Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
There exists a modern claim that the Qu’ran contains verses that describe things known only to modern science, but since it was all written 1400 years ago when such things were unknown then “Allah did it”. Challenge this and ask for the best example and you usually are given a poetical phrase which has been quote-mined and twisted out of context to enable some modern thinking to be retro fitted in.
If you know me, then you will know that I’m a staunch supporter of the concept called “Freedom of Thought”, which basically distills down into “you can believe whatever you wish” – fairies, unicorns, jesus and other similar myths. However, there comes a point at which you truly do need to raise your voice of … Read more
For the past week I’ve had a bit of free time on my hands, so for fun (and perhaps also for a bit of Critical Thinking practice), I’ve been hanging out in a couple of Facebook groups where Muslims attempt to debunk Atheism.
It has been exactly what you might expect …
I must confess to being a bit naive, for I truly had no idea just how loopy things would get. Purely for your entertainment and amusement, here now are some examples (I’ll not be providing any names).
IO9 has a great interview with, Paranormal investigator and cryptozoologist , Joe Nickell (picture here is mine, not theirs). Please do not allow words such as, Paranormal investigator, fool you, for while indeed many practitioners of woo claim such titles, Joe is 100% solid skeptic. When I saw him myself a few weeks ago, he explained that he once worked for a well-known detective agency, but since he is not permitted to utilize their name for publicity purposes, lets just say that their name starts with ‘P’ and they went after Jessy James. The point is this, he now applies the rigor you would use at a crime scene to paranormal and monster claims. In other words he is on a quest for the truth, and is not after evidence to prove his specific beliefs.
Yep, a real Astrophysicist has made this claim … but we are deeply into kook territory here.
Before we get into details, I think I better first introduce you to the claimant. This comes from a chap called David Klinghoffer. He works for the Discovery Institute as a … well, that does not really matter, because knowing that it is the Discovery Institute tells you all you really need to know; its basically kook central for the Intelligent Design movement.
Since it is indeed “them” you know in your heart of hearts this is going to be truly silly (it is), so here we go. He starts out with …
First, a bit of context for folks who don’t know. Dennis Markuze of Montreal is a fully certified 100% solid gold kook who, using an assortment of pseudonyms when online (including David Mabus and Hebert Marxuxe) has been issuing a torrent of threating emails and tweets to many skeptic bloggers. When I say “torrent”, I’m not being poetical, its a factual description. To give you a feel for what its like, PZ wrote the other day …
Every morning when I get up and get on the computer, the first thing I do is delete the pile of spam from Dennis Markuze, each of which is usually cross-posted to 50 to 100 other people. Every time I fire up Twitter, the first thing I do is clear the garbage Dennis Markuze has left there; yesterday I blocked and reported spam from over 25 Markuze accounts, amounting to several hundred messages.