This is one of those things that, as I’m sure you can understand, got sparked by watching a bunch of videos over on The Atheist Experience. That should come as no surprise to anyone, but since today, as I’m writing this, is Thanksgiving, I had a lot of time, sitting around and waiting for the food to cook, so I spent it watching some YouTube videos.
Yeah, that rarely ever goes well. So let’s talk about it. Continue reading Keep Your Fee-Fees Under Control!
This comes up a lot and I’m pretty open about the fact that I don’t really trust the religious very much, at least when it comes to their religious beliefs. I take on apologists constantly over on my YouTube channel and it becomes painfully clear that what they’re saying, it comes from their faith, not from their examination of the objective facts.
But is it worse than that? Let’s look at a single case. Continue reading Why It’s Hard to Trust an Apologist
I’ve seen this a lot but where I’ve really started to notice it is on some of the shows put out by the Atheist Community of Austin. Most specifically, I saw a call this past week over on Truth Wanted by someone calling themselves a “sentientist” and from there, the whole thing went to hell. Continue reading Veganism: Me and my Fee-Fees!
This is something that I’ve thought for a while but could only really put into coherent words recently. Someone pointed out that it’s very similar to my 30 Second Debate Tactic so it’s been floating around out there for a very long time but hey, I’m going to try to articulate it here.
Theists, it doesn’t matter what your book says until you establish a baseline for your claims! Let’s talk about it. Continue reading Putting the Cart in Front of the God
This is another subject that comes up a lot in discussions, most often, I notice, with the non-religious. Often, it is tied to the free will debate and they will claim that we don’t really have free will because neuroscience has shown that decisions are made before the conscious mind is even aware of them.
Yeah, but you’re just doing reality wrong, sorry! Continue reading The Consciousness Conundrum
I know that I’ve been doing this a lot lately, but the Atheist Experience has been giving me a lot to think about and, as should be clear by now, disagree with. Now I’ve gone on record disagreeing with Matt Dillahunty’s pronouncements on secular morality and I’m sure I’ll get into that again, but the simple problem is that morality isn’t simple and far too many people seem interested in spitting out a simplistic, easy-to-digest, easy-to-impose moral solution.
It just doesn’t work that way. Continue reading Let’s Talk Morality
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this and I’ve had lots of people, people that I would think are genuinely smart, get it completely wrong.
If you put a real cat in a real box and set an atomic trigger that might or might not kill it, that doesn’t make the cat both alive and dead at the same time. Stop it. You’re just making yourself look dumb. Continue reading People Don’t Understand Schrodinger
Recently, Talk Heathen put out a video from a theist who wanted to talk about God and free will. While the call itself was pointless, the thought experiment that Kenneth Leonard came up with was terminally flawed and I see this kind of thing happening all the time.
So let’s talk about it. Continue reading Bad Arguments About Free Will
Most discussions about free will become complete clusterfucks, mostly, I’m convinced, because everyone is talking past everyone else. It’s just happened yet again so I thought it was a good opportunity to put down some thoughts about why I think free will, at least as I’m going to define it, exists and why hard determinism is such a waste of time. Continue reading The Absurdity of the Free Will Argument
Here’s something that comes up quite a bit but I don’t know if I’ve ever really addressed it as a specific question. It’s something most of us have done and most of us have been frustrated by, but how, exactly, do you argue with dumb people?