On peut envisager le fétichisme comme ayant primitivement ébauché un ordre très élevé, et trop peu senti encore, d’institutions humaines, destiné à régler convenablement les relations politiques les plus générales, celles de l’humanité... Read More | Share it now!
Why do people think objectivity exists?
Question asked here Because they learn that subjectivity exists. Both categories are – if I should say this as a historian – relatively new. The preceding concept was one of the truth, the full truth versus any half truth of mistaken... Read More | Share it now!
CFP: British Literature and Sociology, 1838-1910
Though Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel are generally regarded as the “founders” of sociology as a discipline, sociological theory was actually rooted in nineteenth-century culture as intellectuals and scientists attempted to make sense... Read More | Share it now!
Statement on the death of CC friend and colleague Bassel Khartabil
by Ryan Merkley, August 1, 2017 https://creativecommons.org/2017/08/01/bassel/ [see also our previous post http://positivists.org/blog/archives/5296] We are deeply saddened and completely outraged to learn today that our friend and colleague Bassel... Read More | Share it now!
Ein kurzer Zwischenruf gegen das angeblich so positive Engagement der Verschwörungstheoretiker
Das wäre schön, ist aber doch wohl am wenigsten der Fall. Verschwörungstheoretiker haben kein Interesse an irgendetwas, was ihnen selbst ein positives Engagement abverlangen könnte. Die Umweltzerstörung? – Verschwörungstheoretiker gehen über... Read More | Share it now!
What is the best answer to someone who says the universe is only 6,000 years old?
I had this problem more than once as a teacher of history with university students and there is one thing I found extremely effective: I ask them to contact the creationist author they admire the most, usually an expert who claims that he started as... Read More | Share it now!
The Last Religion | An interview with Hugo Pinto
Olaf Simons: You have made a beautiful film on Positivism in Brazil. "The Last Religion" (Documentary about Positivism in Brazil, 2015) from Hugo Pinto on Vimeo. What gave you the idea to work on such a – shall I say strange –... Read More | Share it now!
Atheist Dogmatics (1): Atheism is not a belief but the *absence* of belief
Sorry to begin with this part of really tricky dogmatics. It will be a dance around minute decisions, but, promised!, of tremendous consequence (as any encounter with dogmatics – yes, I know). A tour with Godless Mom™ can, perhaps,... Read More | Share it now!
Ich bin zutiefst besorgt über das politische Klima in Deutschland | Interview mit David Bardens nach dem zweiten Urteil im “Masernprozess”
Gibt es das Masernvirus? 2011 lobte Stefan Lanka, in Szenekreisen bekannter deutscher Impfgegner, ein Preisgeld in Höhe von €100.000 aus für den wissenschaftlichen Nachweis des Masernvirus. Die Ausschreibung fand ein internationales Medienecho,... Read More | Share it now!
Lorraine J. Daston & Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007) | Review
Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences—and show how the concept differs from its alternatives,... Read More | Share it now!
Some Thoughts on Objectivity, Subjectivity and Interpretation (1)
This was a recent Quora question and it keeps puzzling me. Is reality subjective or objective? If it is subjective is every interpretation of it correct? It is not that difficult to reject this question as what it is: an assumption supported by an... Read More | Share it now!
The Bardens vs Lanka Case | Chronolgy and documentation
This page is an open series of entries on the Bardens vs. Lanka case. It has been of wider interest since had immediately offered the judgments in the case triggered by Stefan Lanka‘s challenge of 2011 (see documents at the bottom of this... Read More | Share it now!
Drei Tage in einer Facebook-Hass-Gruppe “vernunftorientierter Atheisten”
Was brachte mich auf diese Seite? Gar keine so abwegige Frage. Eine Rekalibrierung meiner politischen Koordinaten durch Facebook, nachdem ich mich mit mehr Spaß mit einem Facebook Freund unterhielt, der hier schon war? Vernunftorientiere... Read More | Share it now!
Three Days in a Facebook Hate Group of “Atheists Guided by Reason”
How did I get into this group? And where is it gone all of a sudden? It has left my Facebook stream of notifications – I did not receive a note that I have been excommunicated. The content is “no longer available”, as if Facebook has... Read More | Share it now!
Some More Thoughts on Secular Humanism and Its Special Brand of Scientism
Stephen LeDrew’s Book on the Evolution of Atheism has apparently asked the right questions – if I read Patrik Lindenfors’s considerations at Humanistbloggen correctly. (The Google Translate English version is actually quite readable). What... Read More | Share it now!
Crowdfunding Comte
Two documents with the power to anticipate the age of modern crowdfunding. The first is provided by Bernard Quaritch Ltd who are presently offering the original for the price of £200: A printed receipt with manuscript insertions dated Paris, 9... Read More | Share it now!
All God’s Twitter Accounts
You are an atheist and fear that God might actually exist? A Christian, Jew or Moslem in fear that he might not? Relax and get all the the emanations collected on this site from all the Twitter accounts we have heard of. The scene is in silent turmoil... Read More | Share it now!
4 Years Later 400 Facebook Fans: Insight
We have silently taken the 400 fans threshold this week with our Facebook page. That is not very much and I will make this a silent post just with a bit of statistics and insight. We are making 100 new fans per year. You really do better with an... Read More | Share it now!
The Regressive Left and its Own Brand of Racism | a brief provocation
The regressive left accuses the progressive left of being Islamophobic, racist and Eurocentric, to be culturally imperialistic and to have rejected multiculturalism out of purely elitist snobbishness. Objectively cultures may also just compete,... Read More | Share it now!
Has progress in science and technology come to a halt?
An Aeon article dated December 2014 by the late Michael Hanlon is trying to make some apparently interesting points, but when one goes deeper, it becomes plain that his analysis is based on a couple of false premises. As Hanlon argues, it does... Read More | Share it now!