Keith Parsons's Blog, page 62

Mandating coverage is not requiring use

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Resistance to evidence

Last weekend I presented at a local conference, with faculty members from various departments across campus talking about their work. Since I have been working on a paper (with Maarten Boudry) having to do with the limits of physics and how we might find a signature of a supernatural cause in data, I talked about that—nice interdisciplinary topic and all that.



Among the responses I got, a

A non-believer's guide to biblical economics

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More nonsense from Turkey

Today's my day for pointing out horrors from Turkey. (You know, the "secular," "democratic" country whose moderate Islam US policymakers would like to see as an inspiration to other Muslims.)

I've just read about a Turkish cartoonist being prosecuted, with the state demanding one year's imprisonment for "insulting the religious values accepted by the people" in a cartoon.



The speech balloon

High weirdness on a Turkish philosophy exam

This is almost untranslatable, but I'll try. It's the answer to a Turkish high school exam in a philosophy course, which made it to the Turkish media, and was apparently originally praised by Islamists as an example of a brave Muslim student standing up to an atheist teacher.

The question is: "Prove to me that this chair does not exist (100 points)"

Answer (my translation is artificially

Dumb and Dumber

I notice that the recent posts on SO have taken a turn towards the political. Nothing wrong with that. These days religion and politics have been so thoroughly mixed that it is hard to talk about one without the other. This is especially so when candidates for high office loudly tout their religious affiliations and convictions and tout them precisely as qualifications for public office. They

Mitt Romney: A reasonable man?

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Two Executions

This post is a follow-up on the "Pro Choice and Pro Life" posting of Herb Silverberg. Herb's thoughtful reflections have added to SO's offerings, and I am surprised that they have not drawn more comments. Yesterday there were two executions, one in Texas and one in Georgia. In Texas, Lawrence Brewer was executed. In 1997, Brewer and two associates kidnapped a man named James Byrd, who had

The Non-religion and Secularity Research Network

I've occasionally complained about the lack of attention to secularity and nonbelief as an academic area of study.

Fortunately, this appears to be changing. There are enough nonreligious people around to justify some social scientific interest. Enterprises such as The Non-religion and Secularity Research Network are up and running, and should produce some interesting stuff as the field matures.

Pro-choice and pro life

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