Skeptical thinking is such a wonderful tool to have. It means you don’t get scammed or BS’ed nearly as much by shoddy news or dodgy advertising. You also get to save money because you’ll be less apt to buy gimmicky cure-alls that do nothing but drain your wallet and give you false hope. In his book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
, Carl Sagan wrote about this. It’s called the Baloney Detection Kit. (see below for an excerpt)
Michael Shermer recently made a great companion video talking about The Baloney Detection Kit: (approx. 14 min)
Here are the 10 points from the [...]
I don’t have children, but this issue is still very important to me because I care about kids being indoctrinated and screwed up by their parents and role models.
But as an atheist, freethinker, or skeptic, what do you teach kids about religion? Maybe because I’m removed from the issue it seems rather easy to me. Teach them the same thing about christianity, islam, judaism and all the other active religions that I was taught about Greek Mythology.
I think religion plays such a huge role in the world today, you can’t ignore it. But you don’t have to believe it to share it with young people any more than my teachers believed Zeus threw lightning bolts at people when he was mad at them. I don’t feel religion is helpful in any respect except as a cultural phenomenon. The big three certainly don’t have good moral values. So [...]
Remember awhile ago I asked you to think about a list of your personal 10 commandments? For atheists, we certainly aren’t going to look to the bible for our moral guidance, so we have to put in a bit more thought. What rules, morals or virtues do we choose to live by? I decided to call my list principles because it’s a better word than commandments.
Principles: a personal or specific basis of conduct or management
Neece’s Principles
- Treat others as you would like to be treated. (Golden Rule)
- Do not treat others as you would not like to be treated. (Silver Rule)
- Treat others as they want to be treated, in their best interest. (Platinum Rule, modified by Neece)
- Learn from your mistakes, and when possible, learn from the mistakes of others.
- Choose your battles.
- Be pragmatic
- If it harms no one, do [...]
I’m bored. I have about 5 matters I should be attending to, but I’m uninspired to tackle any of them at the long end of a productive day. So I’m doing what every self-respecting blogger/Geekess/hermit does. I’m stumbling the internet.
Oh, and now is the time to remind you that I officially live under a rock. Someday I’ll take a picture of my rock so you can see how nice it is. But suffice it to say, I’m not a newshound, always up on the latest and greatest of everything.
So in my stumbles I come across a BusinessDay article, a South African paper. This is how I learned this awesome explanation of the difference between an atheist, 2 kinds of agnostics, and a theist. Here we go:
The difference between an atheist, an agnostic and a theist can be summarized by their responses [...]
Ha, as much as I would like to take credit for this beauty…
It’s by Wayne Adkins:
There is no God. How could I just make an assertion like that? Why wouldn’t I say “I believe there is no God” or “I don’t believe there is a God”? After all, I am making a negative assertion, an assertion that something does not exist. To prove that something does exist, one need only provide a single example of a things existence. But, we are often told, to prove a negative assertion, an assertion that something does not exist, one must conduct an exhaustive search of the universe or have complete knowledge of everything. So to prove God does not exist, we are often told, one must possess god-like abilities. This is rubbish. A negative assertion can be proven.
Take the case of square circles. I can [...]
