Blog Stats
- 2,886,132 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- ANSWER THE QUESTIONS - Essay Classes on Feminism for Beginners
- What does Lee Smolin mean when he says that the most fundamental theory can have no symmetries? – GrindSkills on Lee Smolin’s Time Reborn: Physics, Evolution, Atheism, and Buddhism
- Anon on Hanger 18: 1950s Military Clerk-Typist, June Crane, Claims That There Were Alien Bodies Stored at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio
- ra on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Mars on Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- lastunicorn5 on In 1935, Were Cary Grant and Randolf Scott Sex Partners? No, But These Images Look Rather Camp
- Rhianna on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Nevaeh on Matthew 27:51-53: The Bible’s “Night of the Living Dead” Passage
- Dogwhistle politics explained on A List Of Republican Dog Whistles That No Longer Seem To Work
- Why Do Christian Fundamentalists Burn Books – theologyarchaeology on Does the Bible Advocate Book Burning?
- Philosophy homework help - Nursing Essays Center on Feminism for Beginners
- Philosophy homework help - Coursework Heros on Feminism for Beginners
- Pat on Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
- Answer the questions | Philosophy homework help | Writings Gate on Feminism for Beginners
- mike on Blogging UFOs: What Do You Make of Professor Robert Jacobs’s Bizarre UFO Testimony?
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- A Suffering and Resurrected Messiah---Before Jesus?: Israel Knohl's 2002 Book Anticipated the 2008 Qumran Stone Tablet Discovery
- "The Vision of Christ That Thou Dost See": William Blake on the Many Faces of Jesus
- Two Interesting UFO Documents: The "Smith Memo" (1950) and Physicist Robert Sarbacher's 1983 Letter
- Fight or Flight? Two Ways to Read Matthew Arnold's Poem, "Requiescat" (1849)
- Writing or Art? Mel Bochner's "LANGUAGE IS NOT TRANSPARENT" (1970)
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Stacked Corpses
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
- @abrahampiper Yahweh as a frustrated deity, much to be pitied! Abraham Piper's insight here, if thought about as a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 year ago
- RT @tbonier: More than 80M votes cast and we're not done yet. Thoughts: - It's too late for an "October surprise" to have a significant imp… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: 1. Want to thank @DanielNewman for using his HUGE platform for this work. I want to clarify what this is. In the voter… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Tell me again about how old and feeble Joe Biden is??? twitter.com/ProjectLincoln… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Remember when you had a chance to choose country over party and you chose party @SenatorCollins? Well, @ProjectLincol… 1 year ago
Tag Archives: reason
Epidurals and Pains in Childbirth: Why Do Arguments Start and Stop Where They Do?
People often claim that they’re appealing to reason in argumentation, but the way they reason frequently reveals more about them than the truth. Put another way, an argument often says more about your inward passions, sensibilities, and imaginative world than … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aquinas, atheism, child birth, critical thinking, epidurals, Genesis, God, pragmatism, reason, the Bible
55 Comments
Un-Fricken-Believable
Seriously. __________ Okay, I have to comment. First, before you can even get this sort of logic going, Adam and Eve would need to have actually existed in a garden in Mesopotamia 10,000 years ago. They never did. Second, you’ve … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, God, Jesus, philosophy, psychology, reason
5 Comments
Can Feminism Endure Questioning?
At Feministing, Juliana Britto is impatient with privileged white males who, in conversation, play the “devil’s advocate” for non-feminist perspectives. Here are three quotes from her essay (as a representative taste): These discussions [surrounding patriarchy] may feel like “playing” to … Continue reading
Absent Good Reasons and Evidence, Trust No One
I don’t like this t-shirt. It cheer-leads obfuscation, mystification, authority. A better statement would be, “I’m a professor. If I make a claim, doubt it and ask for the reasons and evidence I have in support of the claim. I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, college, critical thinking, Dostoevsky, psychology, reason, The Grand Inquisitor
1 Comment
The Easter Zombie Passage in Matthew Casts Doubt on the Resurrection of Jesus
Matthew 27:51-53. Have you ever read it? Immediately following Jesus’s death, Matthew says that there was an earthquake that exposed numerous graves on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and “many bodies of the saints which slept arose.” Not only did many among … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, blasphemy, critical thinking, Easter, God, Jesus, reason, resurrection, zombies
9 Comments
Alan Sokal on Faith
Physicist Alan Sokal, the famed skewer of postmodernism, in an article at Massimo Pigliucci’s Scientia Salon, gives faith a well deserved towel snap: “Faith” is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. “Faith” … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christianity, critical thinking, faith, God, Islam, reason, religion
6 Comments
Critical Thinking: Roger Kimball Is Against It
Catholic conservative Roger Kimball is editor of The New Criterion, which is a great journal. I read it. I like it. But sometimes Kimball comes a little unhinged. He often seems, for example, to regret that the Enlightenment ever happened at … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Catholicism, critical thinking, philosophy, Politics, reason, religion, Roger Kimball, the Enlightenment
5 Comments
Occam’s Razor: A Quick Tool for Assisting Thought
Occam’s razor gets its name from the medieval theologian William of Occam, who wrote in the 14th century that “No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.” Put another way, the simplest conclusion is usually best. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnosticism, apologetics, atheism, critical thinking, multiverse, occam's razor, philosophy, reason, simplicity
3 Comments
Courage and Critical Thinking: Two Quotes
The first is from the philosopher Bertrand Russell: “What we need is not the will to believe, but the will to find out” (quoted in How to Think about Weird Things, by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn, p. 11). What … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged bertrand russell, critical thinking, life, reason, stephen gould
1 Comment
An Awesome Example of Confounding Variables!
__________ Talk about deep doo-doo! So much of life, philosophy, and critical thinking resonates in this ironically captioned image. Take the atheist-theist debate, for example. Is God, though silent and invisible, lurking beneath the yellow noise of the cosmos? Do … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atoms, critical thinking, dogs, faith, God, life, reason, science, Shakespeare
Leave a comment
A Pretty Good Reason to Suspect that God Might Exist
If you could have been there when the big bang went bang 13.7 billion years ago, you would likely think that God (if God exists) was pulling your leg if She said to you, “From this explosion I’ll make a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnosticism, apologetics, atheism, God, life, philosophy, reason, science, the big bang
2 Comments
Free Thought Road or the Orthodox Route?
Wow. I like this Anglo-French Enlightenment inspired cartoon from 1890: __________ Talk about push-back to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress! “Freethought Road” takes you past a secular schoolhouse and Investigation, Reason, Education, Humanity, Justice, Science, Virtue, Love, and Liberty, with “Truth” shining … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, critical thinking, faith, God, reason, religion, the Enlightenment
1 Comment
Is God Necessary for Morality?
In a recent article, Dennis Prager claims that God is necessary for objective morality, writing the following: If there is no God, the labels “good” and “evil” are merely opinions. They are substitutes for “I like it” and “I don’t like … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, critical thinking, faith, God, morality, philosophy, reason, religion
12 Comments
A Checklist for Critical Thinking
A lot of us are brought under the spell of false beliefs because we can tell a good story about how they might be true, they are consistent with logic (they are logically possible), and we want to be believe them. We’re quite good, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, critical thinking, philosophy, psychology, reason
Leave a comment
Thomas Jefferson’s Weltanschauung Meets a New Claim: Premise Checking as a Tool for Thinking
A Cautionary Tale. As a Southerner living in Virginia in the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson once encountered a jaw-dropping claim, and it came from two eyewitnesses. They said they had seen rocks fall from the sky. Rocks from the sky. They even … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, critical thinking, philosophy, premises, psychology, reason, Thomas Jefferson
Leave a comment
Something Good About Christian Belief
One good thing about God belief of the Christian variety (if you can swing it) is that it inoculates you from other forms of irrationality. A nonbeliever in God is more prone to, say, succumbing to the delusions of Marxism … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, Christianity, critical thinking, God, Jesus, philosophy, psychology, reason
Leave a comment
Why I Prefer Evolution to Intelligent Design
First, it is perverse to reject evolution outright. Darwin was largely right, and people who try to reset science to pre-Darwinian assumptions are engaged in folly. The converging lines of evidence from numerous scientific disciplines point to the fact that … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, biology, evolution, faith, intelligent design, reason, science, theism
5 Comments
Steven Pinker Embraces Scientism
At The New Republic, Steven Pinker comes out swinging against those who direct the pejorative term “scientism” at atheists and agnostics. Pinker thinks that, just as gays turned tables on the bigots and came to embrace the pejorative term “queer,” atheists … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, evangelicalism, faith, postmodernism, reason, science, scientism, steven pinker, the Enlightenment
3 Comments
Why I Am an Agnostic and Not an Atheist
As Thomas Aquinas formulated it, I think the first cause argument is sound. To stop the infinite regress, there must be a first cause that has no cause and a first condition that has no conditions, and, as Aquinas puts … Continue reading
Prometheus Unbound 