On the Strange Idea That Viruses Don’t Exist

It’s generally not worth the bother of engaging the anti-vaxx movement. In my personal experience, it is awash with lies, manipulative rhetoric, bad logic, and implausible conspiracy theories (which, as with all implausible conspiracy theories, tend to...

Is Gynocentrism a Thing?

I was hired to critique a popular video in the manosphere, Traditionalism and Feminism, the Great Gynocentrisms of Our Time. It’s 12-years old but still being commented on and at 60,000 views and counting. Its host, Barbarossa (or Barbar), is no longer active...

Ross Douthat’s Worst Argument for God

I’ve written before about the recent decline of Christian apologetics (e.g. Addressing the New Christian Apologetics and Ben Shapiro’s Worst Argument for God and Another Two ‘Best’ Arguments for God?)—a trend that is illustrated by the enthusiastic revival...

How Not to Be an Idiot: Lessons from Elon Musk

Elon Musk is an idiot. He has never accomplished anything by himself in his life and has no remarkable competencies. He could be the most incompetent person on the planet. Like most rich people, he’s just lucky. And Luck Matters More Than Talent. He fell...

The Evolution of Awe vs. The Aesthetic Argument for God

Over a decade ago I wrote my last update on the science of aesthetics and how it confirms naturalism over theism (“Musical Aesthetics”), building on and updating my argument from visual science in Sense and Goodness without God with a discussion of music science. I...

A Primer on Actually Doing Your Own Research

Here I shall assemble some advice I now realize I always take for granted, but that I find even well-meaning people sometimes don’t know, yet will definitely benefit from. The idiom “Doing Your Own Research” has become a joke largely because the...

Which Is ‘Rational’: Theism or Atheism?

Of course, atheism. But in any debate with the deluded, they will claim it’s the other way around. Flat Earthers will claim the rest of us are deluded, that believing in a spherical Earth is irrational, and so on. So someone not already up to speed might not be...

A Golden Example of Antichoicers Lying to Your Face

Just this week a student in one of my online classes answered a test question with a real-world example of trying to manipulate people using numbers and graphs, which they had to debunk. The example they chose (from the course text, Levitin’s Field Guide to...

Was Daniel Dennett Wrong in Creative Ways?

The great cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett passed away this year. And shortly after, Cameron Bertuzzi interviewed a Christian apologist, Bob Stewart, on his channel Capturing Christianity, regarding “Daniel Dennett’s Philosophical...

Correcting 5 Mistakes Atheists Make About Epistemology

The title of this article is a double entendre. I’m responding to a pretty good video by Emerson Green (“atheist, non-physicalist, and host” of the podcasts Counter Apologetics and Walden Pod) titled 5 Mistakes Atheists Make About Epistemology. In...