General - A Tippling Philosopher

A Tippling Philosopher

Sign in Subscribe

General

A collection of 155 posts

Curating a respectful and interactive community

Dear cherished readers, This is something that needs to be said ahead of some changes in terms of dealing with conversations that veer into insult grudge matches. The first thing to say is a reminder that this column is no longer a blog but a media column. Though I will

Reappropriating the Christmas Appropriators

Somebody recently shared with me a piece from The Catholic Thing titled "Appropriating the Christmas Appropriators" and I would like to take issue with some a lot of the claims. Here are a few: “Cultural appropriation” is just one of the grave injustices recently discovered by the “woke”

American Humanist Association Announces New Executive Director

This is from the American Humanists Association: Today, the American Humanist Association (AHA) is announcing the appointment of Nadya Dutchin as the organization’s new Executive Director. After evaluating many outstanding candidates for the role, the Executive Director Search Committee and the AHA Board of Directors chose Dutchin, an experienced

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

Myth Education: Gilgamesh

In honour of the fantastic book on mythology by David Fletcher, we are running a few excerpt articles featuring some of the gods contained within the anthology. Here is something on Gilgamesh, the famous Mesopotamian god. Grab yourself a copy of Myth Education. Gilgamesh______________________________ a.k.a.: Bilgamesh Pantheon: Mesopotamian

Dogs and Cats

We have “owned”* pets since we were married, and that was a while ago…1960. My wife grew up with a Siamese cat named Buppa who ran their family household. As soon as we were married, she was lobbying for a cat. Her older sister and husband had a Burmese,

Memory, Oral Transmission, and the Gospels

Bart Ehrman's book Jesus Before the Gospels is really quite excellent. It's a must-read for anyone looking into how stories became Gospels, about memory, memorisation, distorted memories, and transmission. I am listening to it now, but let me pick out a few sections for you. In

I Won't Call the "Pro-Life" Movement "Pro-Life" Anymore: They Are Anti-Choice

I Won't Call the "Pro-Life" Movement "Pro-Life" Anymore: They Are Anti-Choice

Why, as I look out on the sea of signs at today’s the March for Life, do I see nothing about maternity leave, much less paternity leave? Why aren’t expansive parental leave policies front and center on every pro-life website, and on the lips of every pro-life politician?

Join Us for the Second Live Stream on the Resurrection, with MythVision, Later Today

Join Us for the Second Live Stream on the Resurrection, with MythVision, Later Today

After a really decent start to our series in the first session on the Resurrection, Derek Lambert of MythVision is giving me a second interview in the series later today (6.30 pm BST/1.30 pm EST): Come join us. In the meantime, if you haven't seen

CS Lewis as Christian Apologist, by John Beversluis

As some of you may know, philosopher John Beverluis recently passed away. I had occasional correspondence with him, and this piece comes from him via a mutual friend, Julian Haydon. It is also due to be published in an upcoming Free Inquiry edition and so thanks to the editor Tom

Pub Debates and Releasing the Inner Geek

I'm a geek. Even when I'm on holiday, overseeing my kids spank too much money in the amusement arcade at the holiday place, I'm a geek. A chance meeting of another dad allows me to lay out my psychology/philosophy/politics feelers after small

GB News (UK's FOX News) Embroiled in Cancel Culture...

This perhaps comes as no surprise to those cynical ones amongst us. GB News has just started up in the UK and it is a clusterf*ck of FOX News copycat opinion TV, polemically arguing for free speech in a very partisan manner. It has been involved in an...interesting

Biblical Exegesis

Debunking the Genesis Flood I

I can't believe I'm going to have to do this, but it will hopefully be useful to some people. I am going to run through the gamut of arguments in the hope that someone like Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong recognises the terminal problems associated with a

biblical contradictions

Armstrong, the Genesis Flood Contradictions and Multiple Sources

Oh, David Armstrong. David, David David. I will try to be as cordial as possible here but please excuse me if I let off some rhetorical steam at times. I recently posted a piece on the documentary hypothesis as exemplified by the Genesis account of the flood, although I should

Biblical Exegesis

Apologies for Calling Armstrong "Disingenuous"***

Dave Armstrong very kindly retracted some of the rhetorical flourishes in one of his recent pieces. We are both surely victim to such, and it is something I must shy away from. He recently commented: You cited me: Atheist anti-theist polemicist Jonathan MS Pearce wrote in his screed… As long

What We've Been Watching

Just to take a break from arguing the ta's pretty much everything, since the discussion boards have been getting into some kind of frenzy, I thought I would talk about something completely different today. And, hopefully, something that won't cause such overt argument. However, I can

An Idea on Commenting

I understand that commenting on my articles and in the threads below is something of a problem for a good many of you in a way that I wish it wasn’t. And I do understand everybody’s position on this. I also witness threads being hijacked in a number

Another Comment Appeal

So it’s that time of the month where I am having to talk about commenting again. We have got to a situation where Bert is getting a little bit frustrated (and that is probably understating it a good deal), and I am even receiving a couple of unsolicited messages

A Broken Clock Is Right Twice a Day

I recently wrote a piece analysing my feelings about and dissecting the local elections in the UK. This was actually shared a number of times across the Internet locally because people of certain political persuasions thought it carried value. About 50% of my writing more recently has been political in

freedom of speech

A Note on Commenting

You know my position on commenting, and many of you lament my lax approach. As I have said many times before, I hope that this allows for reasonable freedom of speech in such a way that people are hoist by their own petard. The flipside is that we often get

Amazon and the Future of the High Street (and Everything Else)

Personally, Amazon worries me, but I need it and use it, though I am trying to minimise my use. I could bore you with how they are seeking to monopolise book publishing services, enabled with their algorithms, to the detriment of competitors. I could bore you talking about ebook monopolisation.

Here's Why AOC Is a Political Powerhouse

I love lawmakers like AOC and Katie Porter. They are eloquent, they care and they DO stuff. You know, other than going on holiday to Cancun. Chris Cillizza nails loads of good points here, so I'll leave it to him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLrrUtXCQJI Just

The Nonsense in Spades We Are Now Dealing with

Dealing with dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporters was difficult enough when he was in office, but now that he is gone, such cultists have doubled down to a state of psychological mania that beggars belief. I have seen Twitter feeds and forum comments that make me incredibly sad. This isn't

What Does Jesus Say about the Afterlife?

Here is another guest post from Dana Horton, this time looking at Jesus' claims regarding life beyond death (thanks Dana!): What does Jesus say about the afterlife? A lot of us in a western Christian culture just assume there is an afterlife. It is what we grew up believing.

Offending Words

As many of you often complain, there are offending words for the netfilter, though some have said there are ones that cause problems here but not elsewhere. Can you supply me with a list of words that are giving you problems below and I'll see if I can