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'Critical Thought' Archive
Debunking The Power of Now: The Greatest Obstacle
Chapter 1: You are not Your Mind
Subhead: The Greatest Obstacle to Enlightenment pp. 11-16
Tolle encourages "finding the gold inside yourself." It's ...
Debunking The Power of Now: Introduction
Eckhart Tolle is a first-class charlatan. Despite this fact, he has sold, and continues to sell millions of copies of his ...
The Brain, Engine of Creativity
Best selling New-Age author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) recently delivered a TED talk in which she called into ...
Conspiracies and Climate Change
I received an email taking me to task for comparing the 9/11 truthers with climate change deniers. The correspondent claimed that while climate science was solid, the 9/11 truthers might ...
The Free Will Argument
Right-wing bloggers and pundits churn out a steady stream of cookie-cutter articles insisting on the "impossibility" of moral atheism, and presenting ...
Why I Choose Reality
My good friend Adam Lee, also known as Ebonmuse, who runs one of the most popular and enduring atheist sites Daylight Atheism, wrote ...
Fans of Michael and Marti Parry Respond
"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." --Christopher Hitchens Thanks to Google search or maybe word-of-mouth, a couple of ...
Psychic Smackdown: Michael and Marti Parry
Despite what they believe, or how they may view themselves, what is the appropriate response to psychics who take advantage of the vulnerable bereaved ...
www.isanyoneupthere.com
Oh, how the credulous are shaking in their boots. Searching high and low like jonesing addicts for their security blankets, their soporifics. Now comes ...
The “Radio Wave” Argument
"People in the middle ages didn't know about radio waves, yet they were everywhere. They just didn't have receivers in those days. How can ...
Science Education is not Totalitarianism
Recently I was called out by Elisheva Hannah Levin, a hypocritical homeschooling mom (supposedly a degreed Biologist). Levin balked at my stance (...
It’s Simple. Stop Lying to your Kids!
Objectivity scares the hell out of people, because facts always trump wishes. I knew that when I started writing for Black Sun Journal 7 ...
“Everyone Believes in Something”
Three simple words. "No, they don't." A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a former CUT member who I hadn't ...
Comments: Life is Short and Christianity is Logically Impossible
Two brilliant comments will have to fill in for me today since I'm having an incredibly busy week. And really, I couldn't have said it better. ...
Oxford Theologian Giles Fraser Folds Intellectual Tent
Giles Fraser, a lecturer at Wadham College, Oxford, has decided that theism is not a premise that can be defended intellectually. In an article on Ekklesia ...
Morality: Neither Scripture Nor Nihilism
Atheists are often accused of being moral nihilists. It's one of the leading smear tactics believers and bigots use against us. Russian Chief Rabbi Berel ...
Why Science “Sucks” (Is Damned Inconvenient)
Why Science "Sucks" (Is Damned Inconvenient)
Nice piece from Wired on the sad state of the public perception of science. Though I disagree with the idea that science can't handle ...
The Sadomasochism of “Hard As Nails”
There's only one word for what unordained Catholic minister Justin Fatica does, and that's sadomasochism. Not in a sexual sense, of course, but in the sense ...
John Haught’s Cliche-Ridden Caricature of Atheism
It's another groaner over at Salon. After their inexplicable dalliance with the confused ramblings of Camille Paglia, it's hard to pretend anymore that the webzine ...
New Comment Guidelines: Exhibit A
I hate having to ban commenters. It's a last resort. But the alternatives are:
Spending precious minutes addressing bad arguments that have been rebutted countless times.
Leaving unrebutted fallacies at the end ...
A Freshman Summary of Every Naive Faith Argument
I ran across this gem by freshman Sharon Neely this morning at the Tufts Daily. It would be nice to think such a person would go through college and ...
The Home Schooling Question
[UPDATE 11.01.07: From some of the comments, it's clear this should have been two separate stories. There are really two separate problems with home schooling. The ...
Al-Kafir Akbar: A Denialist Digs Himself In Deeper
It's on. As a staunch defender of the mainstream scientific consensus on AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming), which has recently been reaffirmed by the decisions of the ...
The Tyranny of Belief: Part 2
Continued from Part 1.
Beliefs fall into four main categories: opinions, predictions, superstitions, and strategies. In the first post of this series, we made the distinction ...
The Tyranny of Belief: Part 1
"Of course you have beliefs," said my friend as we sat having breakfast, "everyone does." He made a graph on the table with a ...