January 19, 2013 – 6:40 am
If you’re going to win an argument or persuade someone to your point of view, it helps if you can tell a story. And by this I don’t mean any old story, but the sort of story that kept you awake at night as a kid, or made you cry, or made you afraid to [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Posted in Books, Economics, Law, Saturday chit-chat
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Also tagged A Christmas Carol, Andrew Norton, Carl Sagan, Charles Dickens, Free to Choose, Jane Goodall, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Paul Krugman, Road to Serfdom, Salman Rushdie, Steven Horwitz, Steven Levitt, Steven Weinberg, Sweatshop labour, The Undercover Economist, tim harford, Tyler Cowen
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February 23, 2012 – 2:19 am
Apologising for something one does not think is wrong is not very nice. Apart from anything else, it is insincere. I have done it several times in my life, once publicly. The public apology was not a success for anyone concerned (me or those who disliked me), and I have long since retracted it. Sometimes [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Posted in Britain, England, Fark!, History, Law, scotland, Skeptics
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Also tagged Adam Lusher, Camilla Long, Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph, kevin rudd, Mary Ann Sieghart, Stolen generations, stolen generations apology, Tony Abbott, tories who should bloody know better
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On May 7, 1959, British physicist and novelist C.P. Snow delivered an influential Rede Lecture at Cambridge University. His lecture concerned the intellectual division between the sciences and the humanities, and contained the following famous passage: I remember G. H. Hardy once remarking to me in mild puzzlement, some time in the 1930s, ‘Have you noticed how the word ’intellectual’ is used nowadays. There seems to be a new definition which certainly doesn’t include Rutherford or Eddington or Dirac or Adrian or me? It [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Posted in Feminism, Law, Religion, Science, Skeptics, The Left
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Also tagged Adam Smith, Amanda Marcotte, atheism, Australian Skeptics, bent spoon award, Bigfoot, C.P. Snow, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Loxton, David Hume, ESP, Harry Houdini, Lucretius, Mary Wollstonecraft, Ophelia Benson, P.Z. Myers, The Two Cultures
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October 25, 2010 – 9:54 pm
During the course of what is now a lengthy thread on the future and role of the humanities in higher education, Mel asked me a very thought-provoking question. It runs as follows: SL, do you have any thoughts on the theories and theoreticians popular in the humanities that derive in whole or in part from [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Posted in Academia, Philosophy, Science, Sexuality, Skeptics
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Also tagged Darwin, empiricism, evolution, literary theory, metaphysics, Natural law, psychoanalysis
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On the very lengthy ‘charge the Pope‘ thread, there was some discussion in the comments of the moral content of different religions. There were suggestions that some religions may in fact be superior to others with respect to their social and institutional effects, even if on an epistemological level, all of them are equally untrue. [...]
… Or, should I say, Richard Dawkins. Apparently, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are consulting their lawyers to see whether the Pope can be charged when he visits Britain in September. Mr Dawkins and Mr Hitchens believe the Pope should face charges for the alleged cover-up of sex abuse in the Catholic Church, The Guardian reports. [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Posted in England, Law, Religion, Science, Skeptics
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Also tagged atheism, Catholic Church, Charles Darwin, Christopher Hitchens, epistemology, homosexuality, is-ought problem, moral claims, morality, paedophilia, sexual abuse, the Low Anthem, The Pope
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November 23, 2009 – 9:52 am
I originally posted this comment to the Richard Dawkins forum (which gets rather bitter and nasty over time). I’m writing a novel based around the issue now, but the question originally came from one of my students. ——————————— This topic came up when I googled the question ‘what would civilisation look like without monotheism? I [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Posted in Economics, History, Law, Religion
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Also tagged alpha male, bushido, charity, japan, paganism, polytheism, Religion, rome, Skeptics, warrior code
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November 3, 2009 – 6:39 pm
Being of a libertarian cast of mind, I’ve often been of the view that all the campaigns about smoking, drugs and obesity are more than a little overdone. It’s not that I think these things are unhealthy — they plainly are. It’s more that I suspect the moral panic is made worse not because we [...]
February 22, 2009 – 1:34 am
[SL: G is a lurker and occasional commenter on this blog who describes himself as an 'amateur theologian'. I'm not sure what he means by that, because he seems pretty knowledgeable to me. His home blog is here. In this piece, he turns his mind to Richard Dawkins's popular piece of God-bashing, The God Delusion. [...]
