Comments on: Tweet your skeptical journey

By: TAM 9 – Nye The Planetary Guy » Skepticality

TAM 9 – Nye The Planetary Guy » Skepticality — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:50:49 +0000

[...] by the National Humanist Society. – To make a difference we need to write your representatives. – You do not become a skeptic 'right away' you need years to go through the 'process' and requires discipline. – Sharing ideas and [...]

By: SkepTales, Woo OOO ooo! « One Astronomer's Noise

SkepTales, Woo OOO ooo! « One Astronomer's Noise — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 06:12:17 +0000

[...] recent skeptical confession prompted the bad-ass-ness himself, Phil Plait, to call for people’s skeptical stories on Twitter. The abbreviated format allowed for cleverness, [...]

By: Gus Snarp

Gus Snarp — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:50:07 +0000

@Tom #104 – There’s a link in that NPR article to critics of the study, namely the Center for Skeptical Inquiry. The article there will tell you all that you need to know, albeit not briefly. In the comments to the NPR article someone has also posted a link to another critique on Common Sense Atheism. Between these links you should be able to see what’s going on. I won’t post the actual links so this doesn’t get trapped in moderation, but you can find them from the NPR story. Brief summary: poor research design, plus bad use of statistics to make a small effect seem significant, and attempts to replicate it have so far failed.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 20:50:37 +0000

Phil,
I ran across this blog:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/01/04/132622672/could-it-be-spooky-experiments-that-see-the-future

Now I don’t believe in ESP. What is going on here?

By: Professor Mayhem

Professor Mayhem — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:48:50 +0000

Raised mostly by a skeptical grandfather. Grew up thinking I was alone in that aspect. Found out that I wasn’t, felt relieved.

By: Keith Bowden

Keith Bowden — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 06:33:41 +0000

@messier – thanks! lol
@noen, gus, joseph, et. al. (and messier):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_WRFJwGsbY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

By: Egill V

Egill V — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:03:01 +0000

my journey…

i was born in iceland.

that’s it, prolly more of a journey for the religious then for the majority of us here.

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 01:03:00 +0000

@96 Gus Snarp: Ugh. My close friend went through a postmodernist phase. Call me a philistine if you want, but it all sounds like an enormous exercise in verbal masturbation. “Hey, let’s ‘deconstruct’ some ‘text’ (break it down into constituent words devoid of original context and separate from any agreed-upon etymology) and write a 5,000 word paper on why the definition of the word “is” should really be “has been,” and why this proves that English is a homophobic language”…

@97 noen: Apologies, I know it’s been a few days and you probably won’t see this, but I just got back to it.
Question: If scientists shouldn’t comment on matters of philosophy, what gives philosophers license to make sweeping judgements of science?

By: TechyDad

TechyDad — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:50:09 +0000

@Jeffersonian,

especialy considering that Jesus would have been a Jew and wanted his followers to practice Judaism, never asking them start a new religion and naming it after him

I took a history of religion course in college. One of the first things the professor told us was that if we had any religious views at all, they *would* be offended as he was going for a historical view of religion and not a religious one. When we got to Jesus, my professor taught that Jesus actually was teaching a super-strict version of Judaism.

Let’s say you were Jewish and walking down the street. You pass a McDonald’s a smell a bacon double cheeseburger. The smell makes you think about eating one but it’s not Kosher so you avoid it. According to pretty much any Rabbi you ask, you did nothing wrong. Jesus, according to my professor, would have said that thoughts were just as sinful as actions and thus by merely thinking about eating that bacon double cheeseburger, you violated the Kosher laws same as if you actually ate it.

Other rabbis of the time (thankfully) rejected this and he was on the fringe of Judaism. There were a lot of rabbis on the fringes, most of their teachings (and their names) died with them. Somehow, though, Jesus’ teachings survived and mutated through the centuries into Christianity.

The irony, of course, is that (if my professor is correct) the people who “follow Jesus’ teachings” aren’t following anything close to the super-strict version of Judaism that Jesus was a proponent of.

P.S Beyond the memories of my college course, I have no evidence that these were the real teachings of Jesus. I present it more as an anecdote than evidence. Still, given that we know that Christianity morphed through the centuries to absorb various pagan tribes, it isn’t entirely unlikely that Jesus’ real teachings differed from what the present-day Church says he taught.

P.P.S. If anyone else has heard this Jesus Super-Strict Judaism historical theory and/or knows of any evidence to back it up or disprove it (not religious sources, of course… “The Bible says…” isn’t a valid source), I’d definitely be interested in hearing it.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 03:25:20 +0000

@27. Keith Bowden :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

Classic Python.