Reading Time: 11 minutes The creator of The Secret, Rhonda Byrne, taught woo enthusiasts they could think themselves rich, healthy, and happy. And she did so using some really reprehensible and sketchy science-based and historical claims. Today, let’s look at some of those false claims.
scientific method
Posted inHealth, News, Philosophy, Religion, Science
The Coronavirus and a Better Gospel
Reading Time: 6 minutes As you may already know, last night President Trump phoned in an interview to Hannity and brazenly disagreed with the World Health Organization about the fatality rate of the latest global health threat, the COVID-19 virus. Viewing the appearance of the Coronavirus as more of a public relations issue than as a matter of public health, Trump takes […]
Posted inPolitics
Dems vs GOP: Voter Confidence in Scientific Method
Reading Time: 2 minutes Pew Research Center recently carried out some research with regard to science and voter preference. The piece is interesting and worth a read, but what stuck out for me was the confidence in the scientific method. As Pew stated: Factual knowledge alone does not explain public confidence in the scientific method to produce sound conclusions. Overall, […]
Posted inReligion
The Problem of Wingnuts: How One Untrue Belief Inevitably Becomes Many
Reading Time: 8 minutes Untrue beliefs only proliferate. That’s really the quintessential Problem of Wingnuts: What gets weird can only get weirder. Today, let me show you how it happens–and why.
Posted inReligion, Science, The Secular
Award-Winning Physicist: Science Doesn’t Support Atheism
Reading Time: 7 minutes Last week, Scientific American published an interview with Marcelo Gleiser, a theoretical physics professor at Dartmouth and this year’s winner of the Templeton Prize, in which he said some things about the interplay between science and faith that ruffled some feathers. Gleiser, who identifies as an agnostic, said a number of things I would disagree […]
Posted inCartoons, General
Tonight: Panel of Experts vs Guy with an Opinion
Reading Time: < 1 minute OK OK OK. What if scientists aren’t just making up statistics to get more grant money to fund their pet theories and instead we are actually hurting ourselves and the planet because we’re greedy and lazy?
Posted inReligion
Captain’s Log: Adventures in Mayonnaise Making
Reading Time: 8 minutes I love cooking. But sometimes my attempts to revise a recipe gets me into trouble. The most recent case in point: an attempt to revise the ingredient list for homemade mayonnaise. Today I’ll show you what happens when a revision goes hideously wrong–and how this adventure was a perfect example of how I want to live my entire life.
![By Inside_my_head.jpg: Andrew Mason from London, UK derivative work: -- Jtneill - Talk (Inside_my_head.jpg) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/onlysky.media/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/psychology.jpg?resize=550%2C290&quality=89&ssl=1)
Posted inPsychology, Science
Study Calling Out Psychology Studies Is Itself Called Out!
Reading Time: 2 minutes You may remember recently that the world of academic psychology was called properly into question. One of the main findings dealt with was whether many psych studies are repeatable. A study that is reproduced (called replications) to get the same or similar results is more robust. Single studies may just be flukes or things like […]
Posted inGeneral
Expertise, Apologetics, and David Marshall.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Recently I ran into this debate between David Marshall and Richard Carrier regarding whether or not belief in Christianity is “reasonable.” It got me thinking about apologetics generally, and about this new name specifically because I’d never even heard of him till now. Today I want to talk about how apologetics plays into right-wing Christians’ distrust of education and credentials, and what David Marshall’s brand of apologetics represents in the religion.
Posted inReligion
Naturalism: Not Gross. Not Crass. And Not Negotiable
Reading Time: 9 minutes Wow, do Christians tend to hate the idea of naturalism. One apologetics site even calls it, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, “a belief-system opposed to our god.” Notice their flowchart, by the way. It’s actually not too bad. “The natural world is all that exists, so if something falls outside the natural world, it is excluded from reality.” One almost wants to say in response “Yes, and…?”