Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

Even though I’m not religious, it doesn’t mean that I don’t find religion interesting. This BBC interview of Hanif Kureishi echoes a lot of the sentiment I feel towards religion. It’s a fun, and short, read.

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• BBC.co.uk: ‘Most religious leaders are fools’

Courtesy of Bus Stop Bible Studies, I found myself confronted with the following question today while driving down Dufferin Street:

What would it take to convince you of God’s love?

To start, it would be useful to know that God actually existed. I feel that this is a fair prerequisite condition to be met before I could be convinced that God actually loves me.

Second, it would help if God talked to me on occasion. It’s really hard to know if somebody loves you when they’re never around, and don’t even bother to write or call.

Your move, God.

A simpler truth.

Courtesy of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

If you’ve been following the news over the last couple of days, you may have heard about Gary Goodyear, Canadian Minister of State for Science and Technology, and his strange remarks regarding evolution. On Tuesday it was reported that he was asked whether he believed in evolution, and his response was, “I’m not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate.” This created a bit of a stir, naturally, and he has since changed his answer – now saying that he does believe in evolution, but that the question was irrelevant.

Irrelevant, Gary? No matter what your beliefs, evolution is currently one of the most contentious points between religion and science – and as you are the Minister for Science, I’d say it is pretty clear what side you should be on. The question is as relevant as ever, and your wishy-washy answers have got a lot of rationally-thinking people feeling uneasy. I’d like to note that I personally am fine with Mr. Goodyear being a Christian. Despite what my personal feelings are on the compatibility of his religion with science, the fact is that many brilliant and successful scientists in the past have been religious in one way or another. But the way he drags religion into a question that should be purely scientific, quite frankly worries me. It’s not too hard to picture him promoting so-called “intelligent design” as a valid alternative to evolution. This is a road that we as a country do not want to go down. We’ve done a good job so far of keeping religion out of our government, and I’d like to see it stay that way.

Despite successfully running in several cities in Canada, including London, Calgary, and Toronto, the Atheist Bus Campaign was blocked from running in Ottawa (Link). Despite the city staff’s approval of similar Christian bible study advertisements, the ads were disallowed from being placed on Ottawa buses with no obvious explanation.

Despite this seeming like a gross violation of the Freethought Association of Canada’s freedom of speech, it’s troubling that the city government in our Nation’s capital would so blatantly apply a double standard to religious and non-religious messages. This would be less troubling if the city had a policy against religious messages of any sort, but this is simply not the case.

“I don’t follow the logic,” said Bus Stop Bible Studies founder David Harrison. “Why would they approve ours and not theirs? If we don’t stand up for (the atheists’) rights, ours will be trampled too.”

Hell, even the other side is sticking up for the rights of the non-believers. To say that I am ashamed in the City of Ottawa would be a gross understatement.

Now, if somebody really wanted to spice this debate up, they would try to get Qur’an verses displayed on the buses.

Originally posted on That’s the Way the Banana Crumbles.

Link.

Recently, an article entitled “Does Science Really Have Laws?” appeared on Dinesh D’Souza’s AOL “News Bloggers” Blog. The article is an attempted defense of the existence of miracles, written by my all-time favourite person in the whole world: Dinesh D’Souza.

Summed up, the article explains Hume’s problem of induction, and uses this argument in support of the existence of miracles. The problem of induction explains how the scientific method (or any type of empirical knowledge) can never lead to metaphysical truth, due to all empirical knowledge being falsifiable¹. In theory, this is a good epistemological argument, but in practice, it is irrelevant, because nobody cares about metaphysical truth. Gravity is reliable to the extent that we no longer worry about it failing one morning. We can never conclusively prove without a shadow of a doubt that gravity will always continue to exist, and behave the way it does right now, but we have a pretty good reason to believe that it will continue to do so and therefore act under that assumption.

Is there a possibility (no matter how tiny) that the laws of physics will suddenly reverse themselves tomorrow? Yes; however, it is statistically improbable (“impossible” in common parlance) and we wouldn’t be around to appreciate it anyway. Furthermore, whereas there is no epistemological reason to believe that the laws of the universe will remain constant, we have yet to observe them change, so I suggest that the burden of proof is on Mr. D’Souza to prove the existence of these changes, and therefore the existence of the miracles that he believes exist. If the laws of the universe changed on a daily basis, then I would have more of a reason to believe D’Souza; but sadly, this is not the case.

Of course, the irony of D’Souza’s post is that Hume, in the same paper, wrote specifically about the problem of miracles. Simply put, he believed that testimony or observation (when it could be trusted, which he did not believe was often — if ever) leading to belief in a miracle could only be considered valid proof of a miracle if the opposite (i.e. the negation of the testimony or observation) belief more unbelievable than belief in the miracle. This is similar to Occam’s razor, and essentially means that a miracle can only exist insofar as it is the simplest (i.e. results in the fewest new assumptions) possible explanation for the observed events.

So not only has Dinesh D’Souza re-iterated a centuries old argument against inductive reasoning, which doesn’t even prove the existence of miracles, but he neglected to read the part of the very same essay that proved his argument to be incorrect. I’m sorry Dinesh… better luck next time.

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• Does Science Really Have Laws?

Hello my fellow skeptics, I’ve returned and apologize profusely for my long-held inactivity.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Mitchell for being an absolute champ in filling the void while I was AWOL.  Despite our obvious need for new contributors (whom we will ALWAYS be happy to hire), Mitchell did a good job keeping our site afloat with new content!

There are many things I’ve learnt throughout my absence per se, the first being that life can be unrelentingly unfair.  Theologians and apostles can often find comfort in the belief that our lives, and indeed the world itself is governed by some divine formula culminating in– by my understanding– an apocalypse somehow orchestrated for our benefit.  As an atheist, I find the image silly. As someone who has seen his sister undergo five separate cancer-related surgeries, I find it vulgar.  The overall point (and one which I’ll probably elaborate on in the not-so-distant future) stands that were human suffering part of an omnipotent being’s master plan, that realization alone would be reason to rebel (were it sane to rebel against an imaginary character).

Another thing I’ve learnt is that despite the overwhelming stress one can face in life, to back away or otherwise neglect one’s own projects (as I, admittedly, have), you end up losing your only source for normalcy.  This, above all else, is a mistake I’ve learnt never again to repeat.   While it certainly hasn’t held much time in the spotlight (yet), Lintbox is a pride and dedication of mine I’m not soon planning to turn my back on.

To avoid any more fluff, I’m back, and back I shall stay…  But that’s not all there is to say.

While updates haven’t necessarily been flooding in over the past several months, the aim to expand Lintbox is as strong as ever, which brings me to an announcement:

We’ve recently provided new special features for the site, namely the Panel Discussions (which, though delayed, will receive a new submission tomorrow), there’s an entirely new, exciting special feature to keep an eye out for:  Skepticles.

“But what is/are Skepticles” you may ask?  Skepticles is an idea I’ve been toying with since Lintbox’s conception; A weekly/biweekly-updated comic strip featuring a Skepticism and/or Scientific focus.  Though I’ve already spoilt the surprise, I won’t divulge any more details until the coming updates!

And so, be on the lookout for updates as they should now be much more frequent, and thanks for sticking around throughout the dark patches!

-Paul

This article about an archaeological find that could support the existence of Jerusalem’s King David (whose existence had been disputed up until now, apparently) is for the most part a fairly interesting article about a fairly interesting discovery.

I say “for the most part”, because the article’s headline and the picture captions (undoubtedly not written by the author) trumpet this discovery as “‘Proof’ David slew Goliath”; the implication being that this discovery verifies the biblical tale of David and Goliath. Needless to say, even verified high resolution video footage of King David’s existence would not be enough evidence to validate his heroic biblical feats. Yet another example of a perfectly good article ruined by a sensationalist headline.

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• Dailymail.co.uk: ‘Proof’ David slew Goliath found as Israeli archaeologists unearth ‘oldest ever Hebrew text’