Winter’s Haven

Why, you ask, are Creation scientists not truly scientists? Item one: provided that it doesn’t appear to contradict their holy books, Creation scientists couldn’t care less about how the natural world works. The creationist I recently encountered certainly exhibited that mindset. He of course, was merely a random engineering student.
To see how professional Creation [...]

I generally don’t spend much time following the propaganda and misinformation put forth by creationists, and PZ’s recent post nicely illustrates why I don’t: this stuff is surreal. It’s positively sickening to witness people so full of hate and fear that they invent vile, baseless slanders against their opponents and then go on to believe [...]

Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams’s statements advocating the introduction of Sharia law for muslim residents of the UK has drawn plenty of well-deserved criticism. Johann Hari, writing for The Independent, offers some particularly enlightening commentary. He argues that by advocating Sharia law, Williams has pushed the doctrine of multiculturalism to its logical conclusion and unwittingly demonstrated [...]

I found this comic via Hemant.

That hypothetical situation sure showed what an intellectually dishonest fellow that fictional atheist was! I have no idea whether this comic is trying to make some sort of point, or what that point might be.
The only reason I’m posting this is because I’ve long dreamed of launching an array of [...]

All too often, people talk about market competition as if it were opposed to cooperation — as if capitalists were only a step away from resorting to napalm and land mines. The Economist’s Free Exchange blog douses that burning pile of stupid with some cool, clear analytic philosophy:
The competition at the heart of capitalism is [...]

The Bad Astronomer condemns Ron Paul for reasons which are… politically misguided. Namely, Paul is a creationist.
I think I speak for a lot of atheists libertarians when I say that, yes, Ron Paul’s views on evolution/creationism are awful, but in spite of that I’d still be fairly overjoyed to see him in the Oval Office. [...]

From Utah, a correspondent for The Economist relates that

Ironically, one of the worst places [for Mormon missonaries] to be sent on a mission is the American Bible belt, says another of the students: “People there have had guns pulled on them or dogs set on them.”

Think about that. Of all the many places in the [...]

Here’s an abstract view of how the Ontological game is played.
A philosopher constructs some property, p, and asks you to consider the following statement:
(1a) You can imagine that a thing with property p exists.
Or alternately, if the philosopher wants to use modal logic,
(1b) It is possible that a thing with property p exists.
Now, unless [...]

In response to this article in The Independent.

Dear Sir,
I read your recent recent article on Dawkins, ethics, and religion in The Independent. I have a question: of which religion are you a member? I wish to join. I am an atheist, but see no conflict in joining a sect so refreshingly free of mysticism and [...]

Peter Williams makes an argument for the existence of god based on morality:

1. Morality is objective
2. The existence of a personal deity is entailed by objective morality

…thus, god exists.
Honestly, I’m just confused by this one; the article doesn’t have any explanation for why objective morality entails the existence of god.
But suppose (2) is correct; [...]