horsefly

It is often impossible to disentangle the motives. For example, it may be true that a fight over resources motivates conflict, but often that is because the proclaimed right to those resources is based on religious claims that the land concerned was promised to them by God. You can certainly add a few more wars to the Crusades as being fundamentally religious in motivation, not the least of which have involved the Taliban in Afghanistan.

I take it you haven't read the Bible or Koran then. Perhaps start with Leviticus and then return to tell me that misogyny and mistreatment of women is a "bolt on" rather than core to the religious doctrines.

Of course, no one has ever heard of a single case of a gay child being psychologically damaged by religious conversion therapy. Nor a gay person being beaten up, imprisoned, or sentenced to death in countries run by religious zealots. FFS!

The real threat of censorship captured in John Simpson's tweet. The extremely wealthy far right: https://x.com/JohnSimpsonNews/status/1780639200401879412

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1780853153480479132.html?utm_campaign=topunroll

The answer to your question can be found in my last post. You're asking a "pseudo-question". There is absolutely no answer that could satisfy your requirements because NOTHING could count as a verification that excludes that possibility.

Indeed! As a bit of a trick with the students I would ask them, "Prove to me that there are not 2000 invisible pixies in the lecture room right now". Many hilarious attempts at doing so would usually ensue, but of course the right answer was to point out the absurdity of the question. NOTHING at all could be cited as evidence that there were not 2000 invisible pixies in the room. So we are then left with two choices, either to think this failure means we should believe there actually are 2000 invisible pixies in the room, or think that we are left with no evidence at all for believing there are. Atheists take the second option (Just replace the invisible pixies with God and you will see the point). Wittgenstein, in my view, was spot on when he said "'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." In short, our language is such that we are able to ask questions like the one I posed to the students that look as if they are perfectly meaningful but are actually a result of confusion (if not simply absurd and meaningless). Substitute for "2000 invisible pixies" the word "chairs" and you have a sentence of exactly the same grammatical structure but now a sentence that has actual meaning because we can identify the truth conditions that determine its truth value (true or false).

I just don't think this is true. Who is this hostile group of atheists who are preventing people expressing their religion? If your talking about the headmistress who has banned prayer from school I think you'll find it has nothing to do with being anti-religion but more about about her peculiar form of school discipline. I know of no atheist who has protested outside a mosque, church, synagogue, or Gurdwara, calling for their closure. Atheists simply want to ensure that religious people are not given some kind of privileged position over non-religious people.

Nope!

Somewhat misleading I'm afraid. Science (in all its branches) is in the business of ascertaining facts. Philosophy is a wholly critical activity in which the status of of such facts are assessed for their significance. You would benefit enormously from reading some AJ Ayer on this (Language, Truth and Logic), or try this very readable essay by the Logical Positivist Moritz Schlick https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Philosophy You're right if you are claiming that ALL claims to knowledge (scientific, religious or otherwise) rest on certain underlying assumptions. And it is indeed the job of philosophical criticism to identify and question those assumptions. However, the merits or otherwise of certain scientific beliefs are determined by their veracity and the explanatory power of the claims they make, not philosophical criticism. I think you probably meant to refer to "scientism" when you talk of science as a "complete philosophy". Scientism is the view that there are no phenomena that can't be reducible to a scientific explanation. This, however. won't help you out in a criticism of atheism. Atheism is not a form of scientism (although you can, of course, be both an atheist and scientistic). It's simply not the case that an atheist has to believe that all empirical evidence is reducible to scientifically proven entities. If you read David Hume's empiricist arguments against the existence of miracles you will see they make not the slightest reference to anything to do with science. The atheist simply denies that ANY empirical experience (scientific or otherwise) provides evidence for the existence of God.

What utter rot. You can't rule something out that you can't comprehend because by that definition you can't comprehend what it is you're ruling out. Yet again you're trading on a completely fallacious account of what Atheism is. Atheism rests on the fundamental methodological principle that the justification of all beliefs must be founded upon some form of empirical experience. The atheist claims there is no empirical evidence that justifies a belief in God. Given that fundamental methodological principle, no genuine atheist who understands her position correctly would rule out the possibility that there ever could be such empirical evidence. If God were to appear before our eyes, perform all the extraordinary miracles for which she is famous in the bible, then we would have convincing empirical evidence, and all bar the most deranged atheists would become believers. Atheists don't rule out the existence of God by logical principle (which would be what is required to "definitively" rule out the existence of God). They express a belief that God doesn't exist on the grounds that there is no human experience or natural phenomena that requires the existence of God for it's explanation. In short, there is no evidence for the existence of God, ergo there is no evidence which would justify me believing in God.

As a staunch promoter of Enlightenment values I'm against any restriction on freedom of speech except in those instances where there is incitement to commit a crime. As such I'm against the new "hate speech" laws introduced in Scotland as it seems obvious to me that you can express hate for something without it being the case that you intend to incite violence against those you hate (e.g. I hate religious fundamentalists and racists). However, in this case I'm not convinced of your argument. The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) has absolutely no power to censor anybody. It is a body that offers analysis of what it considers to be misleading information and makes suggestions to advertisers accordingly. Its recommendations remain entirely unenforceable, and entirely within the discretion of those businesses contemplating advertising with the organisation under consideration. Nothing GDI has said restricts UnHerd's freedom of speech. If UnHerd feels it has been libelled by GDI then there is a well established system of law to which it can turn to seek remedy. Are you really suggesting that GDI should have their freedom of expression restricted? Surely you would want to protect their right to speak about what they consider to be corrupt practices, wouldn't you? Frankly, there are far more insidious restrictions on freedom of speech than an organisation that attempts to reveal in the public domain what it considers to be disinformation. We had a perfect example yesterday in the case of Hugh Grant's settlement with News International. Murdoch used his financial might to make it impossible for Grant to reveal his evidence of crimes in court. By offering a settlement for a huge amount of money that Grant's lawyers told him would be well beyond what a judge would order, Murdoch was able to shut down exposure of those alleged crimes. Bizarrely, if Grant had won his case but been awarded an amount 1-pence lower than Murdoch's settlement offer, he would have been liable to pay all the legal costs of BOTH sides ( a figure estimated to be around £10 million). As such News International is able to continue with its disinformation project, claiming it did nothing wrong. Freedom of speech is very much under threat; more than at anytime I can remember in my lifetime. For example, Braverman's draconian measures in restricting the right to protest are completely at odds with her duplicitous claims yesterday to be a defender of free expression. Thank the Lord we still have the ECHR to protect that fundamental freedom, just as Churchill intended it to be.

https://x.com/RussellScott1/status/1780686322908487787 Bought with your money during a national crisis. Estate Agent: The Tory Party

Thomas Hardy once described marriage as buying a month's pleasure for a life's discomfort.

Some claim MAGA is not a cult. This self-professed Christian not only supports a rapist and serial sex offender to become his next president, he loves him so much he has just blown at least 60% of his wealth on shares in a company that made a $58m loss on just a $4m income. Try not to laugh at his jibe at liberals:

Pair of blackbirds on the bird table this morning, feeding two already fledged youngsters. That seems very early to me.

The last time I saw a significant flock was on Halvergate marshes

Nope! (See above) You are conflating two connected but different things; "belief" and "knowledge". Atheists believe that God doesn't exist because there is no empirical evidence that points to the contrary. It is only those seeking to discredit atheism that make the further claim that atheists believe they can prove God doesn't exist. The history of epistemology (theory of knowledge) is as old as philosophy itself, and concerns the fundamental question of when a belief can be considered to constitute certain knowledge (I'm sure you are aware of Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" for example). Atheists will differ to the degree of certainty with which they believe that God doesn't exist, but none (on pain of contradicting their very own criteria of empirical evidence) will claim to know with absolute certainty that God doesn't exist. I can't prove there are not thousands of invisible homunculi inside my brain responsible for all my thoughts, but I have absolutely no evidence for believing that there are. Likewise the Atheist believes there is no evidence for believing that an invisible omniscient deity is responsible for the natural phenomena we encounter in experience. The power of the atheist position lies in the fact that human history has involved a long process of debunking religious claims through a process of empirically verifiable (scientific) evidence. An earthquake, once "explained" as the wrath of God, is now understood as an effect of natural geophysical phenomena.

I'm afraid that's ill-conceived. Religions are fundamentally defined as belief sets based upon articles of faith completely independent of empirical evidence or the strictures of reason. The "leap of faith" that every religious believer has to take is resistant to any kind of evidence of the senses, or exercise of reason. Atheism is perhaps best defined as the view that empirical evidence is essential to justify ANY belief, so rejects the "leap of faith" as a legitimate source of knowledge. It is not the view that we can know for certain God doesn't exist, it is the view that there is absolutely no empirical evidence to show that she does. If God were to turn up and empirically prove her existence then every atheist would become a believer. Thus atheism has NO articles of faith, indeed it denies any role for faith in our epistemological grasp of the world and our place in it. Ergo Atheism is NOT a faith.

The really good thing is that our momentum is huge going into the play-offs, but whoever we play will be on a real downer for their recent poor form and missing out on automatic promotion

Stormy Daniels has confirmed there was NEVER any chance of that happening

You clearly have no knowledge of organic farming at all. Also it seems you have you never heard of a compost heap.

TBF I distinctly heard the sound of full-on sobbing coming from the away end

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/liz-truss-among-over-25-32535627?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar Voters in South West Norfolk please note that your MP has spoken in parliament precisely ZERO times in 2024. Voters in South Norfolk please note that your MP has spoken in parliament precisely ZERO times in 2024 Voters in Great Yarmouth please note that your MP has spoken in parliament precisely ZERO times in 2024 Voters in Norwich North please note that your MP has spoken in parliament 4 times in 2024 Voters in Norwich South please note that your MP has spoken in parliament 8 times in 2024 Voters in North West Norfolk please note that your MP has spoken in parliament 23 times in 2024 Voters in Mid Norfolk please note that your MP has spoken in parliament 43 times in 2024 Voters in Broadland please note that your MP has spoken in parliament 48 times in 2024

You truly are shockingly thick. Not the slightest understanding of why INTERNATIONAL laws exist outside of purely national laws.