One of the most confusing things to attempt is self-evaluation. It might be easy to think that if there’s one person we’re intimately familiar with, it’s ourselves, but when it comes down to it, we realize how hard objectivity is in such situations. Ego is such a loud voice in our minds, it’s hard to hear the little things which might be much more accurate.
Thus, I cannot
I was working on another post that dealt with clarifying some details about atheism, and the initial premise of this was one of those points. As I started to address it, I realized that it wasn’t going to be covered in a paragraph or two, and so it has become the latest installment in the But How? lineup, to wit: But how does atheism or secularity defend against evil?
What I was originally
This one is born out of a post on Mental Floss – or at least, that’s the most recent thing to provoke the thoughts the attitude is remarkably common and can be found connected to countless topics. In short: if a government agency or some otherwise
You know what I said a few days ago about standards being too high? I just had to share this.
In the local Craigslist postings, there was a ‘Creative Gig’ opening for a Paranormal Investigator, the entirety of the ad reading thus:
Creating a show to investigate the paranormal and past lives. Looking for an individual who is natural, curious, has a personality and is interested in these
I’d really love to see a poll on this topic, because I think it would be immensely revealing about religious belief. Lacking this, we’re just going to proceed with my own experience, which fits the description of “anecdotal” without conflict – we’ll get that out of the way right up front. My experience, however, has led me to believe that every religious
There is a concept, a meme if you will, that shows up a lot in critical-thinking circles, and I’ve even tackled it a few times before here. Commonly known as “Occam’s Razor” but also by the less folksy term of parsimony, it provides a very simple measuring stick: if multiple explanations can be advanced for any given facts or events, the simplest
Well, very briefly, anyway. Almost as soon as I got the binoculars on it, it became Identified.
Here’s the whole, sordid story. The Girlfriend was outside at roughly 10:25 pm EDT chatting with a neighbor when they saw the light in the sky, and came in to summon me, telling me to get the binoculars. By the time I came out it had disappeared, but I got specific location and directions from them
This is an observation that’s been lurking in the back of my mind for some time now, and I finally decided to set it down in detail. It is sure to make quite a few religious people get defensive, but the point is, that’s probably inevitable.
Let’s start with the simple aspect, and I’m going to fall back onto my old favorite, gravity (as well as subtle but terrible puns, it
Capital punishment yet remains a contentious topic, even while we’ve found comfortable positions on many of the moral issues we struggled with for centuries – slavery and racism, women’s rights, legal adulthood, and so on. Perhaps the biggest reason behind this is, there are too many factors that motivate a response, most of them emotional, and most of those have been
I started thinking about this idea when I read this article on Mental Floss about various conspiracy claims (they do not deserve any proximity to the word “theory”) regarding Denver International Airport. And it reflects the same thing that
