Image: Scuola di Atene by Raphael, via Wikipedia. Recently I read a very interesting article at the Aeon website titled Your Point Is? , by author Stephen Poole. The main gist of the article was a criticism of a book called Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False by renowned philosopher Thomas Nagel. The title of the book certainly sounds impressive, and promises to contain many thought...

  It’s not often that I write about a particular political or social agenda that needs action from the community. Most of my writing consists of musings about the state of society, or a particularly nasty cultural situation. But this past week something troubling is brewing in Australia, and I am calling upon YOU to take some action. It was recently announced by The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy,...

  A common misattribution I have seen spread over the web, and one that strikes a couple of notes with me, is the one in the title of this piece, and is often credited to Benjamin Franklin. The misquote reads: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Not only did Benjamin Franklin never say this (at least not in recorded history), but his original quote had more to do with a naturalistic view of the...

  Early last year, the president of Catch The Fire Ministries, Pastor Danny Nalliah (formerly a member of the ultra-conservative party Family First) announced the formation of his new political party, “Rise Up Australia”, whose political agendas include a vigorous stance against multiculturalism and in particular the limiting of Muslims from entering Australia. The catch cry of RUA is “Keep Australia Australian.”...

  Recently I read a piece on Skepchick, an “Ask Surly Amy” blog in which the letter writer, named “Liz”, asked about a particularly awful situation she’d encountered with a male student at her university. The male student in question used the age old false argument that if a woman is falling-over drunk, or wearing a short skirt, that she is asking to be sexually assaulted. I’ve seen this argument many...