You two are so cute together! 🥰

“Brexit betrayal” - oh for god’s sake..

Every day, we’re paying to be poorer. We’re paying to be second class citizens on our own continent. We’re paying to queue. We’re paying for more red tape. We’re paying to be less secure and less trusted.

Brexit IS the betrayal. And so is defending it.

Just now on Sky News: “A good night for Europe and a great disappointment for President Trump and Vladimir Putin.” I still have the ability to feel shocked when hearing words like that out loud and remembering that the current US and Russian governments are on the same side.

Hungarians celebrated the landslide defeat of Orban by singing "We Are the Champions" out in the streets

The greatest quests demand we make a sacrifice to gain their transformative grails. The sacrifice truth requires is that we discipline our ideas by ensuring their epistemic utility.

Once we say “our ideas don’t even have to be *epistemically* useful - they merely have to exhibit second order epistemic characteristics”, I think we risk losing that nobility. Our intellectual pursuit becomes less of a quest for something hard (but achievable) and more of a posture, a pose.

I really like this, because I think it sharpens the disagreement. I think what makes the quest for truth noble is precisely what it requires of us. The restraint, the care, the caution, the groundedness, the discipline. Intellectual nobility consists of these things. That our ideas are answerable.

If there is an ultimate reality to find, we don’t find it without keeping our theories disciplined by contact with the problems that motivated them. If we remove the requirement for theories to be epistemically useful, I think we untether ourselves too much. Head in sky, yes, but feet on ground!

Final worry: there are limited things any of us can dedicate our time to in this life. While we are debating which theory of consciousness (or fine tuning, or whatever) has the best secondary epistemic qualities, we could actually be searching for a real answer! Eyes on the prize!

This is how I hear arguments comparing, for instance, panpsychist and theistic accounts of consciousness. None of them do the primary explanatory work of *showing how* we observe what we observe. They don’t provide understanding. So which is “simpler” or “best predicts the data” isn’t yet relevant.

A “guess” about “ultimate reality” should do primary explanatory work. It’s meant as a map to get us from A to B. If we have rival hypotheses, none of which get us from A to B, we can argue about the font and the colours and quality of the paper all we like - we still don’t have what we need.

I worry that we fail to take the quest for understanding sufficiently seriously if we are don’t discipline our speculations with concerns about how they cash out. If the only epistemic standards we employ are secondary, we are promoting mere speculations to explanations without warrant.

I love the aspirational quality of this - I think we should certainly develop our best thoughts about experience. But surely our ideas must be “useful” in the epistemic sense - otherwise how do we know if they are the “best guess” or not? We need rigorous standards to judge the goodness of guesses.

The danger, it seems to me, is that we prematurely embrace metaphysical schemes because we enjoy some secondary epistemic qualities they might have, when they haven’t yet shown they serve the primary purpose of a hypothesis, which is to explain things. That seems to me empty theorising.

Especially since these schemes often don’t seem to advance inquiry or solve concrete problems, it seems to me we have no need to commit to any of them. If they haven’t proved their worth, why pay the epistemic cost of embracing them? If they do start to solve problems we can pick them back up.

Remain uncommitted, view metaphysical schemes as explanatory hypotheses that earn their keep through facilitating inquiry and solving concrete problems, like other hypotheses. Afford them no ontological priority - they are just epistemic tools like every other idea.

Large University of Sussex billboard on the side of a building beside a Brighton street, displaying the message “Averting an insect apocalypse” above a close-up image of a bumblebee and flowers under a clear blue sky.

University of Sussex poster inside a train carriage promoting wellbeing in education, showing two students smiling and holding ice creams, with the headline “Supporting wellbeing in education” above turquoise Southern train seats.

University of Sussex advertising display inside Brighton railway station, showing a campaign poster about protecting the real-life Paddington Bear, surrounded by travellers beneath the station’s high glass-and-steel roof.

“Revealing the history of the Universe” appears beside a Phantom of the Opera advert, with London location and social media story text overlaid on the image.

Thanks to everyone who has shared photos of our 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲. 𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄. campaign across Brighton and beyond.

It's helping more people discover what makes Sussex an exciting place to be — celebrating ideas, research, collaboration and the difference we make.

Find out more: https://ow.ly/ouqR50YvQ87

Why don’t I get invited to such parties! Jealous. 🥺🤣

Others will not care to resist, reasoning that “even if it is Christianity weaponised by the radical right, at least it’s Christianity!” They will hubristically believe they can ride the tiger. Then they will either get eaten, or have to bring it food.

My sense is that much of the hype around a religious “revival” in the UK comes from radial right political outfits, most funded from overseas. Christian voices in the UK, unaccustomed to such attention (and such money!) will find it hard to resist the temptation of speaking gigs at these events.

Great report on the radical right network being funded by Orban in Hungary. The recent conference on Christianity and “post-liberalism” at Pusey House, Oxford was funded in part by The Danube Institute. It drew major voices like Graham Tomlin and Iain McGilchrist. The should not have attended!

This is such an interesting discussion! I don’t see why we have to plump for any of these grand metaphysical frameworks, honestly. If they help advance inquiry, we can employ them as and when. But to me many of them seem not to advance inquiry at all - not enough payoff for the epistemic cost!

The Bible Society didn't just push back on critics like me: they characterised us as biased meanies who were unwilling or unable to accept the new reality. In some cases they tried to control what was being published about their research. Now they've pulled their report - but no signs of remorse.

Last August I released an exhaustive analysis of the evidence supporting the claim that a Christian revival was underway in the UK. I said that reports of a revival were not credible, and that the Bible Society's claims were overblown given the data. Now they are saying essentially what I said then.

Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds 'fraudulent' responses The original report claimed a rise in young people attending church in England and Wales.

Very happy to see this on the BBC. Last April headlines far and wide parroted the Bible Society uncritically. We've uncovered the truth. All hard evidence points to religious decline, not 'revival'. And, as of yesterday, the Bible Society pulled its report.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Momentous. The Quiet Revival report kickstarted a conversation about a so-called revival in the British church, shaping global religious discourse, helping create a narrative that religion was returning to public life. Now it has been retracted - as critics have been requesting for months.

The Atheist Chaplain: On God, Meaning, and What We Get Wrong About Religion YouTube video by Vansh

Thanks to Vansh Deswal who interviewed me for his podcast The Human Lens - we talk about meaning, spirituality, morality, faith, and God.

I love speaking with Gen Z creators because it’s like talking to my students, and that’s peak no cap. 😎

youtu.be/S9tyBaWGz3g?...

'Secularism’ is often muddled with 'atheism' or 'non-religion' when really, it's a political position advocating for the separation of the state from religion – or indeed, non-religious beliefs – so that human rights are guaranteed for *all*. It's supported by humanists but many religious people too

Secularism - a principle accepted by many religious and non-religious people - puts the human right to freedom of religion and belief front and central, together with separation of religion and state. This is a great new resource for schools from @humanists.uk

Andrew is absolutely right here. There is no single, definitive interpretation of any religious tradition, and it dodges the issue to say “Christian nationalists aren’t REAL Christians”. What’s important is how the symbolic resources of the faith are being employed and the effects that has.