Category Archives: Featured

One Final Push For The 2014 #GFGS Charity Appeal

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https://www.justgiving.com/Godless-Spellchecker1/

https://www.justgiving.com/Godless-Spellchecker1/

Back in 2013, I decided to launch a charitable fundraising initiative named ‘Good For Good’s Sake’.  The idea behind Team #GFGS is a simple one; regardless of what you do or don’t believe about anything else, all that is needed to do good is to agree that doing good is worthy for its own sake.  Gods, scripture and ancient tablets are not required to appreciate the importance of our fellow primates’ wellbeing.

Witnessing the good will and compassion emanating from a large number of atheists & humanists I interact with online, convinced me that this shared camaraderie could be harnessed into achieving something good together.  And you’ve proved me right time and time again.

Our first fundraising drive for Comic Relief raised £10,930, which put us at number 6 in the top ten UK fundraisers.

We followed this up with another drive for WaterAid.  Surely we couldn’t better our last effort, could we?  Well, we did, raising an incredible £11,843.03.

This was accomplished without any media attention or corporate backing whatsoever. Furthermore, no attempts were made to indoctrinate or demand acknowledgement of a specific worldview. We simply just wanted to do something good.

This brings me to our third and current fundraising effort for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).  The target amount1 is currently set to £2,000.

We’re within touching distance of this amount, but the fundraising will end Christmas Day 2014.  If you’re yet to donate and wish to be a part of something good, now is the time to do it!  Any amount is welcomed, and you can donate a number of different ways.

Donations can be made via PayPal, Credit or Debit Card, or by Texting2 from your mobile phone.

Just giving

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Donate Via Text by following the above instructions

 

Thank you for all your support for Team #GFGS over the last two years.  Your generosity and passion is truly astounding!

  1. Update 03/12/2014 – The original target amount has been reached!  Given we seem to like a challenge, I’ve increased it to £2,250. 10/12/2014 – The target has been smashed yet again! I’ve increased to £2,500. Update 17/12/2014 – The Target has been smashed once more.  The new target is £3,000 Fundraising closes on 25/12/2014 ↩
  2. Please see the texting FAQ to ensure your country and network is supported to avoid any unwanted charges ↩

Ep#36 – Andrew Copson – Humanism

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Joining me on this week’s #GSPodcast is the Chief Executive of The British Humanist Association, Andrew Copson (@AndrewCopson).  We talk over the bonfire night fireworks to chat humanism, faith schools, the ‘Trojan Horse Plot’, the BBC, The Sunday Assembly and Assisted Dying. Also, Star Wars or Star Trek?

Also available on iTunes and Stitcher.

Support the podcast at www.patreon.com/gspellchecker

#GSPodcast Theme by Dorian Silk & The MCH


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Ep#35 – Horus Gilgamesh – Awkward Bible

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AKBTrans

The wonderfully talented Horus Gilgamesh of Awkward Moments Children’s Bible (@AwkwardBible) drops in on The #GSPodcast.  We talk his near death experience, working as a Pastor and the lost gospels.  Horus will also tell us about his well-publicised death threats.  Also, when does religious indoctrination become child abuse?  We’ll be hearing about RTS (Religious Trauma Syndrome). Buy the book here.

Also available on iTunes and Stitcher.

Support the podcast at www.patreon.com/gspellchecker

#GSPodcast Theme by Dorian Silk & The MCH



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CJ Werleman Releases Plagiarism Nonpology

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I recently wrote two blog pieces on Author CJ Werleman. The first detailed some deeply unethical methods of operating and the second revealed an apparent catalogue of plagiarism throughout his work. Prompted by these articles, Michael Luciano with the help of Peter Boghossian have done a great job of uncovering even more instances of plagiarism (14 more at last count1).

After days of lashing out, excuses and potentially libellous claims2 levelled at other public figures, Werleman has released what he understands to be an ‘apology’. You can read it in full here3, but I’ll detail below my initial thoughts regarding some of it.

“Since my recent appearance on the Young Turks Network, my criticism of Sam Harris’ position, as it specifically pertains to the main driver of terrorism led many of his ardent fans to attack me. I have no problem with that – I made myself fair game”

This is the first attempt to deceive. ‘Ardent fans’ didn’t ‘attack him’ because he criticised Harris’s position, they ‘attacked’ him because he invented it. I’d like CJ Werleman to reference what in Harris’s works justifies saying: “[Harris] Has already said, that [he] would support, possibly, a nuclear first-strike on the Arab world”. This sentence is particularly troubling given Werleman so casually interchanges the word ‘Islamist’ with ‘Arab’. Do keep an eye on that CJ. Read more

  1. Now confirmed to be 14 additional instances ↩
  2. Werleman publicly accused Sam Harris of plagiarism only to have said accusations dismantled with devastating precision here ↩
  3. It seems given the negative response to this ‘nonpology’, Werleman has now deleted it ↩

Ep#34 – Eiynah & Tommy Robinson

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Image from www.nicemangos.blogspot.com

Joining me on the show this week is Pakistani-Canadian ex-Muslim Eiynah (@NiceMangos) & founder of The English Defence League Tommy Robinson (@TrobinsonNewEra). We have a conversation about extremism, The EDL, Multiculturalism, Quilliam, Interfaith Dialogue and Eiynah’s excellent book ‘My Chacha is gay’.

 Also available on iTunes and Stitcher.

Support the podcast at www.patreon.com/gspellchecker

#GSPodcast Theme by Dorian Silk & The MCH


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Is CJ Werleman A Plagiarist?

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Image Taken From https://www.facebook.com/pages/CJ-Werleman/207324500344

Image Taken From https://www.facebook.com/pages/CJ-Werleman/207324500344

Update: 22/10/2014 – Soon after publishing this article on 17/10/2014, the charges of plagiarism contained within were confirmed to be accurate, revealing CJ Werleman to be a serial plagiarist. As a result, many new developments have occurred – including the discovery of 14 additional instances of plagiarism and a number of Werleman’s publishing outlets taking action against him. I have now added additional footnotes to highlight these developments.

I recently documented a number of concerns regarding the unpleasant behaviour of ‘Author’ and ‘Social Commentator’ CJ Werleman in my article: ‘CJ Werleman: Misrepresentation, Dubious Ethics and Unoriginal Hackery’. Expressed within that article and reproduced below are my thoughts on some of Werleman’s published writing:

‘[Werleman] is simply regurgitating past hack jobs and slapping sensationalist headlines on them’

‘…you’ve already heard this elsewhere, many times before, many years ago.’

‘Also, what he has cobbled together in his attack on Harris has already been written by others many years ago’

I attributed his imitative output to an absence of original thought rather than something altogether more cynical. But it’s now possible my feeling of ‘having read this all before’ was a symptom of literally having read some of this before.

The above article mentions Dr. Peter Boghossian (@PeterBoghossian), which subsequently prompted a conversation between us. During our conversation, Dr. Boghossian called attention to some things he’d identified in CJ Werleman’s writing that I hadn’t previously considered, and so I decided to conduct an independent investigation to determine whether or not CJ Werleman is guilty of actual plagiarism. (Parts of Dr. Boghossian’s letter have been reprinted here with his permission.)

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