In my previous post we briefly looked at David Wolpe’s claim that a some aspects of experience cannot be properly captured in a “scientific” analysis of the sort most skeptics are talking about when they say religious claims lack “evidence”. According to Wolpe, and others who share his opinion, looking for evidence of God’s existence

There is an interesting debate on Youtube between Sam Harris and David Wolpe where they discuss the importance of religion and the role of religious experience as it bears on faith, morality and politics. Sam Harris is a well known anti-religious speaker and author whose fairly simple message is that religious discourse should be subjected

Author’s note: “This is the beginning of a series of posts about religious non-belief. I don’t like the term ‘atheist’ because it sounds so certain. So I use the term ‘skeptic regarding religious belief’ to denote the position of non-belief. The skeptical position that I take is that there is no good reason to believe

There’s an interview with John Chen, Blackberry’s new interim CEO on Crackberry.com that is quite interesting for those of us who are Blackberry watchers. Chen is known in the business world as a “turnaround specialist” having been at the helm of the company formerly known as Sybase. His team and the shakespeare comms marketing strategy

Kaitlyn Leis from Mathew McCarthy on Vimeo. I was digging around in the Waterloo Region Record blogs today and stumbled upon this nice video of Kaitlyn Leis and the steam powered locomotive of the Waterloo Central Railway that runs from Waterloo to St. Jacobs. The video is from Mathew McCarthy’s blog A Reason for Being.

The 470,000 sq. ft. Microsoft data center in San Antonio, Texas. Microsoft has signed a 20 year deal to buy electricity from a 55 wind turbine wind project being built just outside of Fort Worth, Texas. The wind power will be about 430,000 megawatt hours – enough to power about 45,000 homes. The energy is

Twitter is set to go public this week. Some facts about Twitter: – total Twitter losses since 2006: $500 million – total profitable years since inception: none – number of registered users: 232 million – maximum number of characters in a tweet: 140 – revenue to be generated from ads in 2013: $650 million –

Governor-General David Johnston has recently kicked off the “My Giving Moment” campaign to encourage young people to volunteer. A new campaign to encourage volunteerism, especially by younger people, has been kicked off by Governor General David Johnston. The campaign consists of print, TV and radio ads as well as a website mygivingmoment.ca Recent statistics show

Adolph Hitler ordered the seizure of thousands of pieces of art during World War II. More than 1500 paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Renoir and Chagall (among many others) were found in the Munich apartment. These had been seized during the war by the Nazis and deemed “degenerate”. They were thought to have been destroyed many

John Chen is the new interim CEO of Blackberry. Today was the day the Fairfax Financial (Prem Watsa) deal was supposed to go to the next phase. Watsa had signed a deal some months ago to buy the company for $4.7 billion and take it private. But when he couldn’t arrange the financing the way

Prime Minister Stephen Harper once again showed off his musical talents at the Conservative convention this weekend. Harper sang and played the keyboard with the band, Herringbone for a 5 song, half hour set while a few Conservatives took to the dance floor. Pretty soon people will start thinking the guy is a real musician.

The old Waterloo Post Office building was built in 1912 and has undergone many renovations over the years. The original corner clock was removed in 1956, because it had fallen into disrepair. A modern clock was added in 1969, but itwas replaced in 1987 with one based on the original drawings and specifications. This restored

SJAM Highlanders cap perfect season, win Ontario highschool title. For the fourth year in a row Sir John A. Macdonald Highlanders met the Resurrection Phoenix in the final game of the OFSSA field hockey tournament. The three previous years it was Ressurection that cme out on top. But not this year. SJAM capped off a

Rob Ford was on the radio again today addressing his faithful. According to police reports Rob Ford has been associating with the wrong kind of people, and the evidence suggests he is both addicted to alcohol and perhaps other harder drugs (like crack cocaine), and has been involved in an alleged extortion case with his

It is a common criticism of non-believers, agnostics and atheists to suggest they need “faith” just as much as religious believers. For instance, secularists as much as religious people have “faith” that the earth will continue rotating around the sun, or that an object will fall if it is released from a height. As David

The VeloCity garage work area at the U of Waterloo. Working on 30 new startups this fall. There’s no doubt the ongoing reports of layoffs and downsizing at Blackberry are painful to many individuals. Many are losing their jobs, at least temporarily. And this recurring news gives the distinct impression that both Blackberry is fading

According to many who are involved in the “aboriginal problem” in Canada, the federal Indian Act is at the heart of the problem. Here is an interpretation of the place, importance and problems associated with and stemming from the Indian Act, and an analysis of moves by the current federal and provincial governments to make

Hallowe’en is all about kids. The special day seems to actually be growing in significance, at least in some cultures, Canada among them. It is not just the commercialization, although that is certainly a factor. For kids it is a night filled with excitement over getting dressed up and canvassing the neighbourhood for candy and

Photo: John Crux/Getty With the wildfire season upon them, Aussie Prime Minister Tony Abbott has called climate change science “crap” and has denied a link between man-made climate change and an unusually high number of Australian wildfires. Abbott had recently (September, 2013) been elected running a campaign against a previously imposed carbon tax. The irony

Many parents are up in arms after a Calgary school decided to drop all academic achievement award ceremonies. The school board wrote in a letter to parents that awards don’t mean much to their recipients and “often hurt the self-esteem and pride of those who do not receive a certificate.” Many parents think these awards