The Smug Baldy Speaks

The other day I was thinking how awesome it would be if everything revolved around me. Seriously, if I were the center of the universe, then all problems – worldly and otherworldly – would take a back seat to my own. When I moved, I would move the universe. When I shake, I would shake [...]

The Guardian reported the interesting story of self-proclaimed psychic, Patricia Putt, and her attempt to take home 1 million dollars from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). While many “psychics” have tried to take home the top prize, which would be a scientific stamp of approval to their claims of esp or other super powers, [...]

Scientific American is reporting today that a recent survey of users of magic mushrooms have had profound mental changes that have lasted up to 14 months: Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and [...]

In my ongoing series about how local non-scientists are attempting to make scientific appeals to include intelligent design in public science classrooms in Alabama, I bring you this tidbit that appeared in yesterday’s Mobile Press Register. In letter titled, “Science not beyond error” a minister from a local Church of Christ argued: Herein lies the [...]

In a recent opinion piece in our local paper, the author announced support for something he oxymoronically called “non-religious” intelligent design (or ID), and went further to claim that this version of ID was more scientific than its predecessor since it made no claim as to the identity of the mysterious universal designer. The author, [...]

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to examine critical thinking and I’d like to get your input as well. For starters, I’ll just take on the term “Critical Thinking” itself. In later posts, I’ll cover how critical thinking is related to science and effective argumentation.

In a previous post we looked at scales of measurement – from the very very large, to the incredibly minute. In a similar vein we have Giant Stars, which provides us with a sense of just how big our biggest problems really are. As I said before, I find it reassuring when I can get [...]

I made this response on Kevin Murrell’s blog after he made the following vacuous claim: In the movie Expelled, Ben Stein gives a compelling argument for Intelligent Design. Having not seen the film yet, I can’t really comment on how compelling his argument actually was, but I suspect that it wasn’t a compelling scientific argument. [...]

I saw this comment on a religious blog, and thought I’d give it some more room here. This was made in response to a favorable review of Ben Stein’s movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed: ID isn’t really scientific and its detractors are correct to say so. However, evolution is completely neutered by LOGIC, which needs [...]

In today’s eSkeptic there are not one, but two responses to Ben Stein’s new anti-evolution film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. In the first response, Ben Stein’s Blunder, Michael Shermer recounts his own strange interview for the film, as well as several fabrications, including the one at the film’s opening in which Stein lectures at Pepperdine [...]