Hey, folks! In Part 1 of “Calculating God” earlier this month, I began by talking a little about my reading habits, including science-fiction, and introduced the reader (assuming you/they weren’t already familiar with him) to the Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer. His novel Calculating God (2000) is the source for the title of these two […]
If you have followed this blog for very long, you know that it’s not uncommon for me to cite from, or at least refer to, various books on the topics of science, politics, and religion. Non-fiction stuff. But, I also read, watch, and listen to a lot of fiction, as well. As it turns out, […]
“Use soft words and hard arguments.” — English proverb “Soft words are hard arguments.” — Thomas Fuller (emphasis mine) Among the various books I have in progress, lately I’ve been reading Arguing with Friends: Keeping your friends and your convictions by Paul Buller. It’s a relatively thin book, but I only read 2 or 3 […]
Part 6: Avoiding Presumptions “A presumption becomes a self-refuting assertion.” — R. Alan Woods Following hot on the heels of “Part 5: Facts Over Feelings”, today’s logical fallacies involve inappropriate presumptions that confuse and invalidate one’s argument. (Of course, I would never do this! … OK, OK, maybe.) Sometimes when making a case or […]
Part 5: Facts Over Feelings “Feelings should never supersede rational thought… so, if you feel that you’ve got the answer, you should think some more.” — Julie Ann Elliott-Morton Up to this point in the series, we have dealt with the basics. We learned about the fundamental laws of logic, categorical propositions and logical relationships. […]
Today’s post is a bit more philosophy-rich than I am usually comfortable with and, thus, than I would normally post. But, as I was reading the book named below (and stretching my brain cells), I realized that the topic and observations are at least as, if not even more, relevant today than when written almost […]
Part 4: Three Ways to Argue Meanwhile, at the clinic… Client (Michael Palin): “Aha! If you’re arguing, I must have paid.” Mr. Barnard (John Cleese): “Not necessarily. I could be arguing in my spare time….” OK, if you aren’t a Monty Python fan (and I am only marginally) and you don’t understand the above quote, […]
Part 3: Logical Suicide and Staying on TRACK “Without good support, not only is it a ‘bad argument’, it’s merely opinion.” — me Welcome back! (Or, just “Welcome!”, if this is the first part you read in this series.) So far, we’ve been learning some fundamental ideas in what is known as “informal logic”. We […]
OK, time to resume the discussion. As explained in Part 1, I left a comment in my Facebook status, saying that I approved of the RNC’s reaffirming its support for traditional marriage and against same-sex “marriage”. A libertarian friend then challenged the wisdom of this stance by Republicans, the audacity of evangelical Christians for speaking […]
I give up. I wasn’t gonna do it, but I caved under (imagined) pressure. I wanted to blog on something else this week, but with the recent SCOTUS rulings involving same-sex marriage, I felt sort of obligated to publish some commentary of my own. So, though I had intended to save this for a later […]
