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?
I caught a video from Talk Heathen today, where a caller had some problems understanding the concept of evil from a religious context. I see this kind of thing all the time, especially from the religious and I think it’s time we talked about it.
Fair warning, this is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. Continue reading Let’s Talk About Evil
Go watch that video first and then come back because I’m going to get into some of the details. It’s okay, I’ll wait. Continue reading Matt Dillahunty Gets It Wrong
This kind of thing comes up all the time and I figured it was about time I talked about it because I tend to disagree with determinism on a certain scale and a lot of people just don’t like that.
So let’s have a conversation. Continue reading Let’s Talk About Determinism