The rules of science

PZ Myers has a great post Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Intelligent Design. It briefly discusses, and disposes of, some of the most common intelligent design (ID) arguments. And does it so clearly.
He is a great writer – and I just don’t know how gets time to write so well and do [...]

Why We Are Atheists

Book Review: 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk
Paperback: 360 pages
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (October, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1405190469
ISBN-13: 978-1405190466
Price: US$26.95

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Wow! A book about atheism and it’s not written by Dawkins, [...]

From stones to atoms

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Book Review: The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms by Alan Chalmers
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Publisher: Springer
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9048123615
ISBN-13: 978-9048123612
US$119.00

It’s [...]

Epistemolo-what?!!

One of the biggest complaints of New Zealand scientists working in the Crown Research Institutes is bureaucracy. Or, at least that was the case during my time.
You know – stupid bureaucratic requirements like time sheets. At one stage we were being forced to break our time down to 6 min intervals! I used to say [...]

Human Morality I: Religious confusion

This is the first in a series of posts on morality. They are aimed at countering the usual religious claims for a god-given morality with current scientific understanding of how the morality of our species arose. Also, they attempt to justify a non-theist objective basis for much of the moral decisions we make. This first [...]

“Scientism” in the eyes of the beholder

Well, I have finally been accused of “scientism.” Usually considered a derogatory label it is often used unjustly. After all, there a people who wish to discredit scientists and scientific findings because they these don’t support a product, or idea, they are selling. So it does come up as a defensive term in commercial, philosophical, [...]