Tag Archives: reason

Epidurals and Pains in Childbirth: Why Do Arguments Start and Stop Where They Do?

Posted on June 11, 2015 by

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 →

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Un-Fricken-Believable

Posted on July 2, 2014 by

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 →

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Can Feminism Endure Questioning?

Posted on June 5, 2014 by

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 →

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Absent Good Reasons and Evidence, Trust No One

Posted on April 15, 2014 by

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 →

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The Easter Zombie Passage in Matthew Casts Doubt on the Resurrection of Jesus

Posted on April 1, 2014 by

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 →

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Alan Sokal on Faith

Posted on March 29, 2014 by

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 →

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Critical Thinking: Roger Kimball Is Against It

Posted on February 25, 2014 by

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 →

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Occam’s Razor: A Quick Tool for Assisting Thought

Posted on February 6, 2014 by

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 →

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Courage and Critical Thinking: Two Quotes

Posted on February 3, 2014 by

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 →

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An Awesome Example of Confounding Variables!

Posted on November 17, 2013 by

__________ 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 →

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A Pretty Good Reason to Suspect that God Might Exist

Posted on October 30, 2013 by

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 →

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Free Thought Road or the Orthodox Route?

Posted on October 30, 2013 by

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 →

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Is God Necessary for Morality?

Posted on October 2, 2013 by

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 →

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A Checklist for Critical Thinking

Posted on August 25, 2013 by

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 →

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Thomas Jefferson’s Weltanschauung Meets a New Claim: Premise Checking as a Tool for Thinking

Posted on August 21, 2013 by

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 →

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Something Good About Christian Belief

Posted on August 15, 2013 by

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 →

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Why I Prefer Evolution to Intelligent Design

Posted on August 14, 2013 by

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 →

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Steven Pinker Embraces Scientism

Posted on August 9, 2013 by

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 →

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A Nice Example of Ad Hominem

Posted on July 31, 2013 by

Ad hominem, adding or attacking the man as opposed to the argument, is on display for over nine minutes in this hilarious Fox News interview with Reza Aslan. Professor Aslan, you see, is a Muslim who wrote a book about … Continue reading →

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Why I Am an Agnostic and Not an Atheist

Posted on July 26, 2013 by

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 →

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