And since you mentioned skepticism – explain something to me. This Intelligent Designer we hear so much about. It’s supposed to answer those questions that atheists and biologists and similar tiresome people can’t answer. But the thing about this Intelligent Designer character is that it raises a hell of a lot of questions that don’t arise if there’s no need to explain the Intelligent Designer. Surely finding the Intelligent Designer a satisfactory answer to questions while finding Designer-free answers unsatisfactory, relies on ignoring a great barnlike stack of questions that trail in the wake of the Intelligent Designer. The most obvious one of course is Okay smartyboots then who designed the Designer? But there are others.

The one that I’ve … Read the rest

The Third Skeptics’ Circle is posted. Read, doubt, enjoy.… Read the rest

Last month Richard Posner said something similar to what Stanley Fish said, but Posner said it much more clearly.

For as a practical matter, chief executive officers do not enjoy freedom of speech. A CEO is the fiduciary of his organization, and his duty is to speak publicly only in ways that are helpful to the organization. Not that he should lie; but he must avoid discussing matters as to which his honestly stated views would harm the organization. (Judges also lack complete freedom of speech; as I mentioned in our introductory blog posting, I am not permitted to comment publicly on any pending or impending court case.) Summers must think that his remarks did harm the university, as

Stanley Fish has an interesting take on the Larry Summers matter. (You don’t mind if I call him Larry do you? Everyone else does. I’m not pretending I know him, it’s just that it’s easier than trying to remember whether he spells it Laurence or Lawrence. Plus it sounds so much more friendly, and knowing, and American, and as if I might be important enough to know him, which I’m not.)

It is only if Summers’ performance at the January 14th conference (where he wondered if the underrepresentation of women in the sciences and math might have a genetic basis) was intentional — it is only if he knew what he was doing — that he can be absolved of

The Fifth Carnival of the Godless is posted. And I’ve been meaning to point out this post at Normblog for days. He points out what seem (from the available evidence, e.g. what the article reports) like rather dubious bits of reasoning in an article about the possible evolutionary basis for religion.

There is one quite convincing comment in the article though. It gestures at something I often think.

Childish belief is one thing, but religious belief is embraced by people of all ages and is by no means the preserve of the uneducated. According to Boyer, the persistence of belief into adulthood is at least in part down to a presumption. “When you’re in a belief system, it’s not that

No comment department. Speaks for itself department. Christian Voice.

“It was a bad day when they let homosexuals in the Armed Forces. People there do not want to be objects of sexual attention from blokes they are sharing a trench or tent with.” He added: “It was an even worse day when they let women on the front line. They should be in the home. The man should be the leader in the family and the woman should be the daughter or wife under the authority of her father and then her husband.”

Yup. Men like you – they should be the authority. Yup.

“We would like to reach out to Muslims and tell them they cannot find salvation