Flat Earthers Just Held an International Conference

What the human mind is capable of believing ... Over the weekend, hundreds of people donned their tin foil hats and flocked to Raleigh, North Carolina. Why? To attend The Flat Earth International Conference, of course. The conference was bound to be a doozy. It's schedule was chock-a-block full...

NewsTalker's Comment Structure

A few new members (especially ex-viners accustomed to NV's structure) have questions regarding the structure of comments in NewsTalkers.   The questions are fair, so here is a description of what is going on under the covers (and, importantly, why). Threaded Comments NewsTalkers is built on a...

Guide to the Tracker

What is a Tracker? A tracker is a mechanism built within a discussion forum that tracks comment activity and presents a custom record of this tracking for each user.  The tracker is based on the idea that each user wants to follow activity on one or more articles (a discussion or a blog)....

Sophistry

William Lane Craig is one of the best known contemporary Christian apologists.   He is very intelligent, well read, articulate, disciplined and poised.   He is a debate machine who has performed this role successfully for decades.    Seems to me it would be interesting to take some of Dr....

Presuming Certainty

Theological discussions often turn ugly.   A major contributing factor is our terminology.  Theists seem to equate 'atheist' with 'evil' while atheists liken 'theist' with 'mindless follower'. We routinely use the terms atheist, agnostic and theist yet it is not clear they mean what we think...

Coin Tosses and Calculating Odds

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion on the probability of winning a series of coin tosses. Everyone understands that if one tosses a single coin, the probability of heads (H) or tails (T) will be 1 in 2.   A 50/50 chance. But a number of people do not understand that tossing two or more...

But its not Proven

Objectivity Empirical science deals with reality.   Given no human being is omniscient there is always the possibility that a theory of empirical science might not be entirely correct.   No matter how thorough our scrutiny it is possible that sometime in the future reality will deliver an...

Just a Theory

If you dismiss a scientific theory as 'just a theory' you do not understand science.   The word 'theory' has an everyday (colloquial) meaning of:  "An idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action".    In this case, a theory is just an idea.    In science, a theory is: "A...

How Evolution Works (from BioLogos)

BioLogos explaining evolution to Christians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf6WB5H8KXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVq9O3F97J0  

Men with Pens

Virtually everyone agrees that the Holy books of religions (especially the Abrahamic religions) were written by ancient men.   That is, there are no popular claims that God literally wrote these books.   The claim instead is that God (Yahweh, Allah, Jehovah, ...) inspired men who then wrote the...