A commenter at WEIT yesterday, strikingly named RPS, made a familiar point. 

I eagerly await your demonstration that the claim “God exists” is false.

She later expanded.

As they say, you don’t know what you don’t know. I’d be perfectly happy with a clear demonstration of how “God” as commonly understood doesn’t exist.

The fact that it’s difficult to impossible to demonstrate conclusively that something doesn’t exist does not mean it’s reasonable to believe that that something does exist. It’s also not a good reason to believe that it does exist.

It’s possible to imagine an infinite number of things, none of which we can demonstrate conclusively not to exist. That doesn’t mean we should believe they all do … Read the rest

Oh look, Sans has made its debut. It’s the new magazine put out by the splendid people at Fri Tanke who published Hatar Gud kvinnor? The theme of this first issue is religious oppression of women, including an interview with me, and there’s an occupied burqa on the cover. Barely had it hit the stands when a Christian think tank accused it of…wait for it…Islamophobia. Sayeeda Warsi would be so proud.

Sara Larsson and Christer Sturmark, the editors of Sans, wrote an article saying why the magazine is not Islamophobic and why the whole idea is bad and stupid. It’s in Swedish, but then not a few of you read Swedish, and then there’s Google translate. I used it and … Read the rest

Lauryn Oates points out that the TES reported the Taliban had gone all sweet and cuddly on girls’ education, while absent-mindedly also reporting that it had that on hearsay.

The only person quoted in the story was Afghan Education Minister Farooq Wardak, who reported, “What I am hearing at the very upper policy level of the Taliban is that they are no more opposing education and also girls’ education.”

No confirmation from the Taliban itself was provided in the story, or since.

Oh. Which, in basic beginners’ journalism, or basic beginners’ epistemology, or courts of law, or historiography, is Not Good Enough. NPR re-learned this just recently after it reported that Gabrielle Giffords had been shot and killed, based on … Read the rest

Paul W has another good comment on Ben’s post (from 2009 is it?). It’s about social science that purports to show that religion>happiness, and where the holes are.

One of the most robust findings in all of psychology is that people tend think their own children are above average. Should we then conclude that the large majority of children are above average?

Another of the most robust findings in the social sciences is that people tend to think that their own cultures are superior, and that the central, distinctive tenets of their own religions are true, and that the comparable distinctive tenets of others’ are false.

The robustness of a finding may not reflect ground truth, but pervasive systematic biases.