For some reason I don’t seem to attract the kind of crank email that, say, PZ Myers gets, but now and then I stumble across a bit of good material. It happened to me this weekend: I was in the store buying vitamins, and noticed that someone had discretely slipped a copy of “Prophetic Observer” …
Category Archive: Denialism
May 15 2012
The apologist’s dilemma
Thanks to some articulate and well-informed comments on yesterday’s post, I now understand that there’s a lot more to it than just needing to verify your conclusions before you accept them as true. Verificationism (or at least, the strict forms of verificationism that William Lane Craig was referring to) can go so far as to …
May 11 2012
Who said it?
I have a new favorite quote. The person who follows the pursuit of reason unflinchingly toward its end will be atheistic or, at best, agnostic. Guess who said that?
Apr 13 2012
Whooping cough rising among unvaccinated babies
Via Slashdot: In its fortnightly Communicable Disease newsletter (PDF), Oregon Public Health officials note increasing cases of pertussis (whooping cough) in infants, with 146 hospitalizations noted in the 2 year period ending March 2011, and at least 4 deaths since 2003. Most cases are attributed to lack of vaccination, with 86% of those due to …
Apr 06 2012
1981 global warming predictions
In August of 1981, James Hansen and 6 other authors wrote a paper describing the projected impact of CO2 emissions on global temperatures. And now those predictions have once again come to light. In the ongoing debate over climate change, it’s at times a good idea to check in with historial predictions made by climate …
Mar 29 2012
Conservative trust in science in sharp decline
From the color-me-surprised department comes news of this study showing a very clear trend towards anti-science hostility among conservatives and/or people who regularly attend church. Relying on data from the 1974-2010 waves of the nationally representative General Social Survey, the study found that people who self-identified as conservatives began the period with the highest trust …
Jan 05 2012
A prescription for gullibility
We’re approaching the point of beating a dead horse with this miracles discussion, but I do have one last point to cover before we move on. Jayman’s primary complaint is this: Based on multiple surveys and polls, Keener notes that hundreds of millions of people alive today claim that they have witnessed or experienced miraculous …
Jan 04 2012
Depending on ignorance
This is proving to be a fun week. On Sunday I observed that the Gospel is a story and that we do not see God showing up in real life, attending church, and raising the long-dead. Jayman777 objected to that observation and tried to refute me—by supplying more stories about people seeing alleged miracles. He …
Jan 02 2012
Debunking Skepticism
A believer who goes by the handle “Jayman777″ has written a blog post taking me to task. He’s not happy with my remarks at Evangelical Realism about how William Lane Craig handles the historical arguments for Jesus. I have not read this book by Craig but DD’s post contains a few problems common to arguments …
About the Author
Recent Comments