On the 67th episode of the Ra-Men, I interviewed Prof Gleb Tsipursky PhD regarding a project he co-founded and which I find personally intriguing. I asked Dr Tsipursky to write a blurb for this podcast, and this is what he shared with me: We will talk about the Pro-Truth Pledge, whose purpose is to reverse the tide of lies in our politics. It does so by changing the incentive structure for public figures, establishing rewards for truth-oriented activities and penalties for sharing… Read more

When my wife and I testified against HB 1485 before the House Education Committee at the State Capital, there were a number of other witnesses who’s comments need to be noted, addressed, and corrected. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYPfh-dpsP4[/youtube] When the bill’s author, Representative Valoree Swanson says she wants to provide “academic freedom” for teachers, what she really means is that she does NOT want teachers held to academic accountability. People of integrity should know better than to assert as fact that which is… Read more

A couple weeks ago, my wife, Lilandra and I once again testified before the Texas State Board of Education. They were still considering including language in the science standards that was designed to undermine teaching of evolution. This language would have encouraged ignorant teachers to cite anti-science apologetics instead of teaching anyone what the theory is or the evidence for it. Lilandra and I testified in opposition to an overwhelming collection of creationists, but we were pleasantly surprised that the… Read more

On April 18th, I was in Austin to testify once again before our infamous Texas State Board of Education. Lilandra and I felt alone in that crowd of creationists. It was disheartening to see so many people repeating such easily refutable falsehoods as fact. But it is even worse to see organizations determined to exploit the language of the science standards to allow teachers to misrepresent evolution, abiogenesis, climate science and so on, and to replace factual lessons with fraudulent… Read more

On March 3rd, “Street Epistemologist” Anthony Magnabosco invited me to join him at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to see a debate between one of their apologists and the editor of Skeptic Magazine. Turns out this was the start of an apologetics conference called “Stand Firm”. Which of course, I interpret as “be unreasonable”. Because that’s what apologetics is, making up excuses to defend the faith against all reason: to rationalize or justify a faith-based position while systematically dismissing any and all… Read more