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Reading Time: 12 minutes This is a long piece, but we get onto some good stuff, so stay on target. Catholic Dave Armstrong, over at his own Patheos Catholic channel blog, has been attempting to refute my recent pieces both on Doubting Thomas and on picking apart his own responses. Unfortunately, Dave is pretty much a poster boy for […]
fairness
Posted inEthics and Morality, Politics, Psychology
Duval vs Haidt: Moral Foundations Critiqued
Reading Time: 16 minutes [This post is a guest post from Alan Duval] Jonathan has kindly invited me to present my work on the psychology of morality. What follows is largely drawn from my dissertation, which I submitted as part of the requirement for my BSc in psychology. Despite being a psychology dissertation, I did try and bring a […]
Posted inPsychology
Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God – why it is unfair that autistic people, men and scientists are less likely to believe in God
Reading Time: 9 minutes Here are some extracts from a fascinating paper released a few years ago – “Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God” by Ara Norenzayan, Will M. Gervais and Kali H. Trzesniewski. Gervais is certainly a name which keeps popping up in conversations about the cognitive functioning of people with regards to their beliefs and so on. The basic […]
Posted inUncategorized
Is Everyone’s Free Will Exactly Equal?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Anyone who has frequented my blog in the past or who is cognisant of my writing will know that I deny Libertarian Free Will (LFW) – just search my categories to the right for more information. This question was sent to me by a friend, and I think it is a really interesting line of argument:
Posted inUncategorized
God and the Problem with Age
Reading Time: 3 minutes A interesting quote came in from Marcus Ashes some time back upon which I would like to expand. He said: I haven’t read the book yet but does anyone know if it talks about the age problem with regards to Christianity? For example Christopher Hitchens died at the age of 62 and according to christianity is burning in […]
Posted inPhilosophy, The Secular
An attack on egalitarianism and the worst post and comments I have ever seen
Reading Time: 21 minutes I have recently had a conversation on facebook that left me truly flabbergasted. I think it qualifies as the most jaw-dropping conversation I have had. It was with someone whom I did teacher-training with (though who chose not to finish the course). Now I wouldn’t normally go into detail about personal matters when evaluating somebody’s claims and positions, but I think it explains so much in terms of cognitive dissonance, and is so relevant to the topic, that it does need mentioning. The person in question has certain tendencies which are deemed sinful to the Catholic Church. He lives in Brighton, ironically a city in Britain known for its diversity and sense of equality.
Posted inSex & Gender
Feminism: Christian vs atheist misogyny and sexism
Reading Time: 10 minutes I have been involved in long and protracted, and not to say a little tiring, debate on facebook about misogyny with regards to atheism, and the apparent schisms in the “atheist community”. Though most feminists will probably sigh at another man giving their tuppence on what should be a fairly straightforward point, I do feel the need to pass comment in the context of atheism and theism. Feminism in its various waves has become more and more nuanced in its outlook in what is now, in some sense, a broad collection of ideologies.