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Friday, 31 October 2014

Estranged Notions: What the Media Got Wrong about Pope Francis and Evolution

Inaccurate reporting in mainstream media shocker:

What the Media Got Wrong about Pope Francis and Evolution

Of course this all misses the point of what the real incompatibilities between evolution and Catholicism are: no teleology in nature, no Adam and Eve, no immutable human nature, "soul" as the Aristotelian form of the evolved human is not compatible with the "soul" which is individually specially created by God.

Monday, 27 October 2014

Estranged Notions: Do Atheists Believe in God After All?

Today's post:

Do Atheists Believe in God After All?

A pretty silly study on the whole; the issues of small sample size and high variance have already been pointed out by PBR. Even Horn spots the methodological issue of not using a known-nonexistent deity or similar as a control (to which I'd add, they should also have considered using one from a culture foreign to the study participants).

A possibly more serious issue is the issue of conflation of "believe" and "have an emotional reaction to", the problem with which should be obvious.

Horn also demonstrates his ignorance of the nature of delusions (quoting the idiotic "poached egg" comparison). This is best answered with this piece from Scott Alexander.

Wednesday, 22 October 2014

Estranged Notions: Can We Know God’s Existence with Certainty?

Feser again:

Can We Know God’s Existence with Certainty?

That rule about questions in headlines seems to be holding up...

Friday, 17 October 2014

Estranged Notions: What is a Soul?

Oh dear, back to Thomism again in today's post:

What is a Soul?

(And angels? really?)

Wednesday, 15 October 2014

Estranged Notions: On the So-Called “Choice-in-Dying”

Today's post, on a topic I don't think we've seen raised before:

On the So-Called “Choice-in-Dying”

Naturally Horn presents a one-sided view of the issue, though.

Tuesday, 14 October 2014

Milestones

Seems we recently passed both the 10,000'th comment and the 100,000'th pageview - milestones of no particular interest to those not committed to decimal arithmetic, but providing me with an excuse to make a new open thread :-)

Wednesday, 1 October 2014

Estranged Notions: Orwellian Analytics: Christians, Atheists, and Bad Statistics

Today's post:

Orwellian Analytics: Christians, Atheists, and Bad Statistics

There are legitimate criticisms of most social-psych research, but this article fails to exhibit any.