Richmond Area Free Thinkers Society

My son and I watch the television show “Arthur“. It’s based on the series of storybooks by Marc Brown, and is shown in the mornings on PBS. It’s pretty good, as far as kids shows go. It teaches some good morals and emphasizes compassion and understanding, both good traits for people of any age.

On Friday the 13th, though, they showed an episode regarding Superstition. In this episode, the science nerd “Brain” (that’s his name) devises an experiment to conclusively show that superstition is bunk. He does so by walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, stepping on sidewalk cracks, etc. The usual drills. So good so far. (Read More »)

Certain athletes are notorious for having certain routines or rituals they do because it’s “lucky”. Some people believe that “psychics” like Sylvia Browne can speak with the dead. Others still believe that eating immediately before swimming is dangerous, even life-threatening.

The common thread between all of these things is irrationality – a bizarre glitch in the part of our brains that processes reality into the stuff of thoughts. For the purposes of this post, we’re using the definition of “irrationality” that means something that lacks “a sufficient ground of explanation or of logical defense.” In other words, it’s something we believe in spite of there being any sufficient explanation for it.

But what does that even mean? (Read More »)

The other day I was browsing Kerasotes’ website and I noticed that the movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” was featured prominently in the “Coming Soon” section, receiving billing above even the next Chronicles of Narnia movie.

This was hardly the first exposure to this movie that I have had. I’ve been following it’s progress through other blogs and websites for a while now. But it suddenly made it a lot more real, and close to home. Would we really be getting Expelled shown here in Richmond?

The synopsis of the movie is this: Intelligent Design is the position that everything we see around us in the natural world must have been the product, at some level, by an unidentified supernatural designer, and that traditional solely-naturalistic explanations are insufficient to explain the complexity we see around us. Those individuals who support Intelligent Design are constantly being suppressed by the proponents of “Darwinism” (Stein’s word for “Evolution / Naturalistic worldview”). Darwinism is also “necessary, but not sufficient,” in the words of David Berlinski, for the horrible atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich.

But of course, this movie really isn’t a documentary so much as a propaganda film. With recent reviews done by Michael Shermer & John Rennie of Scientific American, and a very fresh Copyright Infringement lawsuit pending, the contents of the movie are almost moot compared to the details surrounding it. (Read More »)

One essential element of a democracy is that when people honestly disagree on how to deal with the political and social issues they face, they feel free to openly express their disagreement. In order to make a democracy work, people must be both willing and able to argue their views in a market place of ideas and allow citizens to sort the good ideas from the poor ones.

In our contemporary culture, however, the idea of argument has taken on negative connotations. We think of it as an unpleasant activity. We are admonished not to bring up the topics of politics or religion, because these subjects often produce unpleasantness. We believe that arguments are toxic and destructive of relationships. We view arguments in military terms, where one side is vanquished. Arguments are seen as damaging to the self-esteem of the “loser.” Losers of arguments may feel hurt and angry, because they perceive their loss as a personal humiliation. (Read More »)