1. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #190957 by onclepsycho on June 10, 2008 at 1:58 am

I stopped at "illogical fallacy"...

2. Happy Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #150129 by onclepsycho on March 26, 2008 at 1:27 pm

Joyeux anniversaire professeur!
avec mes meilleurs voeux.

3. The Encyclopedia of Life, No Bookshelf Required

Comment #133687 by onclepsycho on February 26, 2008 at 2:20 pm

Wonderful, inspiring project. Can't wait to browse through it. On a related note, I'd like to remind everyone about http://www.scholarpedia.org/, another amazing project well on its way now.

4. Machines 'to match man by 2029'

Comment #128553 by onclepsycho on February 17, 2008 at 11:18 am

2029?
Of course, it's kinda obvious that 2030 would be too late, and 2028 too early.

5. Council pays psychic for exorcism

Comment #127304 by onclepsycho on February 15, 2008 at 6:30 am

"Mr Burnip said: "This family was absolutely distraught and believed what was happening - that is not to say that the council believed. "

why then pay and send in an "actual" psychic? Why not just lie to the family, claim that a psychic did the job and the house is now clean? Sometimes, idiots just need a good placebo, and that's cheaper.

6. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism

Comment #115704 by onclepsycho on January 24, 2008 at 2:38 pm

GSP
You don't get to "cherry-pick" in science. You just keep the stuff that the best evidence favours. You just have to accept that the structure of DNA is as proposed by Watson, regardless of any of his other ideas, preferences, prejudices, etc. There is absolutely no problem in there. Same for Darwin. Christians, on the other hand, are not allowed to cherry-pick from the Bible, because THEY accept the idea that it is entirely the word of god. If they chose to keep only the good stuff, it means that they were able to do so on the basis of some intrinsic sense of morality disconnected from the book they worship, hence they don't need the book in the first place. Voila.

7. The New Theology

Comment #113291 by onclepsycho on January 19, 2008 at 8:22 am

"He began to think of God as a silent presence within nature"

Silent, invisible, non-intervening, odorless, tasteless... Good, we're getting closer.

8. The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief

Comment #109713 by onclepsycho on January 9, 2008 at 2:45 pm

Roger Stanyard

Yes, there's a contribution from Flew, but it seems that it's rather an embarrassment to atheists...

see
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/more_flew_peculiarities.php
and
http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/11/flews_eugenic_leanings.php

9. Religious Freedom in Military Questioned

Comment #100872 by onclepsycho on December 19, 2007 at 1:42 pm

well, it's a crusade after all.

10. The empty myths peddled by evangelists of unbelief

Comment #97107 by onclepsycho on December 11, 2007 at 12:42 pm

Oh! the profoundness of Genesis... I-D-I-O-T

Ok, can anyone tell me if this John Gray is the John Gray who wrote "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus"?

11. Dawkins - what can't he be blamed for?

Comment #75180 by onclepsycho on October 2, 2007 at 1:53 am

This is a good paper overall. But I'm rather tired of hearing atheists concede that their worldview might look "chilling", sad, individualistic or hopeless. It is not. We don't feel that way, so we have to frame it the other way round and stop thinking that people necessarily need these last refuges of consolation and "community celebration" and that they can be found only in churches.

12. Scientists Induce Out-of-Body Sensation

Comment #65511 by onclepsycho on August 24, 2007 at 2:19 pm

Nitrogenase:
the point of the study is not to show that OBEs are "simply in the mind". The cognitive and personality aspects involved in such experiences have been studied and reviewed by John Palmer, Harvey Irwin, Carlos Alvarado and Susan Blackmore at length. The neural correlates and physiological triggers of OBEs also are beginning to be understood. Check out Blanke's lab site at: http://lnco.epfl.ch/page58552.html for some papers. The significance of the study is to show experimentally that a multisensory conflict involving the whole visible body is sufficient to induce a systematic self-localization difficulty in normal, healthy subjects. One can see this as a minimal OBE, if you wish. The full-blown OBE, of course, involves a stronger multimodal and vestibular dysfunction, which hardly can be reproduced under controlled conditions.
Something that might be of some interest to atheists is the following: the third author of the new Science paper is Thomas Metzinger, a German philosopher that has this theory about OBEs being the origin of the concept of the soul (read it at: http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/publikationen/OBE_M&M_2005.pdf)