— 1 — Before I launch into the link round-up, I’d love it if you could do me two mitzvot. About.com is taking nominations for best atheist blog, and, as I explained yesterday, I’d love for my weird, crossover, argumentative blog to be included if you care to vote. Also yesterday, I posted a strange time-travelling thought experiment to nail down some intuitions about epistemology. I’d love it if you comment with your reactions before I discuss mine. Merci! —... Read more
About.com is accepting nominations for their Reader’s Choice Awards, and there is a category for Favorite Atheist Blog. I don’t much fancy my chances against the behemoth that is Freethought Blogs, but I’d be thrilled to make the finals. Last year’s winner was P.Z. Myers’s Pharyngula, which has a very different style and goal than Unequally Yoked. Some atheist blogs speak mainly to people who are already atheists. That’s an incredibly valuable service; it’s a way to promote activism, aggregate news,... Read more
I’ve been mulling over a weird thought-experiment, and I’d be really interested in your intuitions. (I’ll explain why I’ve been thinking about it in a subsequent post). Poof! In a burst of special effects, you’re confronted by a doppleganger you! “Hi,” other!you says, “I’m you from the future.” Future!you knows enough about you that you’re convinced it is indeed you, and does something that makes it probably s/he is really from the future (predicts a couple events). “Wow,” you say,... Read more
I had a lovely weekend arguing with undergraduates and alumni at my debating group’s annual alumni banquet. And there was one argument in particular that seems relevant to the topic of this blog. Over dinner, one alum was talking about his upbringing in a Christian Science church and was summarizing their bizarre theology. Essentially, Christian Scientists think all evil is delusion. God created a perfect world, and we must resist any illusion that suggest to us that the world is... Read more
In case two posts on strategy for debates on religion wasn’t hint enough, I’d be very game to argue with people offline. If you’re part of a religious or atheist group that hosts speakers, I’d love to come and give the other side what-for. I’m happy to speak at a student group or a church or pretty much any venue. (I managed to get into a religion debate during an ASL lesson, clearly I don’t require much). As readers of... Read more
After I outlined my best practises for debating religion, Eve Tushnet and The Ubiquitous had some thought-provoking criticisms to make. Well, The Ubiquitous’s was framed as a compliment, but it worried me more. He said, in praise of my suggestion that debates open with both sides putting their epistemological cards on the table: I suspect that the only debate worth having right now regards the problem of induction, which basically summarizes just about every objection to just about everything with... Read more
This week, I attended a debate on “Does God Exist?” co-sponsored by the DC branch of the Center for Inquiry and the George Washington University Newman Center. The debate format had alternating speeches by Fr. Carter Griffin and Dr. John Shook, followed by written questions from the audience. The debate was wide ranging, with both speakers talking about the First Mover argument, scriptural authority, the degree of confidence we should have in recent scientific discoveries, the uniqueness of the Christian... Read more
— 1 — Goodness, I had fun times tonight. A local science museum hosted a Pandemic! game night. (It’s a collaborative board game where you and friends try and contain and eradicate diseases). I think I have never sworn so much in such a short time. — 2 — Going to the game night meant I missed watching the latest GOP debate, but that’s fine by me. Now that I’ve seen First Things’s evaluation of the candidates a... Read more
Alex Knapp took issue with my quasi-Platonism (and possible math idolatry) over at his tech blog for Forbes. Here’s the crux of his argument: The bottom line is that human beings have brains capable of counting to high numbers and manipulating them, so we use mathematics as a useful tool to describe the world around us. But numbers and math themselves are no more real than the color blue – ‘blue’ is just what we tag a certain wavelength of... Read more
This post is part of a series on Aquinas, Aristotle, and Edward Feser’s explanation of them both. Back to Feser and Aristotle for a bit. Later on in The Last Superstition, Feser talks about some of the obvious final causes we can observe. He’s using this section to defend natural law against the accusation that it’s proponents want us to go back to pre-modern technology and to set up his attack on homosexuality. I’m not interested in those points, so you... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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