My blog is a spiritual springboard?

If you're reading this on a decent-sized monitor you'll see at the top-left a search box and the words "Next Blog»". These are provided by Blogger (this is a Blogger blog). It's been a while since I clicked on the "Next Blog»" link, so today I gave it another go. Or rather, about a dozen goes. I was puzzled to find it linked each time to a blog of distinctly spiritual character — bible quotes, God-talk, prayers, Christianity, even a blog authored by a pastor.

After eight or so of these clicks I lost count, and was about to give up at nearly a dozen when I landed on a page with not a bible quote in sight. But scrolling down I found it was the blog of someone who gives Tarot readings. That, however, was a fluke — another click landed me in the goddy again and I gave up. I assume Blogger is (inappropriately) routing these links based on the content of this blog, and the preponderance of linky-Jesus isn't merely random coincidence.

The link is up there on the left — see if you get the same results.

On another matter, I've attempted a degree of consolidation here, importing some older posts from the blog I had before this one, along with any comments — which is why the Intense Debate sample on the right probably looks a bit haywire. It should settle down after a while, and then Evil Burnee will be super-spiffy and together, all set for 2014.

Burnee links for the last Monday of the year

A bit of linky catch-up as the last of this year spirals away...

Doctor Who: fifty years of Humanism
This thematic interpretation of an ongoing British TV cultural institution might be going a bit too far in the exegesis department.

Matt cartoons witty political cartoons and satirical sketches - Telegraph
Ha!

Universities should be the last place to ban free speech | Nick Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer
The answer to free speech you don't like is not censorship, but more free speech. This is especially important in a university.

Texas School Board Adopts Accurate Biology Books, Rebuffing Last-Ditch Campaign By Creationists | Right Wing Watch
I find it incredible that in modern America this is even an issue.

Tributes have flooded in – Mark Steel
On the tributes to Mandela.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee banned from having atheist on Radio 4's Thought for the Day - Telegraph
Whence this extraordinary resistance to non-theistic contributions to TftD?

Another Skepticule episode is available (with more soon to come...)

Announcing that Skepticule will be at QED in some form next April, episode 58 also deals with martyrdom, Jewish exile, deep internet, rational thought, altmed and the burka.

http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2013/11/skepticule-058-20131104.html

 

Enjoy, or cringe, as appropriate.

Burnee links for Friday

Get up to date with this bumper crop of links...

Don't Believe Your Eyes | Shre Design
Amazing landscapes, all fake creatively imagined.

BBC News - Neil Gaiman: 'No such thing as a bad book for children'
If we want a future of rich culture, we mustn't risk putting kids off reading.

WDDTY – Tesco choose profit over people | Western Sloth
Tut tut, Tesco.

A tribute to Prince Charles, champion of anti-science, on his 65th birthday | Edzard Ernst
Not so much a tribute, more a timeline of unjustified influence.

The Throwable, Panoramic Ball Cam Is Finally Here—and It's Incredible
An astounding merge of existing technologies, making something truly amazing for $500. Too cool for words.

Incredible Interactive Dynamic Shape Display
Amazing potential ... I think!

Confronting the World’s Great Unrecognized Crisis | Psychology Today
More than an interesting evening with friends at the pub.

Atheists Must Not Self-Censor - Council for Secular Humanism
Eddie Tabash's call to arms.

National Secular Society - Secularism seeks to balance everyone’s religious freedoms fairly. Why would anyone oppose that?
An explanation of secularism. In case it's needed. (It is.)

The Rants of Cherry Black » Blog Archive » “Superstition Ain’t The Way”
Trish reports first hand on woo in professional medicine.

Atheist Agenda Wants You to Turn Your Back on Christ
Articles like this are (...I hesitate to say "a godsend"...) welcome, because they highlight not only the object of their concern — in this case Boghossian's book — but also the fact that some cages have been badly rattled. That the article also contains obvious misconceptions and non sequiturs is a bonus.

Policy: Twenty tips for interpreting scientific claims : Nature News & Comment
Useful list for non-scientists who don't want to be misled.

School children as young as 8 told they would be labelled 'racist' for missing school trip - Telegraph
I know quite a few headteachers. I don't think any of them would have done something this crass and threatening. But I suspect there's more to this than immediately apparent.

Jehovah's Circular Witnesses

I tweeted this image of a leaflet I found on the mat this evening:

It poses a straightforward question, and I have no difficulty in coming up with an answer. The rest of the leaflet apparently seeks to persuade me I'm wrong, so let's see what its core argument is. The outside of the whole leaflet looks like this (click to bignify):

The inside of the leaflet is where the question is given thorough investigation, and a cogent argument presented (click to bignify, and excuse my sarcasm):

The answer to the question, "Can the dead really live again?" is yes, because it says so in the Bible. Naturally this leads to the next question, "Can we really believe what the Bible says?" And surprise, surprise, the answer to that is also yes, because (see the three reasons on the right hand side above) it says so in the Bible.

Just who is this leaflet aimed at?

---

For all those who have left their brains outside for the evening there's a PDF of this leaflet on the JW website:
http://download.jw.org/files/media_books/c4/T-35_E.pdf

Burnee links for Wednesday

National Secular Society - BBC Trust rejects Thought for the Day bias complaint
I missed this TftD when it aired, but the BBC demonstrates its persistent active blindness on this issue.

NeuroLogica Blog » The Second Law of Thermodynamics – Again
Next time creationists make this argument, send them to Steve Novella's article.

▶ Introducing WildCat - YouTube

This robot looks like something out of Star Wars (but probably noisier). I want one of these, but smaller and battery-powered electric rather than petrol, in a kit-version — with a Raspberry Pi at its core.

First they came for the T shirt manufacturers… | Robinince's Blog
Banning Jesus and Mo tee-shirts is ridiculous. There's no right not to be offended, and in this case the offence might even be imagined.

Damian McBride's war on evidence-based policy
James O'Malley is concerned about evidence. And some bloke.

Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'
This is probably nonsense.

Presuppositionalism is dead in the water

In this week's Atheist Experience TV call-in show, hosted by Russell and Lynnea Glasser, the fundamental presupposition of "presuppositional apologetics" was shown to be utterly without foundation. I agree with Duane Davis — who posted a link to the show on Facebook — that this is "the most elegantly simple take-down of the worldview question I have ever witnessed."

http://youtu.be/5AUZDXlys5s


Duane Davis also transcribed the essential part of the exchange (beginning at about 18 minutes in), as follows:

Seth: "I believe if you reason from any other worldview you ultimately will always end up binding yourself and contradicting yourself."

Russell: "Prove it."

Seth: "Well, tell me what your worldview...describe what your worldview..."

Russell: "No, no, no. You said EVERY OTHER POSSIBLE worldview, so that means I shouldn't HAVE to give you a specific worldview because you've categorically ruled them ALL out. That's a pretty neat trick."

Lynnea: "I've got a good world view."

Seth, "Okay, go for it."

Lynnea: "I created the universe by traveling back in time."

Seth: (Incredulously) "YOU created the universe by traveling back in time? That's your worldview?"

Lynnea: "Yes. Can you disprove that?"

Seth: (laughing)"...Um, can you prove that you can travel back in time?"

Lynnea: "I don't need to. I just need to prove that the contrary is not correct" (echoing an earlier statement Seth made).

Russell: "Yeah, and I assume she's right."

Seth: "So the contrary of...the contrary of..."

Lynnea: "You're laughing because you cannot disprove it and you are stalling for time."

Seth: "Okay...uh...so you are saying that your worldview is that you can travel back in time..."

Lynnea: "Yes, I already did it."

Seth: "...and contrary to that is untrue...?"

Lynnea: "Yeah. Can you prove that that did not happen?"

Seth: "Okay, well let's start with the laws of logic. In your worldview can you account for fact that the laws of logic are universal, invariant, transcendent, and apply everywhere?"

Lynnea: "Unless I choose to suspend them." (Call back to Seth's description of miracles.)

Seth: "Well, that's not what I said earlier. What I said specifically was that God could not lie, so there's no way you could..."

Lynnea: "Well, I'm not God. I am myself. So, I can lie."

Seth: "So you CAN lie, then."

Lynnea: "I CAN. I'm not, though."

Seth: "So, you're a finite, lying sinful human being, of course I distrust what you say."

Russell: "She didn't say she was finite and sinful. She just said she can lie if she wants. That actually makes her able to do stuff that God cannot do. So she is (in unison with Lynnea) 'more powerful than God.'"

Seth: (laughing)

Lynnea: "...And I traveled back in time and I made the universe. And I can understand if your limited brain can't accept it."

Seth: "Well, let me take the worldview that I'm going to guess that you actually adhere to..."

Lynnea: "Whoa, hold on. You didn't prove it wrong."

Seth: "...You're an atheistic, evolutionist who believes that essentially all there is is matter and motion and that's it for the universe, right?"

Lynnea: "NO! I just told you what I believe."

Seth: "No...okay, if..if you want me to engage in this seriously, you have to have to tell me what your actual worldview is. Is that your worldview? You basically say that God doesn't exist and ..."

Lynnea: "Why do you think that is not my worldview?"

Seth: "Because I have common sense." (laughing)

Lynnea: "Because you have what?"

Seth: "Common sense."

Lynnea: "What does that have to do with whether it's real? Why are you applying common sense or reason to a thing..I mean...you need to start out with the belief that it's true. You can't reason yourself into it."

Seth: "Well, what I'm saying is that if you if you adopt any non-Christian worldview, eventually, if you reason it out consistently it just collapses..."

Lynnea: "Mine doesn't."

Seth: "An example would be, if somebody says there is no truth, there is no absolute truth I would simply ask, 'okay, is that statement absolutely true?'"

Lynnea: "You're saying every other worldview, but I just GAVE you one that doesn't. And you are ignoring that."

Seth: "Well, I would simply ask then, 'what confidence do I have at all that YOUR claims about that reality the world are authoritative?'"

Lynnea: "Mmm."

Russell and Lynnea: "Yes, that's a really good question."

Lynnea: "And that's how someone who's an atheist, like Russell, would approach the Christian worldview."

Russell: "Yeah, that's how someone like I, who don't think I created the Universe, would approach claims about the Bible. I would say, why would I think the Bible was authoritative to begin with? Why would I share in your unreasoned assumption that the Bible is authoritative unless we could get to some kind of other means of understanding it that way?"

Lynnea: "Even if it WAS 'INTERNALLY CONSISTENT and could not be contradicted.'"

Russell: "Yeah."

Seth: "Okay, I might go after it this way. I mentioned earlier Henri Poincare's book Science and Hypothesis. When he talk about science, he mentions a fact that is obvious but it's one of those things you don't often think about it. As far as science goes, he mentions the fact that all scientists, no matter how knowledgeable they are, always deal with a finite number of facts."

Russell: "That is true."

Seth: "So if you are going to make claims about how the Bible can't possibly be true because then..."

Russell: "I didn't say the Bible couldn't possibly be true. No one here ever said the Bible can't possibly be true. We just said basically what you said. Why would we accept it as authoritative?"

Seth: "Well, because it was written by God." (laughs)

Russell: "And why would I think that?"

Seth: "Again, because if you go after any other worldview, like.."

Russell and Lynnea: "Whoa!!"

Russell: "What about hers?"

Lynnea: "You're so rude. What's wrong with my worldview that you keep trying to ride it out?"

Seth: "Well, how... How would you prove to me that you can travel through time?"

Russell: "Don't need to."

Lynnea: "Don't need to. I already did it. It happened."

Seth: "Well, *I* want proof of it."

Russell: "Well, now you know what our objection is to assuming the Bible is true."

I think we're done here.