Science, Reason and Critical Thinking: May 2010

Skeptic Trumps: Philip Pullman

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

False Idols

It seems to me that Skeptics, Atheists and Rational thinkers have become so organised of late, that many people are mistaking us for an organised religion.

Those who prefer to understand the world through the arbitrary revealed wisdom of the self-conceived deities of their specific cultural past, seem to assume that the coalescing freethinkers who take a more evidenced-based approach to their understanding, afford the same degree of worship and idolatry to their methods and pioneers.

If we did, I probably wouldn’t even go for a scientist, I’d get me one of these …

I know I'm a day late but, Happy Towel day.

Skeptic Trumps: Susan Blackmore

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Jack of Kent

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Mr. Faith Head

Here’s a quick idea for a new toy to help bring up kids to appreciate the variety of religious beliefs without all that divisive indoctrination from any one particular faith…

Mr. Faith Head comes with all the components to make your favourite religious stereotypes, or mix and match the pieces to form your very own New Age nonsense.

No? Oh well, suit yourselves.

Hat tip to: Felix Oxley (@VinylTiger)

Skeptic Trumps: Stephen Fry

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Science, Reason, Critical Thinking and Bacon Butties

Over the past week I have published Skeptic Trump cards for Jerry Coyne and Peter Singer. As a consequence of which, I have revisited some of their work and trawled the Internet for some interesting facts that I could perhaps pervert into a cheap gag to adorn their trump card.

Whilst reading up about Jerry, I came across an anecdote about an educated, seemingly rational person who simply refused to accept Jerry’s overwhelming evidence for why evolution is true.

Living in a country where evolution is only a controversy amongst the hard lined religious fundamentalists, who do their best to stir up a controversy, it’s hard to understand why so many people can reject such solid science.

In the anecdote I am referring to, Jerry presents his towering wall of convergent reliable evidence for evolution to a businessman who understands the evidence and reason presented by Jerry but nonetheless refuses to accept it as he perceives it as contradictory to his unchallengeable religious viewpoint.

What a fucktard.

We in the Skpetical community may look upon this individual with pious scorn. We are more open-minded, we are prepared to change our opinions based on incontrovertible evidence that disputes our original conclusions. How superior we are to be able to think clearly and accept sometimes counter intuitive realities no matter how ingrained in our culture.

Then I came to write Peter Singer’s trump card I read and listened to many condensed versions of his philosophies. This included some of his arguments for vegetarianism. Singer puts forward multiple reasons as to why we should be vegetarian based on energy efficiency, environmental factors and morality.

I listened to these arguments, considered them, and compared them to my own inferior arguments for eating meat. There is indeed no reason why in today’s society we should farm animals in such conditions. We could produce much more healthy vegetarian food for more of the worlds growing population. I think on the whole Peter Singer was right.

Then I made myself a delicious bacon sandwich with crispy fat and fried egg.

Perhaps I’ll think about that again next time I deride irrational behaviour.

Skeptic Trumps: Peter Singer

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Massimo Pigliucci

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Karen Stollznow

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: David Aaronovitch

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Adam Savage

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Blind Coalition

Skeptic Trumps: Jerry Coyne

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Andrew Copson

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Catherine Deveny

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Eugenie Scott

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Ricky Gervais “Devastated” by exclusion from Skeptics Trump Deck

Competition for inclusion in the Skeptics Trump deck has been fierce and is hailed as a high accolade that all Skeptic aspire to.

Over 1,000 well known skeptics eagerly submitted their application forms back in March and April with the hope that their contribution to science, reason and critical thinking would afford them a much-coveted Skeptic Trump card.

However, with limited cards available, the admissions panel operate a strict inclusion policy. Each application form is subjected to intense scrutiny to assess the sceptical credentials of the candidate and ensure they have achieved excellence in their particular field.

With the unprecedented high number of application forms received, it was inevitable that some skeptics would be disappointed.

Fame is no guarantee for inclusion and it can now be revealed that one particular candidates application form seemed rather pedestrian, relying on his inclusion in last years Simpsonized Trumps cards and his celebrity status rather than advancing the causes of skepticism.

The executive chairman of the Skeptic Trumps admission panel said that with so many well-known comedians and broadcasters getting behind the libel reform campaign and taking active roles in this years 10:23 campaign, there was simply no room for complacency, and consequently Mr Gervais’s application had been denied.

A tall lanky goggle eyed spokesman for Mr Gervais commented that Ricky is utterly devastated by this Portillo like ousting and is considering appealing the decision.

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Kylie Sturgess

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Rachael Dunlop

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Paul Kurtz

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps: Marcus Chown

Click Here for the full deck of cards (New cards added daily-ish)
Get your own personalised caricature by Neil Davies

Skeptic Trumps

Neil willing, I will continue to publish new Skeptic Trumps cards for another two weeks or so. We still have some key influential Skeptics to come so please stay tuned. I will post a full Skeptic Trumps Index after the final card. In the meantime please feel free to use the above graphic to link to the Skeptic Trumps on this site using Skeptic Trumps label.