Jonathan MS Pearce
Patheos
United Kingdom
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Past articles by Jonathan:
Dan Barker has Written the Foreword to 30 Arguments
I am putting the finishing touches on my new book 30 Arguments Against the Existence of "God", Divine Design, Heaven, Hell, and Satan. I have really → Read More
Humanists Call On Supreme Court to Uphold Constitutional Rights of Condemned TX Inmate
This is from the American Humanist Association: The American Humanist Association (AHA) joined with other secular organizations on a friend of the court → Read More
Humanist PAC Marks Gains for Atheists and Freethinkers – and Hope for All Americans in Future Elections
(Washington, D.C., November 5, 2020) – While freethought leaders hoped for more progress this election toward a safer, saner, stronger America, they view → Read More
The Myth of Heather MacDonald’s “The Myth of Systematic Police Racism”
Confirmation bias is a pervasive challenge. I am victim to it; you are victim to it. I have been embroiled in many arguments about racial equality in many → Read More
Chomsky on How Trump Was Elected
Noam Chomsky does a really good job of explaining how Trump got elected back in 2016. There is no rocket science to this and much of this I have talked about previously. However, I like the way that, as the commentator states, Chomsky did this so concisely. What we have is → Read More
The Credibility and Number of Resurrection Witnesses
As I have previously said in my Resurrection series, starting off with looking at the contradictions within the Gospel accounts: The question then becomes, are these contradictions better explained, and are the claims themselves, better explained by an ultimate truth in them, or by an alternative theory? We know from → Read More
School admissions appeal system worsens inequalities and increases social segregation, new report finds
This unsurprising news is from Humanists UK. I will be writing something connected to this later today that people are oddly completely unaware of: The chances of parents getting a child into their first choice of school via the appeals process ‘varies considerably by family background, ethnicity, and pupil → Read More
Number of non-religious people in Britain jumps by 46%, new figures show
I'm not quite sure about the wording of the headline here from Humanists UK, but the sentiment is certainly plain to see. One of the challenges that receives the growing numbers of Muslim, Jewish and Hindu portions in the population see what you think. The number of people in Britain who say they have no religion has → Read More
World’s Happiest Countries Revealed: And Religion?
CNN have recently produced a list of the world's happiest and least happy countries. There are no prizes to those who guess the correlation between lack of religion and happiness. This is a recurring pattern that we have seen over the years. Of course, we can talk more pointedly about causality and correlation here, → Read More
What Would Be Your Last Question?
Here is a sample from thinkers from the edge.com, asked by John Brockman: John Brockman, Editor of Edge, each year asks scores of notable scientists and other intellectuals one very challenging question. For 2018 he received 284 answers to: “What is the last question?” Most were about abstruse subjects. But these six → Read More
“Socialism Always Fails”?
. The other week I was engaged with an individual on Facebook arguing the merits of employing a universal healthcare system (why yes, I am American. How did you guess?) Normally this is a waste of time, but I wasn’t doing anything else and so I figured I would engage. However, a particular exchange stuck with me. → Read More
Trump’s CPAC Speech
I don't want to obsess too much about Donald Trump, but the man has lost the plot. Whether he ever had the plot is another discussion entirely… This video, although it admittedly edits for effect, does show him as being…well…completely unprofessional. Completely unpresidential. If I was American, and I supported this → Read More
Psychiatrist: Trump’s Pre-Dementia & Cognitive Decline Getting Worse
This is something about which we have laughed and joked to some time. However, this really may be a far more serious threat or issue than we have given it credit for. Donald Trump is the single most powerful man in the world, arguably. With great power comes great responsibility and so on. Given his important → Read More
Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will
So by knowing our actions, does God cause them to be? Depending on what you believe, yes and no, and here is the whole crux of the argument about whether we have free will or not in a religious context. There are a few ways in which it is claimed how God can know of our future actions (Middle Knowledge being one). By → Read More
What Is Rationality? How This Impacts Personhood and Other Debates.
We often see rationality popping up as a property that humans apparently exclusively have. This appears in several arguments, most notably those concerning personhood (and thus abortion) as well as famous arguments like CS Lewis' Argument From Reason. I am going to look at what rationality is and hopefully show that → Read More
Humanists Conclude Oral Arguments at the Supreme Court
From the American Humanist Association: American Humanist Association Senior Counsel Monica Miller has concluded oral arguments in defense of the First Amendment before the Supreme Court of the United States. Miller argued that the 40-foot-tall Christian cross in the center of a busy intersection in Bladensburg, MD → Read More
Why Paul Didn’t Write More About Jesus – A Christian Rebuttal
Here is the latest Christian counterpoint piece from John Nelson (a Christian) in an ongoing conversation between an atheist (ex-evangelical, I believe) and a Christian theologian in training. The first and second guest posts (find them here and here) from Ed Atkinson of Wycombe Skeptics in the Pub, and occasional → Read More
Pro-Life Argument from a Zygote’s Internal Self-Organisation
Today, I want to look at a pro-life argument proposed recently by Vincent Torley. It looks at human development differing and being special on account of internal self-organisation. Let Vincent explain: Professor Condic goes on to explain (on page 11) that the embryonic development differs in one crucial respect from → Read More
Trump and the Real Motivation for Wars
Modern wars for the arguably imperialistic United States have, according to many cynics, been about money. Yes, they cost a lot, but to offset the monetary costs of war (and the massive human tragedy they inflict), the possibility of bountiful spoils is truly influential. Indeed, the spoils of oil appear to be the → Read More
Citizen Representation: Corporate Lobbying and Legalised Corruption in the US
I stated the other day that (corporate) lobbying was simply legalised corruption in the US. Big firms can buy influence and even write laws. Back in 2014, John Oliver talked us through the amount of power ALEC wields in Congress: Lobbying on the sort of scale that takes place in → Read More