May 1, 2015

Straight up hit piece on Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett is generally considered the 'nice one' of the 'four horsemen of the non-apocalypse' but some preacher-man took it upon himself to drag Dennett down to his own level, then beat him with experience.

In recent years, so-called New Atheists have become more aggressive and vociferous, and have achieved considerable media visibility. Normally, it rarely pays to argue with them, as their general cultural and historical ignorance means that you have to explain too many basic factual issues to them before you can share any common basis for proceeding. On occasion, though, one of the pack says something that is so silly and obnoxious as to demand a response, and this is one of those occasions.

For centuries, one of the ugliest aspects of Christian and secular culture was the crude stereotype of the Old Testament. Even in ancient times, Marcionite Christian heretics presented the Old Testament God as a violent, capricious monster, who stood in harsh contrast to the loving and merciful deity revealed in the gospels. Jesus, in that view, came to rescue the children of Light from the cruel God who slew the Egyptians in the Red Sea, and ordered the massacre of the Amalekites.

Professor Dennett refers to the Old Testament God as Jehovah. I have no idea why he is using that term, which is a Latinized version of one guess at the divine Name mentioned frequently in the Bible. The form was much used in earlier translations in the seventeenth century, and it is still employed today by some obstinate fundamentalists. Not for many years has it been used by mainstream scholars or translators, Christian or Jewish.

http://www.aleteia.org/en/religion/article/atheist-professor-betrays-ignorance-beyond-belief-5909228778684416

This article really betrays a desperate air of grasping at straws, that last line in particular is reaching about as far as he can, complaining about Dennett's use of an accepted name for the Christian god, probably shook his faith because it highlights that a) he has a name, and b) it's necessary to distinguish what god we're talking about.

April 15, 2015

Why temperatures never go up in straight lines

Potholer54 is an amazing youtuber who is an actual countering the arguments of creationists, pseudoscientists, and "citizen scientists"

This one is tackling climate change.

April 14, 2015

is a canadite's religious belief private?

I Say no. I think it is important to know what may influence our leaders and how close they hold ancient myrhs. What if, say, Tom Cruise ran and claimed his faith was not important and that he wouldn't talk about how it might affect his decisions.