Critical Thinking

Keeping us in Ignorance? – “No”

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Nick Cohen sums it all up very nicely when he writes in Sunday’s Guardian … When censors try to restrict debate, democratic peoples must learn to reply with two words: that’s tough. “You want to use violence to stop criticism of religions that claim supernatural dominion over men’s minds and women’s bodies – that’s tough. … Read more

No rapture – So what happens now in the minds of the believers?

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Its official, the clock here in the UK just passed 6pm, and …No rapture!! … except of course on twitter where we have an armageddon of users expressing their mock disappointment at the lack of dead people rising from their graves, but then again perhaps it has been a rather quiet rapture – the type that passes unnoticed. God popped down,  took a quick look around, decided none of us were worth bothering with, was also rather keen to watch Dr Who today (on in 10 minutes if you happen to be in the UK), and so  decided to give it all a miss.

Of all the tweets I’ve seen so far, my favorite just has to be Professor Brian Cox who tweeted … “I think we should all pretend the #rapture is happening so that when Harold Camping gets left behind later today he’ll be livid.“.

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Is it ethical to support “Lets Draw Mohamed Day 2011”

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Tomorrow, 20th May, is the official “Lets Draw Mohamed day”. Given the high degree of offense this causes, is it ethical to support it or participate in it?

The short simple answer is “Yes“, however, it is still appropriate to mull over this so that as we move forward, we do so with a clear understanding as to why this is the clearest, most logical, and ethical answer.

To start, I’ll lay a foundation that underpins the answer. There are two very fundamental and well-recognized human rights that have emerged, and there is general consensus for the support of both. These are as follows:

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Top 5 Non-Religious Books on Living a Good Life

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There is a prevailing, and fairly common belief, that we need religion to live a truly ethical and moral life, and that a life without a god (pick any, they all claim it), leads you down the road to immorality. It is pure nonsense of course, and tempting as it might be to explain why, my immediate motivation for this post is not to go there, but rather to highlight a rather interesting list of secular books on the topic of living a good, and yet completely godless, life.

Well-known British philosophy professor, A.C. Grayling, has had a lifetime ambition to distill into one volume the very best secular thoughts, and so after many decades of work, he finally completed it, (if curious, you can click here for more details on his new publication “The Good Book”). Anyway, my point is not to point you at that specific book, but since I’m on the topic, do check it out. Instead I want to make the observation that he spent a heck of a long time  plodding through thousands of texts to complete his book, so he has now got specific recommendations – a Top-5 list of books “on how to live a satisfying and morally good life.” …

I was quite surprised at a couple of them.

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Sharia law: an eye for an eye

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What exactly is Sharia? Ask a believer and you will be told that it is “God’s” law. Now, what makes this interesting is that if you attempt to drill down into the details, you make the fascinating discovery that there is no actual agreement on it. Modernists, traditionalists and fundamentalists all hold different views, as do adherents to different schools of Islamic thought and scholarship. Even when its the same school, if you look across different countries and cultures you find varying interpretations.

Apparently God can’t quite make up his mind.

A long term goal for many Muslims is to enforce Sharia, but without being able to nail it, you end up with a specific interpretation being the goal for those who pursue this.

Anyway, why am I babbling on about all this? Well, because of the latest news out from Iran. Here are the details …

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UFO Alien abduction – proof?

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There is a report of Alien abduction from about a month ago that I have just come across.

It concerns a chap who wandered into his garden in the middle of the night, and found that he had lost an hour. Apparently he really had lost an hour and had solid proof, his watch was one hour out of sync with the rest of the world, in fact he was quite astonished to discover that he had  leap forward into the future. So he contacted the Ministry of Defence to report a UFO abduction.

The details read as follows:

It was an ”unseasonably mild” night in late October when the man from Barnes, south-west London, could not sleep so took to his garden with the drink. ”After a few moments I heard a distant roar of engines getting louder and louder,” he told the Ministry of Defence.

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