Category: philosophy

  • Anti-Abortion Arguments, Including the Secular Ones, are Uninformed Drivel.

    I’ve had something of a writing block for the last month or so, so I’m thankful to Hemant Mehta over at Friendly Atheist for providing me with some fodder to dissect. I’ve always figured that there had to be some folk out there whose anti-abortion stance wasn’t built on a foundation of religion, as the…

  • To The Stone: Please Pull Out of Your Nose-Dive

    The Stone is part of The New York Times, an outlet for Philosophy and public discussion of philosophical issues. Generally speaking, I think it’s an excellent idea: philosophy needs more public engagement, and the public needs to engage with more philosophy. Its most recent article (“Is Atheism Irrational“), however, is pure, unadulterated dross. Under the…

  • A Secret Confession

    I have a secret to confess. This isn’t the kind of thing that’s likely to be popular with atheists (or skeptics in general), but I have to get it off my chest: I think Ken Ham is amazing. I think that he’s the best thing to happen to religious-secular dialog ever. Before you shut the browser tab/window,…

  • Astrology, Bullshit Raised to an Art-Form

    Generally speaking, I stay away from the main Skeptic topics. Mostly because they are so obviously wrong, and also because the topic is well-addressed by people who don’t have an additional interest in economics and social reform (the main topics I address on this blog). But scammer-extraordinaire Matthew Currie has decided to loudly object to…

  • Our Brain is a Car

    I’m going to try to lay out what my personal ‘Philosophy of Mind ‘ is. Most of this has been hacked together from a mix of Psychology and Philosophy classes, years of reading articles, and my own subjective experience. As such, it’s going to be fairly light on links and references. On the other hand,…

  • A Gold-Based Currency

    A gold-backed currency. Hard currency, where the value of ‘a dollar’ (or ‘a euro’) is tied to a specific quantity of a specific commodity. Like gold, one of the most (if not the most) chemically inert solid elements. I think this is a great idea, with minimal downsides.

  • On Epistemology

    This is my position on epistemology. Actually not just my position, but the position held by many people. While the route taken to this judgement is uniquely mine, the judgement itself (if not this exact expression of that judgement) is shared by many others the world over. I’m going to deal with a few notions,…

  • Debating Dr. Hugh Ross

    You know that moment that you discover that something that was lost forever wasn’t? I was just idly checking The Wayback Machine to see if any of the posts from the previous incarnation of this site survived, and lo and behold they did. This makes me happy. I’ll be reposting a few, once I’ve edited…

  • “Easy” University Credit

    I do quite a bit of tutoring, so I thought I’d put together a few hints and tips for people seeking a tutor for the first time. Some of these may seem pretty obvious, but (in that case) you’d be pretty surprised how often they come up.

  • Implications of Intelligent Design

    I’ve gotten involved in a fairly lengthy discussion of Intelligent Design on reddit as a result of posting my review of Darwin’s Doubt there. Most of the discussion has centred around a couple of key points, that my interlocutors seem to insist on repeating, ad nauseum. The first point is the inherent implausibility of Evolutionary Theory…