Who’d win the Fight, Santa or God? One of the worst comparisons I see us atheists make is comparing God to Santa (or any other mythological character). I understand the reason comparisons like this start. Many of us atheists regard both Santa and god as myths, which is fine, but what is not fine is that is where the comparison ought to stop. This podcast examines the issues with the comparisons, and why we shouldn’t use this argument seriously. “Santa vs God” – SciPhi…
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Is Atheism the Null Hypothesis? It is common to hear folks claim Atheism is the null hypothesis. In this SciPhi Short we will be going over what the null hypothesis is with a few examples. We will start by covering off what a hypothesis is, moving on to the null hypothesis itself, and finishing up with examinations of atheism and if it could be the null hypothesis under any definition. The Null Hypothesis: How it Relates to Atheism and God…
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Are we Really Born Atheists? We atheists have a number of things in our toolbelts, and one of those is memes. Many of these memes are oversimplifications or just flat out wrong, so I thought I would create a series to address some of our worst memes and explain why they are so bad. Something that shows a lack of epistemological understanding is the claim we are all born atheists. An atheist is one who ascribes to atheism. Atheism is polysemous,…
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What does it mean to be rational? It is common to hear that all beliefs are irrational, but is that really the case? In this SciPhi Short we will be briefly examining rationality and how it relates to belief. We will be covering: – What is a Belief – What is Rationality – States of Rationality: arational, irrational, rational Rationality: How Can a Belief Be Rational? – The Video 00:00 – Intro 00:40 – Rationality PPT Starts 00:43 – Hello…
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Conclusively Atheist? I see a lot of memes flying about the internet. Some are great, some are funny, and others are just terrible. As an atheist, I find some of our atheistic memes absolutely awful so I thought I would start a series called “Bad Atheist Memes” or “BAM!” to go over the memes, explain the issues and hopefully convince other atheists why we should stop using them. Our first meme to analyse is “Atheism is a Conclusion, Not a…
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Hume’s take on Testimony and Miracles! After our chat with Bearded Heretic and his take on the problems with testimony from a psychological perspective, we return to the topic through a different lens. We shall start with Hume on miracles and his theory on testimony and see where the conversation takes us. We also have a special guest joining us from Twitter: Alistair Ware. There’s also an unedited version of this podcast with an extra half hour’s chat at the…
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What is the Gap? Tonight we return to our discussions on the philosophy of mind. We often hear that physicalism cannot account for consciousness. That there is a gap between the physical explanations and the phenomenal experience. Come join us as we explore the ‘explanatory gap’! What does it mean to explain something? What is the explanatory gap? More p-Zombies! More Mary! The duality of experience and realisation Physicalist/Materialist responses to the gap Mind the Gap the Video…
What is a Belief? Belief is often a hot topic and a word that is sometimes said with some distaste by many of us atheists. This SciPhi Short hopes to clear up any misconceptions about the word belief, provide a number of definitions, and give examples of how it is used. The SciPhi Shortz Video on Belief 00:00 – Intro 00:54 – Slideshow Starts 01:04 – Common misunderstandings of Belief 01:25 – What is a Belief? 01:51 – Something accepted…
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Evidence is often a hot topic, and one frequently misunderstood. I covered off a number of different types of evidence before in the post Dirty Words: Belief, Faith and Evidence and we have done a small podcast on the matter too BoPping to The Evidence. Even still, sometimes it is better to see if we can approach things in another way. As such, I present my first SciPhi Short. SciPhi Shortz? The idea of the SciPhi Shortz is a quick and informative video…
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The Truth is Out There! What is truth? How can we know if something is true? What is a truth-apt statement? Do all statements hold a truth value? How does truth relate to morality? Can we have a subjective truth? In this stream, we hope to cover off these questions and examine a few theories of truth. There are actually quite a few theories of truth, but the most important ones are: Correspondence theory Coherence theory Semantic Theory Pragmatic Theory…
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