Here’s a funny thing – Geoff posted some photos from QED at Facebook today, including this one

It turns out that the guy at the mic asking a question is David Aaronovitch. I hadn’t even known he was at the talk, let alone that he’d asked a question! This is all the funnier since I’d gone to his talk three hours earlier, and been informed and entertained by it.

I guess while talking I was so focused on content that I didn’t register faces. Or something. Mind you, people were instructed to say their names when they asked their question…I’m hoping he didn’t actually say, firmly and distinctly, “I’m David Aaronovitch.” I’m hoping he just said “I’m David.” I’m hoping … Read the rest

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The Heresy Club is a group blog of young heretical bloggers – Alex Gabriel, Siana Bangura, Rhys Morgan, Richard Nicholl and Hayley Stevens. You’re already familiar with Alex and Rhys if you’ve been reading B&W for awhile: they were starring daily back in January. I met both of them at QED, and Hayley as well. Check them out and if you like the blog, spread the word!

To be young and heretical in 2012 is to experience the intense realities of superstitious thought.

In our schools, we see science teachers treat Genesis with kid gloves. We see intereference in students’ private lives who blaspheme online. We see religious worship in British classrooms, and prayer creeping unconstitutionally back into American schools.

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

It seems odd that the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne publishes an article by an Anglican minister, but I guess it’s just the usual ecumenical - interfaith – he hates Them so we love him – any port in a storm deal. Catlicks and Prods join hands to fight the real enemy, Teh Atheists.

the sad atheists are those who do take the God question seriously. They know that the stakes are high and that without God it is notoriously difficult to make sense of the world or of human life or death or joy or pain or love-making or justice or even, at the philosophical end of the spectrum, of truth itself.

Do they? You sure about that?

I … Read the rest

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PZ is at this very moment in a church. Not a joke this time, he really is – he’s there to observe Chris Stedman in action. His tweets sound very…restless.

• You know what would be a crappy April fools joke? If I said I found Chris Stedman persuasive. So I won’t.
• It’s a very *nice* room, with very *nice* people. Jeez, but I detest “nice”.
• I learned that Stedman did good rewarding work in assisted living home. How NICE!
• Stedman: religion studies major. Seminarian. Pro-religion advocate. Atheist? Not one word for atheism today. Weird.

Not weird; typical.… Read the rest

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Oh damn, wouldn’t you know it, grumble grumble. Here I’ve been friends with Maryam for years but we hadn’t met, so three weeks ago we did at last meet, to our mutual joy, and what happens? She leaves FTB and her heretical ways to get in touch with her fun feminine side. She tells me she’s always loved fashion, and she’s going to go into the trendy decorative hijab line.

“I love beautiful fabrics and colours,” she told me on Skype, ”and what a great canvas you have in a burqa! Yards and yards of the stuff, to fill up with your own creative genius.”

Well yes. You know the sort of thing she means.

All very decorative and … Read the rest

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