Cobalt had a better suggestion than mine (although something not unlike the scene she suggests did cross my mind) for the new Jesus movie by Paul Verhoeven. I took the liberty of retroverting it to a closer form to the original… Pantera: Mary never told you what happened to your father.Jesus: She told me enough! She told me you killed him!Pantera: No, Jesus. I… am your father.Jesus: Noooo! That’s not true! It’s impossible! Read more

Henry Neufeld asks whether creationists are stupid. This is a key question that is asked too often. Plenty of intelligent people are creationists, and a not-insignificant number of those are young-earth creationists or proponents of intelligent design. Treating people as though they are stupid rarely helps the educational process. Many people are misinformed or uninformed, or even self-deluded, when it comes to these matters. But if one wants to deal with those issues, then one needs to begin with an... Read more

Here’s another book review from the older version of my blog. Keith Ward’s book Re-thinking Christianity provides a useful compliment to his earlier book What the Bible Really Teaches. The former book discusses the Bible and shows how its teachings are misconstrued by fundamentalists, and how fundamentalist claims to take the Bible literally are simply false. This more recent book begins with the New Testament documents, approached in a historical-critical manner, and surveys the breadth of Christian history, arguing that... Read more

The web site of the Biologic Institute has at long last gone live. I think that, rather than being immediately ridiculed, this endeavour should be encouraged. Rather than fighting in the battle for public opinion, let’s see if those involved in this institute can produce real science that produces results that can command general assent among experts. If not, the message will be clear. In other words, let’s see if they can put their logic where their bio is. Let’s... Read more

Stephen Hawking recently called for humanity to colonize the moon and Mars. He also mentioned one reason why there is so much uncertainty about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe: some of us still aren’t sure if it exists on our planet yet… Higgaion and Playing Chess With Pigeons have detailed responses to claims made in the movie Expelled. Apparently the “moral absolutist” mentioned in the last post was here on campus promoting Expelled. That explains why... Read more

Yesterday I wandered into the midst of a conversation between a moral relativist and a moral absolutist. It was a thought-provoking experience. When asked if I believed there is an absolute truth, I had no hesitation in answering. As a critical realist, I am persuaded that there is indeed such a thing as objective truth, even if what we “know” as human being may at best approximate it. But what about morality? Do I believe in moral absolutes? There I... Read more

There is an open letter from Richard Dawkins, replying to a letter sent to Michael Shermer, all of which revolves around the movie Expelled. More on the movie at Skeptic.com. Lots of interesting stuff to talk about… Read more

Jake Bouma just reminded me about these statistics from a few years ago. We must have been trying real hard to achieve last-place status. But presumably Harun Yahya has been doing his work more effectively than even Ken Ham. I wonder whether Expelled will help us achieve that much-coveted last place status. I can’t help but think of the Friends episode where Chandler comforts Monica by telling her that she gives the “best bad massages”… Anyone want to predict where... Read more

A while ago I mentioned a book called The Lucifer Effect about how ordinary people end up doing horrific things. Apparently the disturbing photos of Nazis at Auschwitz picking and eating fresh blueberries and doing other things that show them to have been human beings will be the focus of a documentary. Read more about it at Read The Spirit. Read more

It is no surprise that pseudoscience and rumor can lure in so many people in our time. How many people in our time cannot tell that the following two e-mails (reproduced below) are spam, and worse, attempts to get their personal information? We expect them to be able to distinguish between authentic scientific inquiry and pseudoscience marketed as the real thing? Is that realistic? ___________ Connection-Colonial Bank Renewal Certificate RenewalPersonal (Smartcard) e-Cert & Personal e-CertCertificate owner must renew the certificate... Read more