The headline above is a lie, as is almost everything in an article in The Daily Mail, fisked here by the British Humanist Association.
[via wongaBlog]
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Category Archives: Philosophy
Happy (western, heliocentric) New Year!
01Jan09 – 12:38
I hope that, wherever you are, you enjoyed the extra second imposed upon you by the imperialist forces of the dominant scientific-capitalist worldview and that you have a prosperous 2009.
As for my year so far, I jogged wearily to the gym this morning, dreading the crowds of resolutioners (though it hasn’t been too bad in the […]
“It’s not the despair; I can cope with the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”
15Dec08 – 10:38
Cornershop Man watches every single cricket international he can on his satellite TV under the counter—and, unlike me, he fails the Tebbit test. At the start of the week, I asked him: “Suppose you’re looking forward to whupping England’s backsides?”
“Hmm,” he inhaled, “I don’t know. You’ve got some good bowlers with you. You could give […]
A Search Engine For Labels For Mental Objects
16Oct08 – 18:18
When you can’t look up something in a dictionary because you don’t know what you’re looking for, even the wordy vastness of the Web is of limited use. This happens to me often (and that’s one of the reasons why I am not a linguistic determinist). Tip Of My Tongue might help though.
[via Lifehacker]
“Let Them Eat Smoke!”
03Jul08 – 21:31
Norm asks two questions:
People on the wrong end of social and economic inequalities don’t just experience health disadvantages from smoking, but disadvantages across the board - in every area of health, in life expectancy, in the pattern of life chances in general. Shall we impose compulsory legal norms about diet, about exercise, about whatever else, […]
Jonathan Derbyshire
19May08 – 11:19
I’ve converted the archives of Jonathan Derbyshire’s old Typepad blog and built a new WordPress site for him at jonathanderbyshire.com. Update your bookmarks and blogrolls accordingly. (You can email him at that new domain as well.)
British Tin Foil Hats For British Tin Foil Hat Wearers
11Mar08 – 22:09
The best way to reveal the true political colours of a bloggertarian is to call his bluff: there’s usually a good old-fashioned red-faced colonel underneath the shiny modern exterior. Right Next Time nails the UK Libertarian Party: all liberty, all the time, for all of the people—except for Johnny Foreigner.
The Irreligious Policemen
14Aug07 – 22:43
Not having a telly, I didn’t catch the latest from Richard Dawkins, but when I visited his Website to look for clips, I saw this photo of him:
All I could think of was Michael Mann directing Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in an atheist actioner:
[A convertible Ferrari screams through downtown in slow motion, reflections of streetlights flowing across […]
Pestiferous Rhetoric
07Aug07 – 10:29
R C Metcalf, PhD, knows the erotic power of a polysyllabic adverb and harnesses it to denounce the “diversionary tactics” of public unbelievers, and to, er, divert their attentions to those damned Muslims:
The new atheists are a tumescent bunch, unquestionably articulate, yet consummately misguided. Their incendiary rhetoric can’t help but stir the emotions of the majority […]
Dialectical Minimalism
14Jul07 – 12:17
Damian:
[T]he impression I get is that Norm is more forgiving of Eagleton’s errors of reasoning than he should be
Norm:
Damian leaves an impression about my viewpoints that I feel I have a right to comment on.
Damian:
I’d happily place a bet with Norm on which of the two of them will be considered worth reading in two hundred years’ time.
But […]
World Of Wonga
01Jul07 – 11:38
I caught up with wongaBlog this morning. I enjoyed this post about Jonathan Edwards’ reflections on his conversion from Christianity to atheism. It’s all downhill from here, Jonathan. Believers might be wrong, but believing often makes for happier and more successful people; and I enjoyed this marvellous rant about anti speed camera campaigners. My apologies […]
Philosophers: 2 — Scientists: 0
27Jun07 – 11:48
Last Friday I found myself stuck in a room in a Cambridge college waiting to do a photo job so I took Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations down from a shelf and, as an intellectual dwarf perched on Hindsight the Giant, sneered at it. Certain things he said appear absurd in the light of certain experimental […]
The Harsh Truth
26Jun07 – 15:13
Hot Wheels Helena is back from Glastonbury with a message for post-modernists, fundamentalists, and plain mentalists everywhere:
More info here.
[Thanks to Caroline for the pic.]
Totalitarian Political Nanny Statism Gone Mad
19Jun07 – 12:16
Over at Samizdata, California is becoming a “totalitarian” state because an overwhelming majority of the residents of the city of Berkeley voted for comprehensive regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and because San Francisco can fine pet owners who don’t feed their pets properly and fortune-tellers who don’t have a licence to practise. Britain is […]
Lefties Sell Out
31May07 – 01:38
Thank you to everyone who spoke at, helped with, and attended the Euston Manifesto Conference yesterday. Every seat was taken and then some. It was a superb meeting with some of the most interesting and thoughtful lectures I’ve heard in years—and that includes the stuff I thought was wrong. One of the best things about […]
Hamiltonian Flow
09Apr07 – 13:37
Tom Hamilton’s blogging has been particularly good lately, ranging from the Devil’s Chaplain to the Devil’s Kitchen. I recommend his excellent posts about Richard Dawkins—oldie and goodie—and his fine, if less taxing, fisking of the most superfluous blog in existence not written by someone called Brittany: hoisting out the middle wicket and scooping up an […]
Leggo!
22Jan07 – 09:33
Via things magazine, I discovered an article in the Archinect about how when the people of the virtual community Second Life are given freedom to build whatever they want they recreate suburbia.The author of the piece broadcasts his own prejudices. I hate shopping as well, but I winced at this:
[L]ike most utopias, [Second Life] is […]
Kant, Not Puccini
20Jan07 – 21:51
You can download a series of Glasgow University lectures about Kant on MP3.
Needle
19Jan07 – 15:15
When I used to work for the Medical Research Council, I did my best not to bore people with it on this site. I took up the name “PooterGeek”—ironically, the suggestion of a summer student—so that when people searched for my name on the Web they would find biomedical publications to download rather than movie parodies.
Despite […]
Doing Wrong
17Jan07 – 15:22
Friends have told me that my obsession with freewill and my belief that there is such a thing as evil are products of my Catholic upbringing. They are, in fact, products of personal experience and of a long, dull training in human biology. I know people who simply do not believe in evil. They are […]
A Weekend Trip To The Recycling Centre
13Jan07 – 20:03
I’m busy so, instead of writing my own stuff, I’ll just point at the efforts of some other bloggers.
This at Fisking Central is a point worth making over and over again:
Utopia doesn’t refer to a better world; it’s used to describe a perfect world.
Belief in human perfectability—and its accompanying rejection of all that is imperfect—is not aspirational. […]
Clear Blue Water
20Dec06 – 22:19
First there was my shaking hands with Thatch. Then there were the disagreements about common ownership of the means of production. Now I’ve been linked by the Adam Smith Institute’s blog. My dad’s never going to talk to me again.
Registering Complaints
09Nov06 – 09:30
I hadn’t noticed this until I read Tom Hamilton’s post at Let’s Be Sensible, but the Devil’s Kitchen calls the Mr Eugenides essay that I blogged about “one of the finest posts ever written”. Does Eton College do refunds?
Also, having read the latest post at Never Trust A Hippy, I must revise my slur on smug […]
Pot-Bellied Man In Speedos Points At Naked Middle-Aged Woman And Laughs
08Nov06 – 09:07
Blogger Mr Eugenides displays courage to rival that of Leonidas (the chocolatier rather than the king of the Spartans) as he takes on intellectual giantess Polly Toynbee in the argument over government surveillance and points up classic fallacy after classic fallacy in her defence of ID cards and CCTV cameras.
What case does Mr E offer in […]
Two More Apologies
04Oct06 – 22:34
In response to the previous PooterGeek post I received an email from a reader in Dulwich who wishes to make it clear that, despite buying property there, the Thatchers never actually took up residence in her neighbourhood. I’m sorry for suggesting otherwise.
I’ve also toned down the language I used about Susan Greenfield back here because I […]
Indispensable
08Sep06 – 09:13
Wikipedia will eventually triumph over all other existing encyclopedias. Does any edition of Britannica or Encarta have a “List of films ordered by the use of the word ‘fuck’”?
Yesterday’s featured article was about philosopher and socialist Hilary Putnam, who is the Putnam in the “Quine-Putnam indispensability thesis” and definitely my kind of thinker. (By that I […]
Missed One
07Sep06 – 08:42
Welsh non-dragon Suw Charman doesn’t write very often, but she’s interesting when she does and she fought my corner against ruthless streetcorner pushers Antoine and Jackie in the 2006 drug wars. Now she’s joined the other newcomers on my blogroll.
The Future Of Darfur And The Future Of The Left
31Aug06 – 08:28
Because of a couple of gremlins over at the Euston Manifesto site we’ve accidentally been turning people away from applying for tickets to our meeting next Tuesday evening in London. It’s free and there will be three speakers on the subject: “Darfur: An Urgent Case for Humanitarian Intervention”. Follow the link to email us for tickets.
This […]
