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You can’t measure love
A thoroughly odd argument that gets sometimes trotted out falls along the following lines: Love is a real thing Science can’t measure love Therefore [insert nonsense here] is real This is typically brought to bear by someone whose interlocutor(s) is/are proposing an evidence-based view. While it seems that the “easy” option is to just laugh…
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The Death Penalty as Retribution
The next argument that is put forward in favour of the death penalty is that it’s required as part of retributive justice. The major problem with this position is that it has no basis in any sound ethical theories, and appears to be nothing more than a holdover from various religions.
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Mr. Deity and His Epic Skeptifail
I don’t typically watch Mr. Deity videos, as they’re a little contrived for my tastes, but they’re generally well-received in the Skeptic/Atheist community. They’re light, usually well-informed, and poking fun at believers is bound to raise a few chuckles. Low-hanging fruit. But clearly I was mistaken as to the quality of the skepticism at play.…
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The Death Penalty, Deterrence in Practice
In Part 1 of this series, I dealt with the plausibility of the model in favour of Deterrence. But let’s forget all about that for a moment. Let’s put aside all the science behind our decision processes, how the human brain works, and all of that stuff. Like Deterrence-advocates, let’s pretend that science hasn’t moved…
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The Death Penalty, Deterrence in Principle
This is going to be the first part of a four-part series on the death penalty, There are two main arguments trotted out in favour, both of which I feel fail to be convincing. I’ll get to them, but first I need to sketch out some philosophical/ethical commitments. It helps to get these out of…
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Single people don’t have a right to have sex
A good default position to hold is that ‘whatever the Family Research Council says is wrong’. You’ll get a fair bit of mileage out of that, and you’ll generally be on the right side of history as things shake out. However, in this particular case, I’m going to agree with Pat Fagan, senior member of…
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Honour Killings
This isn’t quite topical anymore, but I thought post this dialogue to go to with the reboot of this site. I really liked Xtranormal.com, and I’m disappointed that it’s been shut down, as I was intending to make a few more of these. If anyone happens to know of any similar websites/software out there, I’d…
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Memories, Emotions, and Brains
One of the things I noticed when taking my Philosophy undergrad was how 17th century Philosophers (and Philosophers of other periods too) often made grandiose claims about how people thought about the world. Often their 100% certain proclamations were refuted by other Philosophers who were also 100% certain about how the world worked. A particular example…
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Islamophobia, a discussion
Depending on who you read or listen to, either Islamophobia simply isn’t real, or it’s not as pervasive as people think it is, or sometimes it’s a legitimate criticism, but it’s often used incorrectly to shut down someone legitimately criticising Islam, or else it’s just some word (without any legitimate meaning) that people use to shut…
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Philosophers: Please Take a Stand
This is an open letter to the Philosophers out there who consider themselves to be involved in Skepticism (even if only in a tertiary fashion). The ones that I specifically have in mind as I write this are Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, Dr. Daniel Fincke, and Dr. Daniel Dennett*. Let’s begin with my credentials: I am…
