I want to try to figure this out. I could just conclude that I simply don’t know enough about it to figure it out, and I ought to either learn more or leave it to people who do know enough. That’s certainly a possibility, of course. I’ve been thinking when reading Sam Harris’s posts in reply to his critics that he just doesn’t seem to know enough about it, and it’s certainly possible that I don’t know enough about what I’m prattling about, either. But the difference is, it seems to me, that Sam’s critics have made a lot of good arguments, while the arguments I’ve seen so far from the ‘overt atheists are wrong and bad’ faction are not … Read the rest

What is it with Massimo Pigliucci and the dreaded Dawkins-Coyne Phalanx or whatever it is? Why does he keep…pinging at them? And saying things that are exaggerated at best?

…my problem with Dawkins and Coyne is different, but stems from the same root: their position on morality is indeed distinct from Harris’ (at least Dawkins’, I don’t recall having read anything by Coyne on morality), but they insist in applying science to the supernatural, which is simply another form of the same malady that strikes Harris: scientism, the idea that science can do everything and provides us with all the answers that are worth having.

Dawkins and Coyne don’t think or say or write that science can do everything … Read the rest

The Times is shameless. (Wait – why do I even bother to say that? It’s a Murdoch paper. Murdoch is the genius behind Fox “News” – for which the word “shameless” would be gross flattery.) Its headline is untrue, yet it won’t even post a letter from the subject saying so.

The Times ran the headline: Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI. It went on to say he was planning a legal ambush, he’d asked lawyers to do things, and so on. He says that’s not how it went. He posted a comment on the Times (and his own site) saying how it went.

Needless to say, I did NOT say “I will arrest Pope Benedict