by Carl Howard | Apr 20, 2010 | Blog Topics, Interesting Stuff, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
I’ve come across some very interesting brain disorders as part of my uni reading (as well from blogs etc). Just as examples of poor design form the best evidence for evolution, so too do the brain’s imperfections tell us more than a “normal” brain. Here’s a list of...
by Carl Howard | Mar 2, 2010 | Blog Topics, Ethics, Philosophy
In the last 2 posts about morality, I looked at moral statements being: based on empathy not provable from non-moral statements being non-arbitrary because of their evolutionary history Today I’ll look at what this means for actual morality talk. The first point is...
by Carl Howard | Feb 23, 2010 | Blog Topics, Ethics, Philosophy
In the previous post, I argued that morality is made up of basic atomic statements (eg. “causing another being to suffer for its own sake is wrong”) that cannot be proved or further broken down into non-moral statements. In a way, I’ve actually argued that metaethics...
by Carl Howard | Nov 21, 2009 | Atheism and Religion, Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Science and Skepticism
Some creationist ads were appearing on ScienceBlogs.com advertising a free creationist booklet. PZ Myers suggested readers order some and write refutations. It sounded like fun and I haven’t blogged too much on creationism, so I thought why not? If you’re feeling...
by Carl Howard | Nov 2, 2009 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Philosophy, Science and Skepticism
This post follows the posts on Galileo’s trial background and what happened at the re-enactment. Time to give my verdict. The most common “populist” argument is that the Galileo verdict was a travesty that represented a clear case of religion repressing science...
by Carl Howard | Oct 28, 2009 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Philosophy, Science and Skepticism
Now that I’ve given some background on the historical trial of Galileo, time to report on the Monday night retrial at UNSW. It had an audience of about 900 and was taped by the ABC for Compass (a show focussing on religion). You can watch Compass online no matter...