Once again, like last year and the year before, we take a brief look at my abuse of standard blogging protocol (I mean, aside from and on top of my perpetual abuse of blogging protocol.) I’m talking about tags here, people. In normal
Tag: worthless philosophy
Other ways of getting the results you want
Every once in a while, you will get to hear the phrase, “other ways of knowing” – almost invariably, it will be in defense of some topic that is sorely lacking in demonstrable evidence or repeatable results. But this doesn’t matter, because science isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, since there are other ways of knowing. While, not surprisingly,
But how? Part 13: Theology
Once again I’m denying that I painted myself into a corner by choosing the “But how?” tag for posts of this nature, though it worked so well for a while. Pretend it’s anything you want it to be, however, since we’re going to ignore it and tackle a frequent lament to atheists everywhere, which is, But you haven’t considered sophisticated theology.
If you ask me
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure
Despite the fact that, just this past weekend (as I type the first draft anyway,) friends of mine have made disparaging comments about debates that take place on the Intersnarl, I return once again to the fabled Fountain of Free Will, a topic sure never to die because philosophy has taught us nothing if not how to continually fail to “get it.”
This time around it’s a post on Why
But what if it is broke?
I’m very fond of pushing different perspectives, because I believe it helps us to understand many things better, and changes our predefined views of our world. Some perspectives, however, are heavily ingrained, and perhaps even self-perpetuating, so introducing something ‘new’ is complicated.
With the lead-in out of the way, let’s take consciousness, and to do so,
Checking in
It’s been a little longer between posts than intended, but this only means that truly major, insightful, earth-shaking stuff is coming soon (yeah, yeah, I know save the sarcasm.) I’ve had a couple of projects going, and have been commenting in other locations, such as Sean Carroll’s Preposterous Universe blog, or maybe it’s S=k. log W,
The missionary position
At Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne has tackled yet another foofaraw among philosophers this particular topic is one of frequent appearance, being Does science assume naturalism? And ever so typical of philosophy, it begins with traditional assumptions and goes even further off course from there.
The duel comes over the various definitions of terms like naturalism and supernatural,
Two hooked at once
At the moment (at least as I type this,) two prominent atheists are tossing forth and back about the old question of what would, or could, constitute evidence for god. Michael Shermer at Skepticblog and Jerry Coyne at
Don’t ask
I’m pretty hard on philosophy, but I’m even harder on pseudophilosophy, the practice of asking questions that aren’t even comprehended or, much worse, are asked for the sake of asking. Unfortunately, quite a few people still seem to fall for this, and we have been treated to countless instances – blogs, articles, books, etc. – where someone has taken the bait
Too smart to be intelligent
You know, I try to let philosophy prove its worth to me. I constantly recognize that, if so many people believe it’s useful, that maybe I’m the one that’s missing something. I don’t dismiss the contemporary philosophers without hearing what they have to say. Yet every time, this proves to be almost totally wasted effort. This latest example has demonstrated
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