Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
I’m off on a slightly different tack today, and am asking you, the reader, a question.
In essence … if you are a blogger, then what should the policy be regarding comments?
It should of course be very obvious, if something is not offensive, abusive, illegal, or spam then it should stay, so perhaps the real challenge is to come to terms with how you define those. Lets take a quick look at some:
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
Please somebody … restore my faith in humanity and tell me that I’ve been conned and that this Facebook response to the latest Onion satire is itself satire and not real, are there really folks out there who are moronically stupid to this degree? If curious, the Onion article that those folks are reacting to … Read more
Exciting news from the BBC folks, we have some new information about “Dark matter”, they report …
First results from a major astronomical survey using a cutting-edge technique appear to have confirmed the existence of mysterious dark energy.
Dark energy makes up some 74% of the Universe and its existence would explain why the Universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate.
The finding was based on studies of more than 200,000 galaxies.
Scientists used two separate kinds of observation to provide an independent check on previous dark energy results.
Two papers by an international team of researchers have been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal.
If you are a believer, then you should seriously consider reading a book by Biblical scholar, Bart Erhman. His latest publication “Forged” is a great introduction to the reasons why scholars are persuaded that a significant number of works in the New Testament are not by their purported authors. He also explains why some of the ideas we embrace today do not actually come from the bible at all, but were instead added in later.
As an example, we have a truly crazy idea that many accept as reality. Its the bizarre concept that there is one God that has three different forms, Father, Son and Spirit. We are all familiar with this concept today, it is part of our cultural baggage. However, what really surprised me is that this idea does not exist anywhere in the bible at all … except for one reference in 1 John 5:7-8.
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.“.