The Reason Stick

Wednesday, 26 May 2010

Skeptic Trumps: Philip Pullman

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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.

Saturday, 22 May 2010

Skeptic Trumps: Susan Blackmore

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Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Skeptic Trumps: Jack of Kent

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Tuesday, 18 May 2010

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)

Sunday, 16 May 2010

Skeptic Trumps: Stephen Fry

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Saturday, 15 May 2010

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.