From rationalwiki.org
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William Albert Dembski (1960–) is an American who is one of the main pushers of the pseudoscience of intelligent design, specifically his unfalsifiable concept of "specified complexity".
#Creationism #rationalwiki #pseudoscience #williamdembski #intelligentdesign
on May 19
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Climate change, also known as anthropogenic (or human-caused) global warming,[note 2] is the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its related effects. Global-warming denialism refers to claims — mostly funded by the fossil-fuel industry passing through...
on Nov 15
From rationalwiki.org
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The 4B movement is a transphobic[1][2][3] online movement originating around 2017 on Twitter[4], and from the South Korean website WOMAD[5].
on Nov 11
From rationalwiki.org
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The 4B movement is a transphobic[1][2][3] online movement originating around 2017 on Twitter[4], and from the South Korean website WOMAD[5].
on Nov 11
From rationalwiki.org
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Reem Alsalem (1976–) is a Jordanian-born anti-transgender activist who has become a key figure of the TERF movement in the 2020s. She is known for using her unpaid position as a special rapporteur on violence against women under the United Nations Commission on Human Rights' Special Procedures...
on Nov 1
From rationalwiki.org
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Aumann's agreement theorem[1] is the result of Robert Aumann's, winner of the 2005 Swedish National Bank's Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, groundbreaking 1976 discovery that a sufficiently respected game theorist can get anything into a peer-reviewed journal.
on Oct 24
From rationalwiki.org
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Motte and bailey (MAB) is a combination of bait-and-switch and equivocation in which someone switches between a "motte" (an easy-to-defend and often common-sense statement, such as "culture shapes our experiences") and a "bailey" (a hard-to-defend and more controversial statement, such as...
on Oct 18
From rationalwiki.org
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King James Only is the belief, found among some English-speaking Christians, that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is either the best translation, or the only reliable or genuine translation of the Bible in modern English. It is most prominent among fundamentalist Independent Baptists...
on Oct 5
From rationalwiki.org
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Australia is a land down under, where women glow and men plunder. A strange nation, located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, to this day mapmakers can't decide whether the land mass is the world's smallest continent or the world's biggest island. The nation is sometimes grouped together in the...
on Sep 24
From rationalwiki.org
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ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) is a controversial and pseudoscientific therapy that uses an aversion and/or reward system on autistic children, in which a desired behaviour is rewarded, while the disapproved behaviour is harshly punished.[1] Some ABA therapists refuse to participate in...
on Sep 21
From rationalwiki.org
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White Savior or White Saviorism is both a trope in media and real world phenomena which describes when a white person (or group of white people) view themselves or insert themselves into the role of needing to "rescue" non-white people from their social struggles (real or imagined). This is...
on Sep 21
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@Cosmikdebris, Spud, DuceMoosolini, Shabidoo, GeeJayK, and Tmtoulouse
on Sep 8
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Bernadette "Bernie" Spofforth (April 1969–)[3] is a UK based and South African educated businesswoman[4] and swimwear inventor[5] turned denialist and conspiracy theorist.[6] Coming to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic tweeting out against public health...
on Aug 8
From rationalwiki.org
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The Creation Research Society is, as per its website, "a professional organization of trained scientists and interested laypersons who are firmly committed to scientific special creation." The "Society" acknowledges that its responsibilities are to provide speakers for talks, issue research...
on Jul 29
From rationalwiki.org
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The Lenski affair was an attempt by politically-conservative activist lawyer Andrew Schlafly (creator of Conservapedia and endorser of creationism) to challenge the groundbreaking research of Michigan State University professor and National Academy of Science member Richard Lenski. Lenski and...
on Jul 26
From rationalwiki.org
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Sinfest is the story of how a once-successful cartoonist wrote and drew a critically-acclaimed comic for nearly twenty years before he went off the deep end and starting publishing insane rants in manga form. It is one of the longest-running webcomics on the entire internet, having started in...
on Jul 21
From rationalwiki.org
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Falun Gong or Falun Dafa (Great Law of the Falun) is a personality cult or a new religious movement disguised as a "spiritual practice" based on the Chinese qi gong and founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi. Some people — including Rick Ross of the Cult Education Institute,[3] the Chinese...
on Jul 12
From rationalwiki.org
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Project 2025 is the master plan by the Heritage Foundation to be enacted should a Republican win the upcoming 2024 presidential election.[4][5] It aims to "march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponised conservatives ready to do battle...
on Jul 11
From rationalwiki.org
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LessWrong is a community blog focused on "refining the art of human rationality." To this end, it focuses on identifying and overcoming bias, improving judgment and problem-solving, and speculating about the future. The blog is based on the ideas of Eliezer Yudkowsky, a research fellow for the...
on Jul 6
From rationalwiki.org
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Keir Rodney Starmer (1962–) is a former barrister and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, as of 5th July 2024. Prior to becoming leader of the Labour party in 2020, he had served as the party's shadow Brexit secretary and was a strong advocate for the ultimately unsuccessful cause to hold a...
on Jul 5
From rationalwiki.org
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The Chalice and the Blade (ISBN 0062502875) is a 1987 book by Riane Eisler that purports to explain the origin of "patriarchy" as the result of Bronze Age era military campaigns in Eastern Europe. It went on to become part of the body of wonderlore that "informs" Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
on Jun 24
From rationalwiki.org
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Ann “Women Should Not Vote” Coulter (1961–) is an American pundit, lawyer, and author who is the most famous Movement Conservative living in the United States, with all the vile arrogance and cruelty typical of the breed. Once upon a time, she wanted to be taken seriously as an analyst, but...
on Jun 23
From rationalwiki.org
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A coup d'état (derived from French; pronounced /ˌku deɪˈtɑ/ also known as a coup, putsch, or pronunciamiento) is a sudden seizure of government power in a state, by a group seeking to depose the current ruling body and replace it with a new one.
on Jun 16
From rationalwiki.org
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Silvio "Bunga Bunga"[2] Berlusconi (1936–2023), a.k.a "Il Cavaliere", was an Italian lounge singer, media mogul, and career criminal/politician,[3]:159-162[4] having served three terms as Prime Minister. He was the leader of Forza Italia (FI, literally Let's Go, Italy!,...
on Jun 3
From rationalwiki.org
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The Political Compass™ is an online test made in the UK by a political journalist and a professor of social history.[1][2] It places people's political views on two axes instead of the traditional left-to-right axis.
on May 28
From rationalwiki.org
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Benjamin "(You have the brain of a dehydrated) Bibi" Netanyahu (1949–) is the pro-apartheid,[note 1] war criminal, Chairman of the Likud Party and current Prime Minister of Israel, having replaced (or ousted) the outgoing Ariel Sharon. If Sharon was Israel's Bush, Netanyahu was its...
on May 27
From rationalwiki.org
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Michael Coombs (online pseudonyms: Mikemikev,[note 1] Vekimekim, Antifungal16, Varg88, Johnny Reb, Thinderstruck2, Felicit52636930, Max Triggers, Rupert Smythe, Planktonshoe, Chimpin25 and most recently Chimpin26358843) is a British neo-Nazi and white supremacist internet...
on May 25
From rationalwiki.org
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The Dendera lamp is a claim by some conspiracy theorists and "alternate" history nuts that reliefs in the temple of Dendera in Egypt "prove" that the Ancient Egyptians harnessed electricity and used it for lighting.
on May 21
From rationalwiki.org
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The homosexual agenda (sometimes gay agenda) is a homophobic conspiracy theory originally created by the Religious Right in the United States, which alleges that homosexuals are trying to infiltrate and corrupt all of our precious bodily fluids every facet of traditional American culture, most...
on May 16
From rationalwiki.org
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James Delingpole (1965–) is a right-wing British novelist, blogger, and in his own words, "an incredibly groovy guy."[1] He identifies himself as "libertarian" which, in his case, seems to translate as free market and anti-science, as he shows no concern whatsoever for the civil...
on May 13
From rationalwiki.org
0 1
Degrowth is an economic, academic, and social movement that argues that the objective of constant economic growth is environmentally destructive and that societies should focus on limiting economic growth in favor of producing only what is necessary to fulfill human needs and promote...
on May 13
From rationalwiki.org
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Deepity is a term employed by Daniel Dennett in his 2009 speech to the American Atheists conference, coined by the teenage daughterWho? of one of his friends. The term refers to a statement that is apparently profound but actually asserts a triviality on one level and something meaningless on...
on May 8
From rationalwiki.org
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The deep web is the part of the World Wide Web that is not findable through search engines.[1][2] In contrast, the dark web is the part of the Web that is an overlay network that can only be accessed with special software.[1] News and media outlets confuse the terms as...
on May 6
From rationalwiki.org
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Crystal woo refers to a seemingly preternatural ability to make — nay, compel — people[note 1] to assign all sorts of ludicrous powers to crystals. The folklore of many cultures as well as modern new-age medicine claim that crystals have special powers or energy. This includes pretty...
on Apr 20
From rationalwiki.org
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Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz, suspected Zodiac Killer,[3] a.k.a Lyin' Ted,[4] Sweaty Teddy,[5] or Cancún Cruz,[6] (1970–) is a Canadian-Texan[note 1] Senator and a leading light of the absurdist wing of the GOP.[7]
on Apr 20
From rationalwiki.org
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The Crusades were a series of medieval-era military expeditions sanctioned by the Catholic Church to conquer religiously significant territories in the Eastern Mediterranean. Yes, the followers of so-called "religions of peace" openly stated that they would kill millions to keep the Holy Land...
on Apr 18
From rationalwiki.org
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Crown Sterling is a crank company that exists at the intersection of pseudoscience (numerology, Pythagoreanism, snake oil cryptography), and New Age occultism (including, but not limited to, pyramidology). It is a subsidiary of Strathspey Crown, both of which were founded by Robert Edward Grant...
on Apr 13
From rationalwiki.org
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Critical race theory (CRT) is an analysis of how society views race and how it intersects with systemic institutions in the United States. This in turn became the perfect new boogeyman for the far-right to scare white people with in the early 2020s. It has also become a Republican campaigning...
on Apr 9
From rationalwiki.org
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Credentialism is excessive reliance on credentials, especially academic degrees.[2] The term originally was applied to over-reliance on credentials in hiring, but its use has broadened.
on Apr 8
From rationalwiki.org
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The Creation "Museum" is a $27 million amusement park located in Kentucky, USA just a few miles from Cincinnati.[3] Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis (AIG) founded it[4] and it is devoted to the young earth creationist idea that "The Bible is true from Genesis to...
on Apr 4
From rationalwiki.org
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Relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are many denialist talking points that seek to downplay the harm of COVID-19 — the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.
on Apr 2
From rationalwiki.org
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The COVID-19 vaccine is a type of vaccine that immunizes patients to the disease COVID-19, caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. During their first year, they saved almost 20 million lives.[1] Nonetheless, there are many concerns about the new coronavirus vaccine scaremongering about its...
on Apr 2
From rationalwiki.org
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Conversion therapy (sometimes called reparative therapy) refers to a wide range of pseudoscientific,[2][3] homophobic, and/or transphobic practices. Those who practice it believe that people who are not heterosexual and/or are transgender can and should be "cured" of their...
on Mar 28
From rationalwiki.org
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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) was a nineteenth-century French proponent of evolutionary theory. However, unlike Darwin, Larmarck expressed ideas on evolution involving "acquired" characteristics passed on to offspring, rather than genetic characteristics. For example, if you cut the tail off...
on Mar 27
From rationalwiki.org
A comparative guide to science denial
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When you watch science denial in action, you will see the same sort of arguments being used over and over, often in much the same order. Here is a handy-dandy cut-out-and-keep guide, with examples from:
on Mar 24
From rationalwiki.org
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The Conehead skulls or Paracas skulls are deformed human skulls associated with the Paracas culture in what is now Peru. They are unnaturally elongated, giving a comparatively pointed shape. Most experts believe they are the result of artificial cranial deformation, a procedure well known to...
on Mar 24
From rationalwiki.org
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The Comics Code Authority, otherwise known as the CCA, was a North American regulatory body for comic books, part of the Comics Magazine Association of America.
on Mar 20