And there’s Stanford President Emeritus Donald Kennedy.

Kennedy argued that teaching creationism discourages students from applying the scientific method, which emphasizes conducting experiments with reproducible results and drawing logical conclusions from observable, measurable evidence. “What the creationist alternative does to students is to intercept and deaden curiosity,” he said. “If relationships or correlations can be simply allocated to the cleverness of a designer, there’s very little incentive to think up an experiment or undertake an analysis.”

Exactly. That’s one of the most annoying things about the whole brawl – the way believers claim that there are all these profound mysterious areas in which science has no place but religion does, with the implication (which is often made explicit) that … Read the rest

Hitchens on large claims.

Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require. Thus…Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or “surrender” as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.

In fact it’s a little hard to think of any teachings that would justify such arrogance and presumption.… Read the rest

Hitchens’s new book is out. He’s an eloquent bastard.

And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins…is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual

Fun and games with the cult studs.

[W]e attended a recent PhD confirmation at the Queensland University of Technology, where we teach. Candidate Michael Noonan’s thesis title was Laughing at the Disabled: Creating comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains….Noonan went on to affirm that his thesis was guided by post-structuralist theory…He then showed video clips in which he had set up scenarios placing the intellectually disabled subjects in situations they did not devise and in which they could appear only as inept. Thus, the disabled Craig and William were sent to a pub out west to ask the locals about the mystery of the min-min lights. In the tradition of reality television, the locals were not informed that Craig

This is getting to be an entire cottage industry, or maybe not even so cottage, this enterprise of saying ‘that Richard Dawkins and those other militant fundamentalist atheists are insulting and patronizing and rude and aggressive while the rest of us are tolerant and respectful and kind and good.’ Now it’s Robert Winston’s turn to take the same old guff out for a spin.

“I find the title of ‘The God Delusion’ rather insulting,” said Lord Winston, “I have a huge respect for Richard Dawkins but I think it is very patronising to call a serious book about other peoples’ views of the universe and everything a delusion. I don’t think that is helpful and I think it portrays science

Someone made a very funny comment on Stephen Law’s interview with Nigel Warburton on the subject of clarity. It’s hard to be sure whether the hilarity is intentional or accidental – I find myself hoping, perhaps maliciously, that it’s accidental, because if so it does so neatly make Nigel’s points for him. This point especially:

[M]any lightweight thinkers are attracted to Philosophy because it seems to promise them power through looking clever. Hiding behind a veil of obscurity is one way in which such people have traditionally duped their readership.

Now the dupe:

although you raise some good points about clarity, i think you are only rehearsing the rather tired analytic vs continental divide;clarity is certainly important, especially for

And let’s not neglect good old Iran, and its positive discrimination in women’s favour.

Police say they stopped more than 1,300 women for dressing immodestly on the first day of the campaign in Tehran. More than 100 women were arrested on Saturday; half of them had to sign statements promising to improve their clothing, the other half are being referred to court. The focus of the new campaign is to stop women wearing tight overcoats that reveal the shape of their bodies or showing too much hair from beneath their headscarves…The police complain that some young women strut the streets looking like fashion models – and it is not a bad description.

Oh, well then. Lock them up. If … Read the rest