanations of religion. There are sociological explanations in terms of the economic, societal and political conditions under which religions develop. There are psychological explanations in terms of experiences, existential...
Read on »
Posted on October 31, 2007 9:28 AM • 13 Comments •
I now turn to the question of explananda - what is it that explanations of religion are adduced to explain?...
Read on »
Posted on October 25, 2007 9:51 PM • 6 Comments •
Much to do about the sexual inclinations of a fictional character in the most successful (and I still think, despite the lack of editorial control, one of the classic) children's stories. PZ Mungle has this to say: I really,...
Posted on October 23, 2007 10:58 PM • 8 Comments •
John Wilkins is an eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and worked at the University of Queensland, in Australia, before taking up a research fellowship at the University of Sydney. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts in 2004, which he has worked into two books.
