RA - Promoting Reason and Science Education

To the Indiana State Senate

January 19, 2019 By Aron Ra

Hi, I’m Aron Ra, Director of the Phylogeny Explorer Project, Regional Director of American Atheists, and author of Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism. This video is an open letter to Indiana State Senators, Dennis Kruse and Scott Schneider, and any other legislators who promote teaching “various theories on the origin of life, including creationism” in public schools. First of all, Senators, evolution is not a theory on the origin of life, but religious fundamentalists don’t understand that, and commonly insist that… Read more

An Infidel reads the Qur’an, Chapters 96, 68 and 73

January 5, 2019 By Aron Ra

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I’m starting a new experimental video series wherein I’ll read a few chapters of the Qur’an and post my impressions of that here. Then I’ll get on a Google Hangout with some ex-Muslim apostates or preferably practicing Muslims and maybe others who are familiar with the Hadiths and the way that these scriptures are understood in Islam. I’ll invite them to read one of these blog posts and then discuss whichever one on video with me directly. I want to… Read more

Of Knights and Knaves

December 19, 2018 By Aron Ra

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I recently had a video exchange debate with a convicted fraud and charlatan who calls himself “Dr Dino”. That playlist is here. My opponent, Mr Kent Hovind has no formal education, but he purchased a bogus PhD from an unaccredited degree mill, and has forever since touted the title “doctor” on everything he does. He has a cult following, and all his sycophants call him Doctor Hovind, which is how he typically presents himself. I have too much respect for actual… Read more

Report on TetZooCon

October 9, 2018 By Aron Ra

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Post report on the Tetrapod Zoology Conference and PEP update. Hi. I’m Steve (Owen), the project manager for/of (?) the Phylogeny Explorer (Project) – you know, that big web of string that Aron has created, with little knots in it that all have strange Latin names, that he somehow thinks people might be interested in looking at. Yes, that’s the one! But seriously, lots is happening and it’s going to take some time to update you on everything. First, TetZooCon…. Read more

A Primer on Scientific Theory

September 26, 2018 By Aron Ra

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A troll on my videos dropped a few attempted stump questions in the comments, but this is an opportunity to share a summary explanation of a topic that often confuses the laity. 1. Are scientific theories ever proven? Not in the mathematics sense that scientists typically use, but they can be in a colloquial sense, if we use the legal definition of “proof” as an overwhelming preponderance of evidence indicating a particular conclusion beyond reasonable doubt. In this sense, we… Read more

Issues before and with Texas Board of Education

September 16, 2018 By Aron Ra

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On September 11th, 2018, the Texas State Board of Education heard additional testimony following their last hearing in June: which itself was just a continuation of the same discussion from four years ago. My testimony then can be seen here. On each of these occasions, I was there to contest the Board’s continued attempts to rewrite history and integrate church and state by implying that the United States is somehow a Christian country. This time around, I followed a line… Read more

Debatable Inquiry in a Church

August 10, 2018 By Aron Ra

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A couple months ago, I heard from a church in Arizona that was looking for an “evolutionist” to participate in one of their scheduled events. It wasn’t described as a debate but as an “open discussion” with an “informal format” relating to evolution vs creationism, where me and some Christian apologist would “each share your thoughts and beliefs on the existence of God or not”. That’s what the email said. In that initial invitation, I was asked to compose questions… Read more

Let’s get physicist

July 17, 2018 By Aron Ra

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Seems everything I post about is based on comments or messages in my email. I’m sharing this latest message as a blog post on the expectation that someone who understands physics better than I do will either correct my ignorance of the subject or they’ll correct the sender of this message. Because I don’t know what he’s talking about, and I don’t think he does either. I copied his email below in italics: ________ Everything that humanity had been taught… Read more

Saying Thanks Back

July 17, 2018 By Aron Ra

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Yesterday I blogged about the type of criticism I most often read from believers commenting on my videos. I don’t just get complaints of course. There is another type of comment that I’ve often gotten. My new favorite example of that was in my inbox this morning and is copied below. I’m sure you get plenty of letters thanking you for what you do, and I’m sure you get just as many (if not more) letters that are angry with… Read more

Ravings of yet another noob

July 16, 2018 By Aron Ra

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Every day it seems I hear from some anonymous internet nobody who must never have spoken to an atheist before, because it’s always the same handful of fallacies. Today I got a massive block of text, one giant whole page paragraph of the same old nonsense; too much I think for a typical troll to waste time on. Normally a whole page of text would be dismissed as “tldr”, [too long, didn’t read] but I decided to use this guy… Read more