Sunday School

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
can philosophy become more scientific without confusing logical certainty with empirical truth?

That’s an interesting way of looking at it.  Michael Tomasello, for example, is someone who does a lot of philosophy referring to a lot of experimental results.  That’s why I trust his ideas enough to give them the time o…[Read more]

Fellow Unbelievers:

I just finished watching Yuval Noah Harari. Whether we are all collectively demented or becoming that way from AI, Mr. Harari is one of the few who are the least troubled by our collective dementia.

Basically, he looks at AI the way Ben Franklin looked at the Montgolfier Brothers hot-air balloon. While others who beheld the…[Read more]

Reg:

AI could lead to the collective dementia of humankind, says Yuval Noah Harari.”

Is he saying we’re not collectively demented now? This I’ll have to watch tonight!

Reg:

The illiteracy crisis has a religion problem

All very true, but most children in the U.S. still attend State schools, so the crises of illiteracy, a literacy, illnumeracy, anumeracy, and lack of critical thinking skills rest with the State as well as with Religion and the merging of both.

Our Teacher’s Unions the National Education…[Read more]

Have a great week! The first video Bad Faith 2026 is very good. Christian Persecution in America is the intolerable injustice of Christians being subjected to the same rules as everybody else.

Atheism, n. The refusal to surrender one’s sense of humor to an imaginary audience.

Good work there Enco.

“This place sure gone crazy!”

The jew hating frenzy is indicative of a very fucked up world. Perhaps it is cuz when scapegoating is at its nadir or zenith depending on perspective that is when the greatest social upheavals are fueled by rage. Human nature when shit goes south to seek someone or something to blame. Ya see…[Read more]

Jake:

I was only 2/5’s listening to the critique but what i heard was shameful and lazy and BS.

Fret not. I Did the hard work of listening so that you and other thoughtful minds don’t have to. Only about 2/5s of the statements about New Atheism made sense.

Forget it, Jake. Great Britain and Continental Europe are Fishbowl World in a room f…[Read more]

It’s a point of view.  I recognise some of it.

I was only 2/5’s listening to the critique but what i heard was shameful and lazy and BS.

Beyond Belief – New atheism

I will now be deleting the files from my web space.

I’ve transferred the two .mp3 files of BBC Radio 4 programmes, to my DropBox account because they were eating up my bandwidth and breaking my fair usage policy.

So, the same files are available at DropBox:

The third man syndrome

Enco, I like the stuff about “debate culture”.  New Atheism has been good for that.

Simon:

Thanks for the link. The critiques of New Atheism were kind of hit and miss. Some with validity that can help, some just based on “vibes” or “feelz.”

One the speakers said New Atheism was “performative”. If “performative” means the dictionary definition–“being enacted as it is said”–does this mean the movement is speaking God out of…[Read more]

Sorry, fixed:

Here’s a programme that was on BBC Radio 4 the other day: “New Atheism”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0032s9x

Reg:

Environment: CNN’s scary plastics report should be tossed into the recycling bin.

This reminds me of the scare talk of last decade when people were alleging that the bread used by Subway Sandwiches™ contained the same plastics used in yoga mats.

I responded by going to my quiet space and said “OOOhm! Best Yoga mats I’ve ever t…[Read more]

Fellow Unbelievers:

Bobby Brainworm and some rotten people in the State of Denmark are repeating a version of the infamous Tuskeegee Syphillis Experiment:
Controversial vaccine trial touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bissau
Recommended dose of hepatitis B vaccine will be withheld from thousands of newborns by Danish researchers
Melody…[Read more]

Reg, Jake, Simon, and Fellow Unbelievers:

To expect AI to practice Philosophical thought and to act ethically first requires creators and owners who do the same. For once, here’s some words from both the “Godfather” of AI and from a AI component manufacturer.

AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton: ‘We’re creating alien beings. I’m willing to be selfi…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
What do you mean by “thorough and satisfactorily.” How do you determine it is satisfactory. What makes your interpretation of human behavior better than another? Those questions involve reasoning about evidence, explanatory adequacy and competing hypotheses.

A good example is conceptions of fairness, how it evo…[Read more]

Reg:

Sorry, I meant Thomas Nagel. But while I’m thinking of it, “What is it like for Earnest Nagel to be Thomas Nagel?”
😁