Jack Charteris
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Atheists for MAGA?
Can an atheist play the Trump card? Short answer; Yes: ask Cardinal George Pell (not about atheism or Trump, but about his interpretation of Matthew 19: 14)1. Atheists are against supernaturalist deceitfulness but, being human, not above deception. Which is why atheism is not enough: it’s how you behave, not what you disdain, that marks your contribution – if any – to society. Take…
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The ‘Wisdom’ of the Not-So-Wise
“Sapientiam sapientum perdam!” (I will destroy the wisdom of the wise) – 1 Corinthians 1: 19) Why the obsession with submissive ignorance? Why ‘The Fall’ in the name of ignorance and/or as punishment for refusal to submit? Why the maleficence of vicarious punishment? Why the bishop’s crook, if not to symbolise a warped desire for power over compliant sheep? To have an intellect is…
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Faithless Reason
The enemies of reason often accuse rationalists of hypocrisy. The claim is that rationalists who oppose faith at the same time exhibit faith in reason1. This is a spurious claim because the capacity for intelligibly communicable thought is inherent; the outcomes of thought are acquired. The so-called ‘Laws of Thought’ are not options to be taken or rejected the way formulated beliefs can be.…
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Misunderstanding Science
The biggest misunderstanding about science is seen in the claim that its worldview, materialism1, is as faith-based as idealism. According to this myth, just as idealism rests on faith that some form of consciousness is the ultimate reality, so materialism rests on faith in cosmic uniformity; causal relationship; in-principle attainable certainty (or at least near-certainty). Pushing this myth is very much in the interests…
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From ‘RAFT’ to ‘CRAFT’: a Tutorial on De-Worming
Rationalism and Free-Thought together make an unsinkable ‘R.A.F.T’; buffeted by gusts of hot-air and tossed on waves of holy-water; but unscathed because truth is heat-resistant and water-tight. Free Thought is an anti-helminthic: a sure-cure for the ‘T.A.P.E-worm’ of tradition, authority, prejudice and emotion that characterises superstitious thinking. But free as it is of dogma, it has also to free itself of untested opinion and…
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Consciousness, Value and Purpose; No God in Sight.
Consciousness (awareness) is the evolved efflorescence of neural complexity. Its elaboration is unquestionably greatest in our species. Its neural base underlies perceptual experience, all of whose mysteries are solved or soluble by science. And perceptual experience augmented by further neural elaboration has led, in our lineage, to cognitive abilities to intuit, to infer, to evaluate, to assert, to question and to explain. We can…
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I Don’t Know: and Neither Do You
It is important to keep in mind that ‘Enlightenment’ science flourished in spite of, not because of, the religious indoctrination of 18th century scientists1. I used to disparage the asking of what I called ‘stupid-because-unanswerable’ questions (like “Why is there something rather than nothing?”). Of course, when questions whose answers can’t be checked are gratuitously posed, they shouldn’t have been asked in the first…
