Tag: reason
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On the Dignity of Withdrawal
There is a distinct, suffocating odour that hangs over the modern digital agora. It is not the scent of fresh inquiry or robust debate, but of stale, recycled outrage and the metallic tang of algorithmic manipulation. It is the smell of a civilisation that has forgotten how to speak to itself, preferring instead to scream…
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Linguistic Theatre
There is a new and particularly insipid form of superstition sweeping the West, a kind of digital animism that would have made the most credulous Victorian spiritualist blush. It is the conviction that the silicon chip has acquired a soul, or at least a conscience, and that we must now hold it accountable for the…
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Reality doesn’t require Apologists
It remains a source of great amusement to me that some people style themselves “religious apologists.” Religion certainly has much to apologize for – inquisitions, crusades, genital mutilations, the ongoing sabotage of science and education – but that is not what they mean. They mean that their job is to defend religion. This is already…
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Abolish privacy
Sometimes you have one of those “What the hell did I just read?” moments. One of those moments for me was earlier this week when someone shared the manifesto “Abolish privacy” with me. People who read my blog, know that I have pretty strong opinions on privacy and I have addressed the topic here many…
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Resisting misinformation
We live in the Age of Information. Never before in the history of human civilization have so many people had access to such a wealth of information. For many of us, knowledge is quite literally at our fingertips. I used to believe that if only everyone had access to information, we would all benefit as…
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Religion doesn’t belong in the science classroom
Recently, a student from the USA contacted me to ask if I was willing to participate in an email interview. His professor gave him the assignment to interview a non-believer or a sceptic. Since he had earlier read my article “9 logical reasons why there is no God“, he wanted to interview me. I asked…