In the latest issue of Skeptic magazine (Vol 16 No 2), there’s an article by Benjamin Grant Purzycki and Kyle Gibson regarding religious violence, which raises the question: does religion cause violence, or are we mistaking correlation for causation? This is an exceptionally intriguing question. Confusing correlation for causation is one of the fallacies with which
Category: Reference
That was easy
All right, let me throw a couple of questions at you – don’t worry, I grade leniently. This is just an exercise.
The US, like most countries with significant vehicle ownership, has speed limits on virtually all of its roads, and while I’m trying to go metric myself, I’d confuse people by switching the examples – 65 miles per hour on many interstate highways, 30 mph in
Not as I do
This follows from an earlier post about science and religion, as well as numerous other posts where I’ve talked about respect, accommodationism, and double-standards. They’re not necessary to make sense of this one, but I recommend checking them out anyway for a deeper appreciation of the points I’m making.
A very common occurrence right now, especially in the blogoblob, is someone
Science and religion
[The following post was originally written some time back, when the referenced posts within were still “current.” For one reason or another, I never finished it off, which I now find unfortunate because it contains several factors that I want to use as a springboard. So I’m resurrecting this post, and ask that you excuse the reliance on ancient-in-webby-terms, yet
Respect
Respect. Oh, sweet baby rhesus, how that word is abused! From my own warped point of view (or at least, from my perspective based on the media I choose to examine,) this is perhaps the key word to define the past decade – not because it was particularly respectful, but because that was what everyone thought they deserved and decried not receiving. The ’80s were considered the “Me”
I hate it when I’m slow
A few years ago when living in Florida, I kept a journal about wildlife observations, which included no small amount of speculation on what I was seeing. It’s interesting to look back through it and see how certain things solidified as I found our more information or made subsequent observations, and I’ll probably feature some parts of it in posts later on.
On occasion, this blog will
Breaking with tradition
[Originally, I wrote most of these thoughts as a separate article to try and get published, but since the concept of actually getting paid to write has vanished anymore (I knew I should have gone into throwing balls around,) I might as well at least make it public. Granted, a blog is a version of “public” much like the
Hooray! I scored a “Not Negative!”
Update September 2012 – This was one of the sample posts chosen for the podcasting experiment click below to listen, if you like (it is identical to the text):
Walkabout podcast – Hooray! I scored a “Not Negative!”
There’s a common argument style that crops up in defense of most of the topics that critical-thinking addresses, such as paranormal activity, alien visitation,
The most important thing you’ll ever read
While I pick on religion a lot in this blog, this is reflecting what I see as a greater need at this point in time in contrast, a few years back I was quite active on UFO and paranormal forums, and have dueled over topics such as health foods, astrology, and alternative medicine. They all fall under the big umbrella of critical thinking, or to be more precise, they’re
Dealing with the real world
You know, it’s not too often that I select articles to respond to here, mostly because my readership is small and I’m fairly remote – I’d rather respond where the article appears, and reach the same audience. At the same time, I’m more often simply passing on thoughts that stand alone when I can. But this one not only deserved a response, it demonstrates some of the