By Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk, Comment Is Free.
Civility has its uses, but atheists should not be afraid to mock faith to undermine religious power.
Of course the Mayans themselves didn’t survive till 2012, so maybe they aren’t the best group to ask about such things. Recently a friend of mine mentioned the 2012 phenomenon as if it were true. Unfortunately I didn’t have the hard facts at my disposal so I told him it’s not going to happen and left it at that. But I thought I’d look up some more information so when your mother starts talking about the end of the world, you will have some facts to back you up. Lucky for me, NASA and Wikipedia have pages to explain where the concept came from and what scientific…
I really wanted to share part of chapter 17 with you. Mr. Gula lists the most important principles to be gleaned from the rest of the book. I highly recommend getting the book and reading it. It has really helped me think more logically. The other thing it’s helped me with is to realize when someone has used a logical fallacy on me. I might not remember the name, but I remember that it is nonsense. It sort of gives me a red flag when someone uses bad logic in an argument. I think that’s pretty invaluable. So here’s the list of important principles from Robert Gula:
Chapters 12-17, pages 153-222 We each took a chapter and presented it to everyone.
This book was quite helpful and I would recommend it. Feel free to comment with how you liked the book and what you got out of it. This will be our third meeting for Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language We had some good discussions and a lot of people showed up. Here are some general principles and some great advice by Robert…
We are slowly going through the main logical fallacies, with examples and also with how to refute them. You can use this in all aspects of your life, whether it be science vs. pseudo-science, religion vs. atheism or agnosticism, the daily assault of advertising and consumerism, or simply to put your own belief systems to the test. This page will have an introduction to each one. Click the title of the fallacy to read the full article. First, some definitions:
Another thing that is really important as we get started is to keep in…
Chapters 6-11, pages 55-151 We each took a chapter to share with everyone. This was a good format which we’ll use again.
This book should be easy to catch up with if you want to join us. This will be our second meeting for Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language We’ll divide the book into three sections to span 3 meetings.
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Chapters 1-5, pages 1-53 This was our first meeting for Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language We’ll divide the book into three sections to span 3 meetings.
We had a great meeting. We are all enjoying the book. We went through the ways language can be misused with emotional appeals, propaganda and mannerisms. Here is a bit from chapter 1 that I want to share with you:
… Since we’re talking so much about logical fallacies, Brent found a site called Fallacy Files that handles things in an interesting way. They have something called a Taxonomy of the Logical Fallacies which shows how they are all related to each other. Here is a small version. Click on it to go to the site’s full size image. After seeing how they are related, you can go to their How To Use page to read a bit more into it. For instance, you can see the logical relationships between them. Also as you get further to the right, you’ll see the colors fade from strong (more general) to faded (more specific). The color and scheme is arbitrary, by the way, except how they blend. Red are formal fallacies. Blue are informal. Green is Loaded Question, which is not in…
1. From a creationist website:
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I can’t tell you how much these ads offend me. First of all, anyone psychotic enough to kick in the door of someone’s home in broad daylight is not going to turn tail and run off just because some alarm goes off. The first thing they are going to do is get hold of their victim to control their movements, that way they can keep them away from any exit or phone. The next thing they’ll do is bind the victim with something so they can be controlled with minimal effort. So by the time the… |
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