A Tippling Philosopher

China

China and the Environment: It's More Complicated Than You Think

China, in the run-up to COP26, was lambasted by media and political spin doctors, and thus by the general public. I meant to post this three weeks ago but forgot, though I managed to discuss it with Geoff Benson when he popped down for a spot of lunch the other

Culture

The Tower of Babel, Immigration, and Google Translate

I have just been inspired to write this piece by an arguably throwaway comment on my YouTube channel in response to a recent video on the Tower of Babel. Sometimes, comments that are intended as light-hearted jest actually contain some theological or philosophical punch. I found this with my book

FOX News

On Rittenhouse's acquittal

"The idea of citizens arming themselves to supplement the police, when the police are being too casual with protestors, when the police aren't being fascist enough.  That's not anything I thought I'd see in my lifetime in this country. It feels like a

Culture

The Tower of Babel Story Is OBVIOUSLY Not Historical

I've got to the point where, and I know this will be counter-productive, I have to claim that anyone who believes this story actually happened is an idiot. Such believers are idiots. There, I've said it. Deal with it. I know there will be some Christians

News

A Ghoulish Sense of Humor

Hey, I’m gonna post a cartoon about killing a political opponent and attacking the President of the United States. Isn’t that hilarious? HA.    HA.     HA. If I were running for city clerk in Podunk, Arkansas, and my opponent was a pro-choice Democrat, my redneck supporters would think this

the Resurrection

Presentation - The Resurrection: A Critical Examination

Although I have been serialising my book in a lot of detail with Derek Lamber of MythVision, for a truncated account, here is a presentation I gave to Dorset Humanists just after lockdown had ended - it was one of their first so the audience was very small. Please grab

divine foreknowledge

God Is Love: Having a Loving Relationship with a Divine Automaton

I've just done a YouTube video discussing this and it's an interesting one. I will use my claim here that God does not have free will. See my following pieces: God's Own Free Will God's Supposed Free Will: He Cannot Be Contrary

David Austin

Was Jesus on a suicide Mission

Here is another guest piece by the inimitable David Austin, this time on the topic of the suicidal Jesus. Was Jesus on a suicide Mission There appears to be a contradiction (one of many) in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s life and death. In a few places in the

AHA

Humanists Launch 10th Annual Freedom of Thought Report

This is from the American Humanist Association: Today, the American Humanist Association (AHA) is proud to host the global launch event for the release of the 2021 Freedom of Thought Report, authored and published each year by Humanists International. This marks the 10th anniversary of the report, which tracks the

News

"I've Got Free Will" Claim Religious Right-Wingers Who Act Completely Predictably

Let's look, for a wee while, at what certain right-wingers do here when asked specifically not to do it. In this case, they were predicted to not engage with the content of what I said in a piece on the Paul Gosar campaign, but instead to use distraction

atheists

Atheists, agnostics and humanists much more likely than Christians to get COVID-19 vaccine

Although on the one hand we nonreligious types don't like to do what we're told by a skydaddy god that we've made up ourselves in our gullible past, on the other hand, we do like to believe what we're told by experts

determinism

Verbose Stoic on my Free Will Chapter (II)

In a previous post, I detailed how theistic commenter here, Verbose Stoic (VS), has critiqued a chapter of mine on free will commissioned by John Loftus for his book Christianity in the Light of Science. In the first piece, we looked at definitional issues and laid the foundations. In my

GOP

WWRD - What Would Republicans Do?

American politics is devolving into a cesspit of polarisation, and it's one side that is making it happen. As has been said here before by many of you readers, only one side appears to be interested in actually governing, in actually getting things done. Trump reigned for a

Bart Ehrman

"Of course there are discrepancies, embellishments, made-up stories, and historical problems in the Gospels"

There is no doubt that Bart Ehrman is a brilliant author. Two of his books are particularly worth investing in: Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior and How Jesus Became God: the Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.

OmniGod

The Bible Shows God Is Not Omniscient

I feel like triggering Dave Armstrong and what better way to do this than to get his longjohns in a twist about the Noah's Flood story. This is from a chapter I am editing in a book I am just finishing (would be ready for proofers to look

Empty tomb

The “Empty Tomb” & The “Minimal Facts” argument

Here is another guest piece by the inimitable David Austin, this time on the topic of the Empty Tomb. The “Empty Tomb” & The “Minimal Facts” argument The “Empty Tomb” claim has been the mainstay of Christian apologists’ arguments for a long time. The apologists love to say, whenever the

Comedy

Why Conservative Comedy Isn't Funny

I am preparing this morning for the net interview for MythVision on my Resurrection book (The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story [UK]) - today, we are talking empty tomb. It'll be a live stream taking place at around 09:20 am EST. In the meantime,

compatibilism

Debating Free Will with Verbose Stoic

I sent regular theistic commenter Verbose Stoic (VS) a chapter I was once commissioned to write by John W. Loftus for his anthology Christianity in the Light of Science. VS has written a lengthy critique on his blog here. I have commented a few times there already in answer to

News

Corporate entitlement and climate change

If you are the owner of a business that harms people, are you still entitled to maintain your profits? Let’s say your business provides an essential service to the public, and it operates without any competition. Now that would be a perfect situation for a profit-making business, right? If

Deep Dive

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

As I have said many times before, I really do feel like my worldview is solid, that there are no crumbling or missing bricks in my epistemological wall. It is why I wrote my latest book Why I Am Atheist and Not a Theist [UK]: Jesus and Mo cartoon is

anti-vax

Dennis Prager Gets Covid, and Uses Insane Reasoning

Dennis Prager, also known as a bad human being, has contracted Covid. The potential schadenfreude is compounded by the reasoning he gives. He wanted the disease so he could build up a natural immunity rather than getting artificial immunity from a vaccine. WHAT? He wanted to get the disease so

Research

Chief Executive Humanists International, Gary McLelland, Interviewed

I really enjoyed this interview. We touched a lot of bases here, starting off with the lack of secularism in education in the UK before talking internationally about the Freedom of Thought Report 2021, which reports on the experience and persecution of the nonreligious internationally. Gary McLelland was great to

divine foreknowledge

Noah's Flood Story Invalidates God's Omniscience

I know it's a myth; it's obviously a myth. But go with it. As I am writing elsewhere: One of a number of Hebrew Bible stories that shows that God really doesn’t have omniscience is the Noah’s flood story. This never happened, that much

objective morality

Morality, the Euthyphro Dilemma & William Lane Craig

In the closing stages of writing my latest book, The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story [UK] (please grab yourself a copy!), I had a few test readers. One was David Austin, down in Australia, who has provided a few guest articles for your delectation. Here is another

Gospel of Matthew

Matthew's Guards at the Tomb

Matthew is the only Gospel to include the story of the guards at the tomb - supposedly the only actual eyewitnesses of the Resurrection - in the Resurrection narrative. For a number of reasons discussed below, this piece of the narrative is clearly ahistorical, acting (I argue) as a counter-counter-argument