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I thought I'd add a few thoughts I recently had regarding pascal's wager (which I have seen brandished many times as reason for why it is rational to choose belief in a divine creator).There are other respects in which I disagree with the wager, but I'll just deal with this particular one in...

Aye, and it's a convenient illusion at that (moral responsibility etc). I would actually argue (as I think David Hume did) that determinism it important to our concept of 'willing' (even if not free willing). Imagine an indeterministic world or, more specifically, an indeterministic will - every...

Who wants to enter the tunnel of ethical skepticism? It's fun, I swear!

Quoting article: To show examples of religious individuals/groups doing 'good' things does little to prove that god/religion is indispensable (I assume they mean in a moral sense). In particular, the argument has the potential for dodginess if by 'indespensable' they mean 'necessary if a...

Another interesting source: Against Nature? - an exhibition on animal homosexuality This is a brief bit of information on animal homosexuality from a museum exhibition on homosexuality in the animal kingdom . It suggests what could be called the 'alliance hypothesis' as a possible...

An example of a phenomenon which appears to be of little reproductive value, but which nonetheless manifests itself, is menopause. A proposed theory is the 'grandmother hypothesis' which suggests that in hunter/gatherer societies back in the day women were required to help with food collection...

Poor argument, biology only dictates that same-gender sexual activity doesn't produce children - not that it is wrong. Men already feel each other up playing football, what's so different about the occaisional poke? In seriousness though, homosexual behaviour is found in animals - particularly...

No, not inherently. I think both religion and atheism can lend themselves to a depressive malaise. As an atheist you can still value things and take wonder in the world around you - likewise you can find meaning and purpose in your existence (as NTB pointed out). The main difficulty, I suppose...

To bring a bit of logic into this. If the cambrian explosion cannot be explained by evolution then: Not all biological organisms can have their existence/features explained by evolution, which is equivalent to there exist some organisms whose existence/features aren't explained by evolution...

Re: intolerance Christians vs. atheists We have observed the evolution of simple organisms (e.g. the example I gave of bacteria and antibiotic resistance). [Edit: Another example is dog breeding where humans, acting as a selective environmental pressure, select certain characteristics which...

You can try and make them roughly consistent with each other. I forget who said it, but there's a quote, which looks to reconcile creationism and evolution, along the lines of 'not only did god create the universe, but he created a universe which could create itself'.

That McBeef story is fucked.

Re: intolerance Christians vs. atheists How do you choose between a judeo-christian god and other conceptually plausible alternatives? On a picky note I feel I should draw a distinction between conceptual possibility and physical possibility (or likelihood). We can conceive of the...

Re: intolerance Christians vs. atheists The key factor in the example I gave was the selective environmental pressure provided by the antibiotics. The problem with the "superbugs not super after all" statement is that it doesn't pay due attention to the fact that there is no one environment...

For those of you who dig the older stuff check out the recording from last night (the 17th,) - it's the show I went to. They actually played four songs from BSSM and one from mother's milk. It killed me when they played 'if you have to ask'... that song is one of my funk favourites. The setlist...

Re: intolerance Christians vs. atheists A few comments on things which have been said in this thread: This was written in the original article that was posted and I think that, in itself, it represents pretty poor reasoning. For analogies sake (please don't start a global warming debate) I...

If you're interested in training times check out this document (page 79 of the pdf, page 65 of the document... the next page has surgical sub-specialties): http://www.health.gov.au/internet/wcms/publishing.nsf/Content/601D99E4A4F08197CA256F8C000AEBCA/$File/mtrp8.pdf The shortest training...

One thing which is worth keeping in mind is that it's easy to confuse student based from university based trends. For example, I have heard some people ask 'why do all james ruse students get good UAIs?' or 'does going to JR make you smarter?'. The simple answer is that james ruse has a lot of...

I'm most strongly considering the paediatric/adult medicine training programs with the college of physicians. Being outside the surgical pathway wouldn't bother me too much given that surgery doesn't attract nearly as much as the options available in the college of physicians. However, I can see...

This is an article I came across from the Medical Journal of Australia which I thought some of the medical students on the forum might be interested in. It looks at different vocational specialty pathways available to medical graduates and what factors influence people to choose them. Here it...