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Dennett contra Weinberg
There's a relatively famous quote by physicist Steven Weinberg : "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."...
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Talk tomorrow in Oxford and Minneapolis in November
Sorry this is rather late notice. I am speaking tomorrow 18 October at 8.30 in the Sutro Room, Trinity College, Oxford on ancient Greek and medieval science. The talk is a seminar for the Ian Ramsey...
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Please tell me there's more to this story
Italian scientists have been convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison for ..... failing to predict an earthquake. There has to be more to this, right? Some exculpatory detail that...
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A salute to the London Library
We are coming up to the annual general meeting of the London Library and I’ll be attending in my capacity as a Trustee. Founded in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle, the Library remains one of the leading...
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Dennett, Darwin, and Deity
Several times in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, the author Daniel Dennett discusses religion in order to argue that it is incompatible with Darwinian evolution. However, he tries to portray himself as a...
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Labour is tough enough without the National Childbirth Trust
Kirstie Allsopp, the host of UK TV show Location, Location, Location, has discovered that the National Child Trust (”NCT”) is politicised,dogmatic and scary. One of the NCT’s tutors has demanded that...
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Q&A
Happy new year everyone. I''m afraid - aside from a brief burst of activity at the beginning of last year - I haven't done a lot of blogging. I have however managed to settle into my adopted country,...
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Eric Hobsbawn was still an old Stalinist
Over the Christmas period, The Guardian has been has remembering famous people who passed away this year. Unfortunately, Neal Ascherson's piece on Eric Hobsbawn is as obsequious as the obitories at...
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Creation according to the Greeks and Babylonians
In around 700BC, a shepherd left his flocks on the slopes of Mount Helicon in central Greece and travelled east. When he reached the coast, he took passage to Chalcis on the island of Euboea, just...
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The Magic of Reality
I expect many young people will have received a copy of Richard Dawkins's book The Magic of Reality for Christmas. I even saw someone reading a copy on the tube this week. This was the paperback...
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A Brown Land of Beauty and Terror
We British are obsessed with the weather. If it rains in the summer (which happens a lot) we get depressed. If it snows (which happens occasionally) the country grinds to a halt. And it only takes...
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Fair to Middlin'
I was feeling a little left out at the recent flurry of activity here, so allow me to point all Quodlibeteers to a recent article on Cracked: 6 Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes....
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Martyred in the USSR
Like many conservatives, I get annoyed at the free pass that the Soviet Union often gets in the history of 20th century tyranny. Students think nothing of having a poster of Stalin on their walls....
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Birkbeck College, University of London
Very sorry to spam our own blog, but if any readers are graduates of Birkbeck College, please could they get in touch. For those unhappy enough not to have studied there, Birkbeck is a constituent...
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A couple of things to listen to
Audible have brought out an audiobook version of the Genesis of Science. This is very much a personal project of the narrator Rich Germaine, so I am very grateful to him for producing it....
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Lovejoy on Behaviorism
Arthur Lovejoy was an important philosopher in the early 20th century, and he presented something like Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, Lucas's Gödelian argument against physical...
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General Revelation and Science
One of the most frequent and consistent themes throughout the Bible is that creation and its elements reveal God's existence and nature. Numerous passages say that some of God's characteristics, such...
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Quote of the Day
Our glittering age of technologism is also a glittering age of scientism. Scientism is not the same thing as science. Science is a blessing, but scientism is a curse. Science, I mean what practicing...
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A Plea from a Grassroots Conservative
Lately, I've been blogging about UK politics at Huffington Post. Although it is a bit insular, I'll repost here in case anyone is interested. In common with many Conservative Party members, I want an...
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Some Old Articles Back Online
A while back, I took down some of the articles at Bede's Library and jameshannam.com because I was worried it was so long since I wrote them, they'd need serious updating. I've now accepted that I'll...
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