Originally a comment by John Horstman on Knowing v accepting.

All knowledge is functionally Bayesian – it’s a matter of probability of being true, which we can sometimes even formally quantify, but it’s never 100%, with the exception of constructed abstractions (like mathematics or other formalized abstract systems, where things can have definite truth values because we construct them that way) and the existence of at least one ‘mind’ – some system capable of cognition such that I can even be here considering the questions.

This is due, as Ibis3 points out, to the solipsism problem, which can never be resolved – not even if there was a god (or some other outside observer of the universe) and you … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Well this is a surprise. A US court declined to dismiss a lawsuit against Pastor Scott Lively. Pink News reports:

An appeals court has refused to dismiss a case against homophobic pastor Scott Lively, who is set to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

Lively is an American pastor who cheered on anti-gay legislation in Russia, branding Putin an ‘unlikely hero’ for passing it.

It previously emerged that he addressed an anti-gay conference in Uganda just before the country’s homophobic law was first drafted, and he is facing a charge of crimes against humanity for his role in encouraging the country’s law, and similar ones around the world.

I’m amazed. I don’t think “free speech” should be … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Raw Story reports on a conversation event Dawkins did last month, in which he expressed surprise that there’s such a thing as the Men’s Rights Movement.

During the event on November 21, Kennesaw’s Michael L. Sanseviro asked the outspoken atheist about the contributions of feminism to science. He also asked Dawkin’s opinion of the men’s rights movement.

“Of course feminism has an enormously important role,” he replied. “Feminism, as I understand it, is the political drive towards the equality of women — so that women should not be discriminated against, nobody should be discriminated against on grounds that don’t merit discrimination. So, yes, feminism is enormously important and is a political movement which deserves to be thoroughly well-supported.”

Much

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

BBC – don’t do that. Use your heads. Have some god damn sense.

Don’t do that headline.

Uber banned in Delhi over taxi driver ‘rape’

Yes I get that scare quotes take up less space in a headline than “alleged” – but that’s not a good enough reason to use them. Don’t do that.

Authorities in the Indian capital, Delhi, have banned international taxi-booking service Uber after a driver allegedly raped a female passenger.

A transport department official said the company had been “blacklisted” for “misleading customers”.

The 26-year-old woman used the smartphone app to book a taxi home on Friday but says she was taken to a secluded area and raped.

The driver has been remanded in custody

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s Monday morning, so let’s have some deep thought to start the week. This deep thought is courtesy of the Huffington Post and typed by Debbie Davis, a “writer, communicator, journalist.” (All three of those? Wow, she wear many hats.)

I have a strong faith in God. I believe He is our Creator, and made us in His image. I pray for His guidance and wisdom daily.

To say it is “foreign” to me to consider that not all people feel this way, is not a very broad-minded view, and is not realistic in today’s world.

Wait what? Who’s the accused here? Who said it’s foreign to her, who took this not very broad-minded view? Why’s she fuming at … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

What was that about Bill Cosby now? Ten women? Fifteen?

Make that thirty-three.

A former Playboy Club waitress is the latest woman to come forward with accusations that she was drugged and raped by Bill Cosby — and she says there are at least 12 more.

According to P.J. Masten, who worked as a “bunny manager” at Playboy’s Chicago club in 1979, she was one of at least 13 Playboy Club waitresses who were sexually assaulted by Cosby when the married comedian was a regular at the club.

“[There are] 12 former bunnies that I know of that are ashamed to come forward, frightened to come forward, married with families, don’t want to come forward.” Masten told CNN‘s

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A new piece of hateful cruelty and suppression out of Saudi Arabia, land of glorious life-giving oil. Via the Gulf Center for Human Rights:

The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) is deeply concerned following the travel ban that has been imposed on human rights defender Samar Badawi, who works on defending people’s rights in Saudi Arabia, in particular the rights of prisoners of conscience.

On 2 December 2014, Badawi was informed by staff in the Passport Office at King Abdulaziz International Airport that she is not allowed to travel abroad anymore by an order from the Ministry of Interior, without any reason given or any prior investigations.

She was on her way to get a flight to participate

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh dear god. Worse than ever.

There’s a second video of the killing of Eric Garner.

The second video shows the choking while one officer grabbed Garner around his neck, and threw him to the ground. It also, however, shows the seven minute long aftermath, where a disgusted bystander films the lifeless body of Eric Garner left on the sidewalk with police officers shuffling around him and seeming relatively undisturbed by the fact that they had just killed an unarmed man for not paying a few pennies of tax on cigarettes.

Watch video below of NYPD officers and EMT standing around, and failing to give aid to Eric Garner, who was lifeless on the ground, but technically did not

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Anna Merlan at Jezebel reports on a new porn series featuring rapes of women crossing the US-Mexico border. Rape is a major risk for women in that situation.

That evidently sounds pretty arousing to the porn conglomerate MindGeek, formerly Manwin, who are behind the series. As the Daily Dot was first to report, the series was launched by MindGeek earlier this year, a major European company that also owns YouPorn, RedTube and many other major porn sites. It’s produced by Mofos, a porn studio that focuses on “real amateur girls.” Here’s a nausea-inducing description on the “Border Patrol Sex” homepage:

Watch these guys hunting the illegal female immigrants and giving them a lesson on why the law should

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A federal judge said Nope to another attempt to get evolution banned in Kansas public schools.

Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) actually had the nerve to argue that teaching evolution amounts to teaching atheism, and therefore should be banned as a religious point of view in the classroom.

Learning about evolution could, following a train of thought, lead to atheism, but I can think of other things that could also do that – like reading the bible for instance; like going to church, like listening to sermons, like thinking about the idea of “god.” Pretty much anything could lead to a train of thought that ends up at atheism – or theism.

Americans United put it this way… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh crap, that’s scary.

An unidentified drone came close to hitting a plane as it landed at Heathrow, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has confirmed.

An Airbus A320 pilot reported seeing a helicopter-style drone as the jet was 700 feet off the ground on its approach to the runway at 1416 GMT on 22 July.

The CAA has not identified the airline or how close the drone came to the plane, which can carry 180 people.

It gave the incident an “A” rating, meaning a “serious risk of collision”.

This is the highest incident rating the CAA can give.

Now add this part:

The incidents have prompted a warning from the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) that the rapid

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

How do we draw the border between what we know and what we have learned from people who know?

The question is prompted by a discussion on a public post of Ed Brayton’s on Facebook about sophisticated theology and Karen Armstrong and agnosticism. Dan Linford (who teaches philosophy) said this:

Armstrong thinks that we can know that it is true that “God exists” but we cannot know what that sentence means, both because we do not know what God is nor do we know what ‘exists’ means.

I can’t make any sense of that. I can’t see what it can mean to know something if you don’t know its component parts. It seems like Dadaist gibberish to me. If I … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Another one from A Mighty Girl – Dr. Catherine Hamlin.

Australian obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Catherine Hamlin has spent much of her life living in Ethiopia where she has revolutionized care for a childbirth injury called obstetric fistula. Dr. Hamlin, who celebrated her 90th birthday this year, was nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her work building the world’s only medical center dedicated to providing free repair surgery to poor women suffering from this devastating condition — one that affects more than two million young women around the world.

When Dr. Hamlin first moved with her husband, Dr. Reginald Hamlin, to Ethiopia in 1959 to establish a midwifery school, they had never encountered an obstetric fistula as the condition

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Because Cute Emergency simply shoved it at me, so how could I  not.

… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

About this business of all of us being just manifestations of PZ – Russell Glasser wittily quoted an apt bit of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

Here she checked herself in some alarm, at hearing something that sounded to her like the puffing of a large steam-engine in the wood near them, though she feared it was more likely to be a wild beast. ‘Are there any lions or tigers about here?’ she asked timidly.

‘It’s only the Red King snoring,’ said Tweedledee.

‘Come and look at him!’ the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice’s hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping.

‘Isn’t he a LOVELY sight?’ said Tweedledum.

Alice couldn’t

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh, no.

Ronin Shimizu, a 12-year-old boy in California, killed himself after he was bullied for being the only male cheerleader on an all girl team. Does “after” mean “because” here? It’s impossible to know for sure, even if he left a note saying so, but…being bullied doesn’t generally make kids happier.

‘I heard that people called him gay because he was a cheerleader,’ one of his teammates told CBS Sacramento at the vigil.

Ronin was the only male cheerleader with the Vista Junior Eagles Cheer Team.

Contempt for girls hurts boys as well as girls. It hurts everyone. It sucks. It’s not healthy that it’s just normal for half of all human beings to be held in contempt.… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A horrifying event in Kansas City, Missouri.

Friends of a Muslim teenager who was run down and killed in a crash that’s being investigated as a possible hate crime said they had been alarmed in recent weeks by someone driving around with anti-Islamic messages painted on a vehicle.

Police say they don’t know if there’s any connection.

Ahmed H. Aden, 34, of Kansas City, was charged Friday in Jackson County with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the crash that fatally injured 15-year-old Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein on Thursday night at the center. Funeral services for Abdisamad are scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at the Islamic Society of Greater Kansas City.

According to a probable cause statement, Aden was driving

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Comedy interlude.

A comment on my piece titled What should we do? at the Freethinker:

1. Blueshift Rhino says: Fri 5 Dec at 4:58 pm

   Nice try, PZ, with those last two paragraphs, but you simply can’t have it both ways.

   You cannot continue to use the derisive label of “Dear Muslima” when someone argues that there are more important issues than the horror of being invited for coffee in an elevator or – even – the outrage of people disagreeing with you on the internet. Either it’s as black-and-white – we at FTB know which issues matter and which don’t, and everyone else needs to shut and listen to us – as you have been claiming for years, or it

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Los Angeles police have opened an investigation into one woman’s claims that Bill Cosby molested her.

Los Angeles police opened an investigation on Friday into a woman’s claims that Bill Cosby molested her when she was 15 years old, a department spokeswoman said.

The investigation was opened after Judy Huth, who is suing Cosby for sexual battery, met with Los Angeles police detectives for 90 minutes.

Los Angeles Police Officer Jane Kim said the department opened its investigation after the meeting.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Saudi and Iran arrest bloggers for being rude about “the prophet”; Vietnam arrests bloggers for being rude about the government.

An award-winning Vietnamese writer has been arrested, reportedly for publishing criticism of the Communist government on his blog.

Nguyen Quang Lap was taken into custody after police searched his home in the city of Ho Chi Minh on Saturday.

His wife and his brother said police had accused him of publishing articles that went against the authorities.

Mr Lap is the second prominent blogger to have been detained recently, in an apparently renewed attack on dissent.

We have blogger privilege here in the relatively non-suppressive part of the world.

The one-party state is often criticised by rights groups for

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)