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Cubik's Rube's Blog (21)

God's press conference fails to clarify Haiti quake questions

At a press conference held this morning, self-styled "creator of the universe" God provided disappointingly little new information as to his reasons for causing a devastating earthquake in the Caribbean country of Haiti.

Although the word of God is held by many to be a sacred and unambiguous message given to us directly by the almighty lord of all things, many commentators are expressing a growing frustration with the creator's vagueness on numerous policy issues, and unwillingness… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on January 14, 2010 at 5:46pm — 1 Comment

Apatheism

This was originally posted over at Cubik's Rube.

Apatheism

Or specifically, why I am not an apatheist.

I'm not exactly sure how long the term's been in common usage (and you know how I feel about doing research), but I'd guess it's only really taken off since atheism started becoming mainstream. For anyone not quite caught up, "apatheism" is a portmanteau of "apathy" and "theism" (or "atheism", I… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on November 27, 2009 at 5:21pm — No Comments

The Bible is WRONG!

Yeah, that's right! I'm one of those godless heathen non-believers, and I say that your holy book is full of inaccuracies! It's not historically reliable at all, let alone divine and inerrant! Contrary to what all those hard-line conservative fundamentalist wackaloons think, it actually contains numerous-

Wait.

What?

Some of the conservative nut-jobs are with me on this? Those same freakazoids who believe the universe was created 6,000 years ago based on a… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on October 6, 2009 at 12:53pm — 3 Comments

The Atheist's Guide To Christmas

This was originally posted over on my blog, Cubik's Rube.

If you want to know what I think of the Atheist's Guide to Christmas, a book that's just been released, which was put together by the lovely Ariane Sherine (organiser of the Atheist Bus Campaign) and which features essays from many of the grooviest godless guys and gals of our time,… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on September 29, 2009 at 6:13pm — 1 Comment

Faith

Today, we're going to talk about faith.

You can't say I don't tackle the Big Important Topics here. In this one post, I'm going to cover the entire foundation of almost every religion in the history of ever, the pillar on which all theology is founded, and the subject over which perhaps more hours of scholarly work and profound philosophising has taken place over the centuries than any other. The one elusive, ethereal concept whose significance has plagued the most enlightened and… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on August 31, 2009 at 1:47pm — No Comments

"But, but Jesus... there's so much proof!"

This was also posted over at Cubik's Rube, my skeptical/atheist blog.

Okay... I think we can all relax.

I didn't watch it the first few times I saw it linked, because I read the summary and it just sounded depressing. Eventually I caved in and witnessed the nightmare for myself.

It really was hideous.

Yes, it's that video of the American… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on August 15, 2009 at 4:39pm — 4 Comments

Wotan Hears A Cthulhu!

This was also posted over at Cubik's Rube.

I just watched the film Horton Hears A Who!. It was very philosophically troubling.

No, really.

I never read the book, so this rant will apply to the movie version only. And I'm sure this is one of those times where Your Mileage My Vary, as to how much I should be reading into all this or whether any of it… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on August 13, 2009 at 6:28pm — No Comments

Play your gods right

My pun muscles are letting me down if that's the best I can come up with. The New Humanist's "Zeal or no Zeal?" is perfect, and there must be other religion/game-show wordplay possibilities out there. I'll keep trying.

The point is, people in Turkey are going to be trying to convert some atheists on a TV panel show, by the clever application of flawless logic and the careful presentation of substantial evidence… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on July 3, 2009 at 5:30pm — 1 Comment

Faith of the faithless

This, and so much more, was also posted over at my blog, Cubik's Rube.

Let's own up to a dark and terrible truth.

We atheists all know that we have just as much faith in unproven superstitions as the religious people we so gleefully despise. I mean, secretly, we're all well aware that our beloved "science" is just another way of seeing the world, dependent on at least as much blind belief as, say, fundamentalist… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on June 28, 2009 at 12:44pm — 7 Comments

What if you only had a trillion years?

Cross-posted over at my blog, Cubik's Rube.

This isn't an argument I've seen put forward anywhere before, so it's possble I'm having one of my more original moments here. I've written before about the idea that only a god, or an eternal afterlife, or something of that ilk, can give life any meaning or purpose, and why I think it's bollocks. But here's a way of looking at… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on June 21, 2009 at 3:01pm — No Comments

Atlantis

This is another of those articles for which I'm having to suppress just a hint of party-pooping, fuddy-duddy guilt. Atlantis is actually a pretty cool legend, and some really fun stories have arisen around it. The Indiana Jones game, about stopping the Nazis from harnessing the immense power of a lost civilisation, was something I had many, many hours of fun with back when I was first discovering point-and-click… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on June 6, 2009 at 1:30pm — 2 Comments

Simon Singh is charming! Er, appealing!

Apparently I went to bed just too early last night to see the Twitterscape and blogosphere explode with the news: Simon Singh is indeed going to be appealing against the ruling in the preliminary hearing, in his legal case in which he is charged with libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Yay!

His book Trick or Treatment, co-authored with Edzard Ernst, is currently in the process of knocking my socks off (quite inconvenient and uncomfortable, actually, especially… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on June 4, 2009 at 6:09pm — No Comments

Putt, still aiming for the green

(See, because it sounds like it's something to do with golf, but it's actually about someone called Putt trying to win money... Yeah, so I suck at titles.)

Well, it's disappointing, but shouldn't be surprising. It's taken less than three weeks for Patricia Putt, the psychic failure of a recent paranormal challenge organised by the JREF, to turn up in… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on May 26, 2009 at 5:09pm — No Comments

Of Humanist Symposia and Amazing Meetings

The 37th Human Symposium is up, with some great links. And I'm in it! I admit, I'm usually more of a Carnival of the Godless kinda guy, and I don't get to read all that much about actual humanism itself, away from all the anti-religious stuff. I think I'm going to need to keep up with this more closely in future, though.

And on… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on May 25, 2009 at 7:39am — No Comments

More than we can handle

Here's something that's annoyed me for a while. It came up again in a couple of places in quick succession lately - once in an episode of Bones, I forget the other - so I thought it was about time to try explaining what exactly it is that pisses me off so much.

It's about the assertion that life, or fate, or God, or whatever, "never gives us more than we can handle".

I think it's a phrase that's supposed to be comforting to someone going through hard times, to reassure… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on May 20, 2009 at 4:37pm — 1 Comment

Acupuncture works!

...just as well as not doing acupuncture! Now that's what I call a medical procedure worth investing large sums of money in and foregoing other clinically proven treatments for. You don't even need to actually do it for it to magically heal you! Hey, I wonder if we can make that work with… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on May 18, 2009 at 5:19pm — 3 Comments

No true Scotsman

This was also posted on my skeptical blog, Cubik's Rube.

More colourfully named than most, the "No true Scotsman" logical fallacy is attributed to Anthony Flew, and is named for the example he gave of a potentially offensive racial stereotype named Hamish.

It's a way of sticking to… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on May 12, 2009 at 2:44pm — No Comments

Bogus! Heinous! Station!

This was also posted on my atheist blog, Cubik's Rube.

Bah.

The preliminary hearings in the legal case brought against Simon Singh, by the British Chiropractic Association, took place today, and things did not go Simon's way. I don't know much about the details of what happened, or what any of it means legally - I… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on May 7, 2009 at 6:30pm — No Comments

Don't panic! No fire!

This was also posted on my atheist blog, Cubik's Rube.

This is a great article, which further serves to intimidate me regarding the task of coming up with my own article to summarise my thoughts on the recent anti-vaccination nonsense. It makes the case strongly and succinctly that the people continuing to push a link between vaccines and autism are… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on May 5, 2009 at 5:30pm — 1 Comment

Pseudoscience

This is an extract from my latest blog post, titled "Pseudoscience".

So, I guess I should've done this one sooner. Pseudoscience is pretty much the pinnacle of anathema to everything I'm struggling for on this blog (hey, writing dozens of words about stuff as often as five or six times a month is a real struggle sometimes). I'm all about… Continue

Added by Cubik's Rube on May 2, 2009 at 1:00pm — No Comments