SCEPTICAL JAYDON

In my opinion, we think about intelligence the wrong way. I think we confuse intelligence with being highly knowledgeable or well-read. While being highly knowledgeable is a sign of intelligence, I think the main (or best) marker of intelligence is problem-solving ability. Being knowledgeable or polymathic, in my opinion, doesn't count for much if the knowledge doesn't translate into innovative, pragmatic problem-solving in the real world. And I'm not talking about making scientific discoveries or technological invention; problem-solving could involve something as little as spotting a flaw in an argument and being able to prescribe a novel way of correcting that flaw or being able to find a pragmatic, conciliatory way of settling a social dispute. Of course, much of problem-solving involves being sufficiently knowledgeable about the ontology of the problem and, maybe, even its historicity; so in a sense, intelligence is not separable from having vast knowledge. But what re...

Nigeria has been going through a turbulent couple of weeks with the #EndSARS protests. The youths have been on the streets fighting for their rights to exist and to be governed properly and incorruptibly by the country's leaders. The Nigerian Army have been widely reported by local media, international media, and tonnes of eyewitnesses to have opened fire on innocent unarmed protesters at several locations across the two weeks as well, the most significant being the truly tragic events of around 7 p.m. at the Lekki toll gate on Tuesday night (20th October). A highly religious country, roughly 47% of Nigerians, predominantly in the South, believe in the Christian God of the Bible. Indeed, during the protests, people speaking in tongues at protest venues was a common sight. It is very clear that the Christian God of the Bible (simply "God" hereafter) is thought to be omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnibenevolent (all-loving or all-caring), perfectly fr...

The problem of evil is perhaps the most pressing problem for believers in an omnipotent and all-loving God. It was one of my own reasons for leaving Christianity (number 6 on my list ). There are many versions of it, and there are also lots of responses to those versions. But in my view, there is a version of the argument that I have not heard anyone put forward as of yet and which I think has some cogent force against certain schools of Christian thought. Allow me to explain.  Christianity holds that God created the world as "very good" (Genesis 1:31). This is often taken to mean that the world was in as perfect a state as God could have made it. In addition, it is often taken to mean that what we would call natural evil  was not a part of God's original creation. There was no suffering or pain, and the suffering in the world came in later as a consequence of sin. Adam (I'll use this name as a collective term for Adam and Eve) sinned and brought death into the world ...

I often get asked by some parents how best they could teach their children the theory of evolution. The first step to teaching any theory, of course, is to understand it enough to do so. So it is important for parents to take some time to actually study the theory and understand it properly. However, in this article, I have constructed a little chit-chat between a dad and his daughter in which he attempts to explain the theory to her in as simple a way as possible. Parents may need to use pictures and other forms of visual aid and may consider purchasing resources that help their children learn about it in a fun and informative way.   Daughter : Hey, daddy. Dad : Hellooo, beautiful! How was school today? Daughter : Not bad. Just a bunch of new stuff in elementary science and math. Dad : Tell me about it. Daughter : Well, my teacher said something about how humans came to be . She said that science teaches that humans came from chimpanzees. Dad : Oh, really? Is that wh...

Homosexuality is a modern puzzle for a lot of people. In Nigeria, explicit homosexuality is prohibited on the threat of 14 years' imprisonment. While the inauguration and enforcement of this law was based almost entirely on social and religious reasons, a common argument that a lot of people have given against homosexuality is biological, at least in their view. Homosexuality is "unnatural" and "against nature," they say. I have even heard someone say "Homosexuality is anti-evolution." But what do they mean when they make statements like this? In my discussions with several people about this matter, I have found that they generally point to two "biological" meanings of "natural": Homosexuality is not found in nature. It is just the product of human whims and fantasies. Homosexuality ceases procreation. Homosexual couples cannot have children together, making homosexuality unnatural and therefore wrong. These ...

As usual, a lot of religious garbage has been flying around during the Covid-19 outbreak. Ranging from people being told not to be afraid of the virus, to outright floutings of government protocols for containment and curation, to very ridiculous claims about a state in West-African Nigeria that only began to exist in 1991 being recorded in a middle-Eastern Jewish book of legends allegedly written by goatherders thousands of years ago, we have heard it all. But nothing caught my attention quite like the pathetic, sordid claims of Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. Earlier this year, Pastor Adeboye had come up, as he and other "prophets" always do, with a series of predictions that God had allegedly given him for the year 2020. He had claimed in this set of predictions that it was going to be a "year of joy and series of victories" for his church members. He also notably said that "sin is becoming rampant...

So you want to pray to a god you claim created diseases because two people ate a fruit after a talking snake told them to. That's akin to asking a guy you claimed has stabbed you for a bandage. But let's leave all that nonsense aside and look at what we know about zoonotic pathogens, how they spillover, and what this means for those who insist invisible cloud people are going to help them. Let's look at what we actually know. Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that cause diseases in animals and humans. They often circulate among camels, cats and bats, sometimes evolving to infect people. In animals, coronaviruses can cause diarrhoea in cows and pigs and upper respiratory disease in chickens. In humans, the viruses can cause mild respiratory infections, like the common cold, but can lead to serious illnesses, like pneumonia. Coronaviruses are so named for the crown-like spikes on their surface. Human coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. They ha...

Which is more likely? The entity alleged to be the creator of the cosmos creates the first two people and places them in a magic garden. Now we all know humans learn to talk, but these two have magic genes—maybe like numerous FOXP2 genes on steroids—that allow them to speak instantly. They not only talk instantly but they also allegedly invent the first language. They are then instructed in this language by the creator not to eat a particular magic fruit in the magic garden. But a talking reptile that obviously was present during the invention of the first language—probably hid under the desk whilst Yahweh, Adam and Eve were busy in the Language Invention 001 class—told them to go ahead and eat the fruit. The creator, a.k.a. Yahweh, is really cross about this and decides to punish the first two humans and all their descendants for eating the magic fruit. So humans and all life on earth allegedly begin to suffer from parasites and pathogens. The descendants of Adam and Eve then begi...

In my article on how I quit the Christian faith and faith in gods generally, I highlighted the fact that Christians systematically stopped inquiry among believers. Believers hold that credulity is a virtue, that it is better to not know certain things if they will lead you to a "shipwreck" of your faith. Many people whom I have brought this point up against have denied that Christianity is like this, and I have even heard a number of Christian defenders say that science and inquiry have helped to strengthen their faith. In all fairness, this is probably true for a lot of Christians, especially in the Western and European worlds. But in my experience here in Nigeria, I have not yet found this to be the mainstream position. For example, while a Christian, I was hugely influenced for a period of roughly three years by the teachings of a certain pastor (name withheld). I found him to be a very intelligent teacher and expositor of the Bible, and I learnt a lot of things from hi...