This is the audio version of the recent YouTube Video An Article version can also be found at: Discussions and The Burden of Proof DavidianI’m Joe. I write under the name Davidian, not only because it is a Machine Head song I enjoy but because it was a game character I used to role-play that…
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Are Religious People More Stupid Than 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….
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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…
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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The Rationality Thesis We take a look at the rationality thesis and delve into the rationality debate asking; are humans rational creatures that make performance errors or irrational creatures that sometimes demonstrate rationality? Dave talks about slides in this stream which you can find here: To Be or Not Be Rational – The Video This…
Testified! Today we will be looking at testimony, and whether or not it is worth anything. Are our memories to be trusted, or do they contain lots of false information? Can people create fake memories just by using words? How good are people at remembering other’s faces? We will also be coving off a pet…
The Paradox of Negative Emotions Disgust, Fear and Sadness are all negative emotions we usually avoid.Why would rational agents want to seek out things that cause them such distress? We embark on a journey through the paradox of negative emotions to gain a deeper understanding of this very thing. Disgustingly Enjoyable – The Video To…
Philosophy of Emotion, how sweet it is! Are emotions just chemical reactions? Or can we consider them more than that? Come join us for a basic introduction to the philosophy of emotion! We are also joined last minute by our friend Bearded Heretic (Luke). We look at emotion both through the lens of Philosophy and…
