Getting random stuff organised
There have been a number of studies published in even quite reputable journals which purport to show results indicating that ESP, or ‘psychic’ powers, or ‘supernatural’ phenomena, are real. It’s not always easy for a lay person without a scientific background to understand why these are not taken seriously by sceptics. What is it that …
Continue reading “The Acid Test for Real Science: Does it GO somewhere?”
The ‘problem’ with atheists is the same as the ‘problem’ with people that don’t believe in unicorns. No matter how hard you try, you’re generally not going to get them to believe in your favourite mythical creature, because they have a commitment to evidence, and there is no evidence that mythical creatures exist. The best …
We can be sure that claims are true when there is good, reliable evidence for them. Where there is no evidence, a claim may be true, but there’s no reason to think so, and it has to compete with a literally infinite number of other evidence-free claims which are all equally likely. So the prima facie probability of any …
Is it possible that… … gods exist? … there is an afterlife? …there are new forms of science we haven’t yet discovered? …Satan used a miracle to alter DNA? … etc, etc, etc… It’s possible, but it’s a vacuous possibility, in that there is no evidence whatsoever to support it. A vacuous possibility is a hypothesis which is …
Continue reading “‘Is it possible that…’ questions are usually daft. Here’s why.”
Do you believe you don’t have a second head? Do you know that you don’t have a second head? Are you sure you don’t have a second head? Are you certain? Are you absolutely certain? We can be as confident about the non-existence of gods as you can be about the absence of your second head, and …
There’s a whole category of words in the English language which are surrounded by semantic confusion. One of these is ‘know’, which I’ve already discussed here: I am not an agnostic, because I know what ‘know’ means But other words of the same type also suffer from the same confusion. This time I want to …
‘Seems’ to whom? Presumably it seems to people who believe in gods that gods exist, and it seems to people who don’t that they don’t. Whether either side has reasons for their beliefs, and what they are, has been a matter of prolonged ongoing debate. It’s certainly not obvious that the theist side is any better …
Because there are reasons why we don’t know much about quantum physics, extraterrestrial life or our human origins. People who have studied these topics acknowledge that it’s very difficult to construct experiments or carry out observations which can help us to understand them. We are dealing with things which are very small, which are very far away, …
Certainly evidence may one day be found for something answering the description of ‘a god’, just as evidence may one day be found for the existence of a fairy or a unicorn. But: We don’t have that evidence right now, so there’s no reason to believe in gods (or fairies or unicorns) right now. We don’t have …
If someone has prayed during a ‘dire situation’, then at that moment they weren’t an atheist. But generally speaking atheists are rational. If they obtain genuine evidence that prayer has worked, for themselves or anyone else, then they will believe it has worked. The details of how and why it has worked will need to be investigated; …
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