Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
We often find that conversations can play out as follows. Anti-Vaccine friend arguing that vaccines are bad: “There was a scientific study that showed vaccines cause autism.” You reply … “Actually, the researcher in that study lost his medical license, and overwhelming research since then has shown no link between vaccines and autism.” Their rebuttal to those … Read more
Much to my surprise, Conrad Black (yes ‘the’ Conrad Black), has written an article entitled “The shabby, shallow world of the militant atheist” within the National Post (a paper he once owned), and there he trots out a litany of rather weird claims in order to assert a god claim. If it had been anybody else, I’d … Read more
What can I say on starting this post, except perhaps to advise you to prepare to face-palm. So the news, as reported in the New York Times, is that a Saudi sponsored meeting of Islamic “Scholars” in Mecca have come up with a recommendation for tackling extremism … …they counseled strict, Muslim religious observance of … Read more
The Popular Claim The news of what has just happened is explained in the UK’s Independent and many other places as follows … A bill that would restrict the right to marry to people of faith and require all marriage licenses to be approved by a member of clergy was approved by the Oklahoma state House … Read more
Hopefully you have picked up on what is about to happen and are aware that an eclipse is about to take place on Friday here in the UK. It is exciting (for those of us into such events) because we have not seen an eclipse like this since 1999, and while not total, it will be impressive (cloud … Read more
When I’ve previously written about Mars One, the Dutch proposal to send people there on a one-way trip, I’ve expressed a considerable degree of doubt that the entire enterprise was in any way a realistic proposition, and while I would truly love it to be real, I’ve never thought it was, there are simply too … Read more