Politics Religion is mental? 26 Feb 201427 Feb 2014 Over at Chris Stedman’s blog, he posted 5 reasons why atheists shouldn’t call religious people mentally ill: 1. Even if well-intended, the equation fails 2. Mental illness is not an insult 3. Religion is often associated with wellbeing 4. This parallel distracts us from trying to understand and learn from… Continue Reading
Creationism and Intelligent Design Carroll v. Craig – a telling comment 25 Feb 2014 Sean Carroll just debated William Lane Craig. In his summing up, Sean wrote In terms of style, from my perspective things got a bit frustrating, because the following pattern repeated multiple times: Craig would make an argument, I would reply, and Craig would just repeat the original argument. For example,… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Accommodating Science: Unpicking the arguments 23 Feb 20144 Mar 2014 So given that it is not entirely clear what religion is, or even what science is, it would help if we could put the arguments clearly. It is hard to find clear statements of either the accommodationist or the anti-accommodationist positions, so what we have to do first is reconstruct… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Accommodating Science: What is the problem? 20 Feb 201423 Feb 2014 [As I write the first draft of my accommodationism book, I will post chapters here under the Category “Accommodationism”. Here is the latest – which comes before Undefining Religion] The religion-versus-science debate took a special turn in the West because of the existence not only of doctrinal religion but of… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Undefining religion 15 Feb 201429 Jun 2024 [This will be a series of posts based on a book I am writing – see last post] When anthropologists began to study religions in cultures other than the European context, which itself was based upon Roman jurisprudence, they encountered a difficulty. Until this time, in the mid-nineteenth century, “religion”… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Can Religion Accommodate Science? 12 Feb 201420 Feb 2014 Recent posts and stuff online has led me to suspect it would be worthwhile my writing a book on this topic, as short posts often lead to misunderstandings and trolls. I’ve started sketching out the contents, and putting in various posts from here to use as a skeleton, but I… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Degrees of religion 8 Feb 201420 Feb 2014 Larry Moran quotes Jason Rosenhouse disputing Phil Plait: So, after all, that, let us return to Plait’s argument. He tells us that the problem is too many people perceiving evolution as a threat to their religious beliefs. Indeed, but why do they perceive it that way? Is it a failure of… Continue Reading
Book Books I am reading/reviewing 6 Feb 20148 Feb 2014 Despite marking scores of essays, after having taught a subject intensive, and preparing various papers, I get to review some books. This means reading them, familiarising myself with the technical literature, and so on. So I thought I’d do a brief summary of them for you now: The first is… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Science outreach: A conversation 2 Feb 201420 Feb 2014 From the Freethinkers Blog Con: With PZ Myzer and Aron Ra. Continue Reading
Accommodationism How to argue with silly thing believers 30 Jan 201420 Feb 2014 [Apologies this took a while; I’ve been rather sick] So, given all this [Why believers believe silly things, why they believe the particular silly things they do, and the developmental hypothesis of belief acquisition], how can you change a believer’s mind? It is tempting to say that you cannot, or… Continue Reading