First off, a comment. Those who are typically most concerned about the title question are those who are trying to discredit evolution because it trashes their belief system: creationists. Thus the people who would most benefit from this topic and the underlying information are the people who will never read it, because their worldview requires that they remain defiantly
Category: Critical Thinking
Coincidence? Well… yeah…
I’m going to apologize in advance: I’m too lazy to spell out a lot of the background details that would make greater sense of this post, and am counting on anyone either following the links within and/or having some familiarity with the culture, and even then, it may sound like a personal rant. That’s okay skip it if you like.
I don’t read half as many blogs as I used to.
Just how stupid?
I admit it: all too often, I look at the generally low level of intelligence displayed in the entertainment, the political parties, the religious tendencies, and the blind consumerism in the US and harbor serious doubts about how many people in this country are capable of critical thought. It’s not exactly something to make anyone feel warm and fuzzy.
Yet, there’s a caveat in this. I
Online course review: How to Reason and Argue
Not quite two years ago, I took a couple of online courses from the new program/organization/school/site Coursera, which were quite interesting. The idea of open-access college-level courses is tricky while it reduces the costs of education and makes it accessible to loads more people, the ability to accurately test
But what if the third time is the charm?
This is, actually, the third time I’ve approached this subject, and it will be another variation apart from the first time, and the second. The subject is the old “But what if you’re wrong?”
Who are we learning about?
Among the many, many reminisces following the recent death of actor-comedian Robin Williams – some in honest tribute, some in shameless opportunism – we can find the video of his meeting with Koko, the female lowland gorilla who is famous for communicating by sign language we also have the reports from the Gorilla Foundation, her caretakers, that when told about his
Underlying
As you may have been told in high school, many great works of literature and filmmaking are actually metaphors, using familiar characters and situations to represent deeper, more nuanced abstract ideas. The reasoning behind this is obvious: even small stories, seemingly inconsequential events, are part of an overriding narrative and purpose, reflecting in their nature that everything
Unseen benefits
First off, I’m going to mention my long absence and the faintly amusing bit about it. I was traveling, one of the few chances I’ve gotten recently, which would be enough to explain the period without posts – except that, I’d prepared a bunch ahead of time and scheduled them to appear while I was away. The dry period occurred after I came back, when I wasn’t
Fish in a barrel
I barely have to write anything for this.
There’s a website called LeastHelpful.com, which features product reviews that, uh, leave a bit to be desired. Far too frequently, the religious reviewer provides the strangest and most clueless entries, and many of those are laden with unintended irony. Case in point:
There are skeptics, and then there are skeptics
Reading an old post, it occurred to me that there’s a lot of misunderstanding about skepticism, enough so that perhaps it could stand a bit of clarification as to where it comes from, and why at least some people find it to be useful. In many circles – circles that spend a lot of time discussing ghost stories, or UFO encounters, or miracles, and so on – ‘skeptic’ is