Tag: evolution
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False If It Helps?
Many people come to believe and embrace Christianity by means of some tragedy or crisis. They’re driven in desperation to look for something that will help them rationalize and file away their grief, and many times, they find Christianity. Many other times, they grab hold of other things, such as drugs, alcohol, other religions, or even a perceived freedom achieved from relinquishing religion. In any case, tragedy has a way of forcing people into a spiral of desperation while their flailing arms are reaching for something outside themselves hoping that thing can withstand the force, and grant stability once again. …
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Falsificationism And Christianity
Another difficulty with religious language (and hence, Christianity) that non-religious people have concerns itself with “falsifiability,” or the aspect of any claim which states it must, in principle at least, be capable of subjecting to certain scientific criteria by which it can conceivably be proven false, in order to be considered meaningful. Like Verificationism, Falsificationism assumes an empiricist worldview, and so is subject immediately to some of the criticisms of Verificationism, including for instance, the seeming arbitrariness of the foundational principles undergirding it. Falsificationism was articulated as a way to circumvent the problems inherent in Verificationism. While Karl Popper …
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Inconsistent Atheism Better Than Atheism
The other day I had an exchange with an atheist friend on Facebook. We’ve had a couple exchanges in the past, so there is a context to some of the things being said. He posted a graphic of a Christian ditty-response (in other words, not the best kind) to the recent school shooting up in Connecticut, and expressed outrage at the audacity of Christians to suggest that God did nothing to help because He’s “not allowed in schools anymore.” In any case, I attempted to draw out some inconsistency between what he said he believed, and the outworking of that …
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Without God and Without Hope: An Atheist on the Connecticut School Shootings
Atheist Matt Oxley comments on Christian responses to the shooting in Connecticut as follows:
Despite how angry this makes me, how silly and offensive I find these notions, suddenly I find myself envious of people with some form of a god to comfort them and answer their questions, even if those answers are shallow and ignorant, because I am simply without any answers that can even begin to make sense of this. Answers like this seem almost blissful.
Note that Matt is angry at the application of Christian tenets to tragic events. As I mentioned in my debate with Matt, …
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Christianity Hinders Scientific Progress
It’s truly a tired mantra. Under the pretense that they own a corner on the Market of Reality while ignoring the fact that they are merely presuming upon the efforts of their relatively recent philosophical parents (many of whose principles are derived from the truths of Christianity), the New Atheists, evangelizing from their Holy Bible of Naturalistic Science and Witless Retorts written by their own venerated prophets, proclaim loudly and often, “Christianity hinders scientific progress.” And of course, as is commonly the hazard of religious discourse, there’s a good bit of nuance to hack through.
First, what is meant by …
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Atheism and Intelligence: an Inverse Relation?
Suddenly, I buy into the science that says the number of atheists is increasing:
http://news.yahoo.com/humans-becoming-less-intelligent-173400651.html
What makes me chuckle (already) is the level of scrutiny to which this link will undoubtedly be subjected, and by the very same people who show the smallest interest in properly interpreting any text of the Bible. Of course, I’m the one reading the article wrong. But that’s what they all say, right?
Trollolol.…
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Bill Nye and his Pie in the Sky
In a video entitled “Bill Nye: Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children” released on YouTube by bigthink on August 23, 2012, Bill Nye, known most popularly for his hosting of a children’s science-themed TV show (“Bill Nye the Science Guy”), shares his thoughts on Evolution and, specifically, deniers of evolutionary science. It doesn’t seem to be scripted, and it lasts only 2 minutes and 32 seconds. The video has gained immense popularity in the few days since it was released (“Bill Nye” was #1 in Yahoo!’s search terms when I watched it, almost a week later), and it has been …