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 […]
I just saw an article about fracking that reminded me of a conversation I had on Facebook a couple months ago. (Yes, another one….) A liberal friend of mind had shared the anti-fracking image below from New Yorkers Against Fracking. It expresses a concern that isn’t usually highlighted in anti-fracking posts & rants. (At least, […]
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, […]
“[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 […]
People make excuses. Nobody likes to be blamed or accused of doing something bad or wrong. We don’t like to be punished or embarrassed. We don’t like to be made to feel guilty — even if we are guilty of wrongdoing. We usually realize that what we were caught doing (or habitually do) is illegal […]
“Men seek an explanation of suffering in cause and effect. They look backwards for a connection between prior sin and present suffering. The Bible looks forwards (sic) in hope and seeks explanations, not so much in origins as in goals. The purpose of suffering is seen, not in its cause, but in its result. The […]
If you are at all familiar with Christian apologetics, whether engaging challenges from non-theists or from Christians with different views, you know that the topic of pain, suffering, and death is a major issue. (In fact, Darwin’s struggle with this was the impetus for developing his theory.) These things are considered “evil”, so the question […]
Welcome back! If you’ve been following along, you know that I recently had a civil-but-slightly-frustrating exchange on Facebook with a young-earth creationist (YEC). (Well, there were more involved in the larger “discussion”, but I’m focusing on the interchange between the two of us.) He was making rather confident — even dogmatic — assertions about what […]
