A Sickening Act of Violence Has Struck Us Today

An act of sickening violence has occurred. Let’s keep our hearts with the victims and our minds vigilantly on the look out for ways we can proactively help them. And let’s especially remember not to be hasty about posting unsubstantiated rumors and accusations and speculations about who is behind this or about the full nature of what has happened today, whether ideologically or factually. Fear mongering, hate mongering, warmongering, and conspiracy-mongering all begin with rumormongering. So, let’s hold our bars for evidence and for justice as high as they should always be and focus on our compassion for all innocent people, including those who others might treat with guilt by association.

The Credible Hulk

I see and share seemingly dozens of amusing memes a week, but every now and then one just has to be blogged: Your Thoughts?

Sex and "Spirituality"

Casey: Sigh, Pat. It seems like there is nowhere in this culture we can escape the pernicious influence of religion. Pat: What are you thinking of in particular? Casey: I’m thinking of the way that even some of the most “sex-positive”, taboo-breaking, kink-celebrating, sexually liberated people I know still cannot enjoy the pure physicality of sex [...]

The Red Flags of Quackery

Sci-ence provides a helpful chart worth spreading around: If you can’t read it, go to the source where it’s twice the size. Your Thoughts?

Criticizing Wicca: Magic is Unreliable

[This is part of a long series looking at atheism and Wicca.] Any procedure for changing an initial situation (the start) into a desired situation (the goal) can be tested for its effectiveness.   As used here, effectiveness is a matter of degree, so that procedures can be more or less effective.  The simplest way to measure [...]

Criticizing Wicca: Rationality

This is a guest post by Eric Steinhart, Professor of Philosophy at William Paterson University. According to the Farrars, “Witches [that is, Wiccans] are neither fools, escapist nor superstitious.  They are living in the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages” (1981: 105).  The Farrars write that “Many witches are scientists and technicians . . . [...]

Get The Ultimate Power Balance Band

Finally a Power Balance wrist band which promises to use a proven method for helping athletes perform better: The Sunny Skeptic reviews it: A friend gave me the most excellent present ever, a Placebo Band! I put it on, stood in the middle of the circle in my wrestler stance and said “TRY to knock [...]

Awkwardness of Association

Kylie (that’s Freethought Blogs’ Token Skeptic for the uninitiated) precisely and humorously describes an experience of being awkwardly and unwillingly seated near a heckler: I’m at a show, sitting with one person I know (let’s call them ‘Z’) and a bunch of people I don’t know (they’re friends of Z and I get a hurried introduction [...]

FtBTV

In the last week, three of our newer Freethought Blogs neighbors posted videos in which they are featured. So see and/or hear your Freethought Blogs bloggers below! We have Crommie rocking out with his band CROWN, Justin Griffith giving what he considers to be his best interview ever about foxhole atheists, and Dana Hunter debunking “crystal magic”. [...]

The Problematic Use of Skeptics in Supernatural Shows

Soon-to-be fellow Freethought Blogs blogger Jen McCreight has a good post, wherein she is skeptical of a character’s skeptical reactions in an episode of True Blood. Jen gives spoilers, but I won’t. I can just sum up the problem abstractly as the following: a character who over the course of 47 episodes of the show has discovered the [...]