Sunday 16 October 2011

Burnee links for Sunday

Matt Slick defends “honor killing”: a woman’s hymen is worth more than her life | The Atheist Experience
So much for "absolute morality".


Guest post: Baroness Greenfield, junk neuroscience, and the dangers of video games – Telegraph Blogs
Dean Burnett puts Greenfield's alarmism in perspective.


Formal debates are a win for atheists - National atheism | Examiner.com
While I support the general thrust of this article — that such debates can be ultimately beneficial to the atheist side, I'm not so sure that "atheists dominate the internet". Straightforward Google searches on "Christian" and "Atheist" appear to contradict that assertion.


C4ID's Dr Noble responds to Attenborough—in the style of a creationist. | British Centre for Science Education
Alastair Noble must be getting desperate. He wants children to be taught about "intelligent design" in science classes, even though he and his cohorts have never presented any scientific evidence to support it. They often claim to have a way of reliably "detecting" design, yet they never produce it — it's all talk.

They object to criticisms that intelligent design is unscientific, yet don't seem to understand what science is. When we try to find a scientific explanation for something we don't understand, we attempt to do so in terms of other things we do understand. With ID there's no such attempt, because ID proponents simply don't have an explanation, or even the beginnings of an explanation.

And school science classes are not the place for speculative ideas — schoolchildren should be taught accepted science only. For in-depth analysis and an effective way forward in science education see James Williams' new book How Science Works.


Apostles have been raised up by God | Butterflies and Wheels
Seriously? I mean, really? Demonstrably off-planet crazy.