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 […]
Part 2: Propositions and Logical Relationships “Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to outward appearance differed but little from the indifferentism….” — Samuel Butler, iconoclastic Victorian author Despite what you […]
Part 1: Firm Foundation “I yam what I yam, and that’s all what I yam.” — Popeye, the sailorman Given the subjects that I usually read and write about on this blog, critical thinking really comes in handy. Not that I’m some great logician or anything. Far from it! But, over the last few years, […]
“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” — Proverbs 27:17 (NIV) Previously, I introduced “Darryl” and his idea that “sin is ultimately a consequence of Creation… albeit, an unintended consequence.” In fact, in an effort to exculpate God from all responsibility for sin, he hypothesized that perhaps “God sovereignly created a ‘Law of […]
We often hear people speak of “unintended consequences”. It certainly comes up a lot in talks of politics & economics. But, the other day — OK, it was a few months ago — I heard the term used regarding quite a different topic. I was browsing a Facebook thread, in which a bunch of people […]
“[S]cience and religion are two essential components in the search for truth. Denying either is a barren approach.” — Dr. Martin Andreas Nowak, mathematical biologist Once upon a time (actually, it was about a year ago) in a land far, far away (OK, it was here in NE Florida), I had a brief but interesting […]
