A headline at The Drudge Report made an absurd claim: "Mankind's belief in evil 'caused by disease'." The headline of the actual article in the UK Daily Star was slightly more ridiculous--it prefaced the unbelievable claim with "Scientists discover..." Both headlines are nothing more than click-bait; the substance of the article doesn't come remotely close to justifying the claims of that sensational headline. In fact. if you actually bother to read the article found at the Daily Star claiming that "Scientists discover mankind's belief in evil caused by disease" what you, the reader, will discover is that scientists haven't said they have discovered any such thing. The only thing Brock Bastian and his team of researchers from the University of Melbourne have actually said is that there seems to be some sort of correlation between geographic locations where diseases were known to be more common and a cultural belief in the existence of demons and evil spirits. Once you get into the real "substance" of the article, you'll find the bold declarations have been considerably watered down by the use of all sorts of conditional words...the backpedaling begins with the article's subtitle that says "A potentially-massive breakthrough in our understanding of evil may have been found." Well, which is it? Has this amazing breakthrough been found, or hasn't it? You won't know for sure unless you read beyond the headline. The headline itself is nothing more than a hook to lure readers into learning about what amounts to simply a secular version of a false cause fallacy based on a … [Read more...]
The reality of miracles
Landen Hoffman About a month or so ago, my life dramatically improved after I basically stopped arguing with people on social media. First I announced that I was leaving Facebook entirely, only to have my wife talk me out of it, by surprise. But I did hold true to my promise to remove myself from all the "debate" forums where I wasted WAY too much of my life in ultimately fruitless conversations with people uninterested in reason and evidence when it might have an adverse effect on their current thinking. In fact, one of the most ridiculous arguments that I have had to deal with during my time spent as a Christian pugilist (never been very apologetic about my own thoughts and opinions) on the internet has been the claim by a few of the more outspoken atheists that miracles do not ever occur because God does not exist. It is ridiculous to argue about miracles because (a.) the definition of one is nebulous and (b.) people who don't believe in miracles can easily reject them as failing to meet their nonexistent criteria for one. To an atheist, a miracle probably requires them to see a physical manifestation of divine intervention, and even then they might dismiss their witness of a miracle as a hallucination their mind imagined because most atheists don't want to believe in God. Why would I say that? It sounds kind of harsh and judgmental, I suppose, but I said it because it is true. Atheists have made up their mind, and just like everybody else, they don't want to be wrong. This explains why there are so many atheists wasting their lives on social media arguing with … [Read more...]
The conceit of belief
A recent article I wrote titled "Anecdotes versus evidence" tried to explain the difference between an interesting story with an extraordinary claim and real evidence of a phenomena obtained via the scientific method. Quite predictably, there was a critic lurking on social media who wanted to challenge the crux of the article without bothering to evaluate the content. In the article I had listed three specific examples of extraordinary claims that apparently could be evaluated using credible scientific evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that strict materialism was false, and that the metaphysical mind can learn new information even when temporarily separated from the physical brain. The idea behind writing the article was to provide the information and people who disagreed with me could fairly evaluate the same evidence and argue my interpretation of what the evidence meant. This critic merely assumed the evidence to which I referred was no better than any other alleged evidence he'd ever seen, and refused to look at the evidence I had offered. Instead, he wanted to challenge my methodology so he could downgrade the evidence back to only anecdote. My answer was quick and easy: I had actually looked at the evidence. I didn't just make an assumption. The direction of his line of inquiry soon became clear: my critic wanted me to acknowledge that I was simply taking the word of witnesses as gospel truth without questioning their veracity. That will only work if we apply the same standard in every situation. How do we know anything is true? The reality is … [Read more...]
Mass shootings and the media
Keanon Lowe Can we have a reasonable conversation about the problem of mass murder in our society? If we're going to try, input from the mainstream media must be excluded from the discussion. The media solution is always "more gun control!" However, only a fool would believe that more laws would prevent future violence. Private gun ownership is basically illegal in Chicago, and yet an astonishing number of people are nevertheless murdered by criminals and gang members using illegal firearms. According to gun control advocates, the problem is that criminals still have access to illegal weapons because gun ownership remains legal in other areas nearby. Like Pavlov's dogs, the media's conditioned response to such tragedy is the inevitable call for more legislation to regulate the sale and ownership of guns. People don't kill people, only guns kill people. However, simple logic and raw statistics argue otherwise. The problem wasn't that these mass shooters had access to weapons, because everybody has access to something that can be used as a weapon. The problem was that his twenty victims were defenseless. If only one of the good guys had been carrying a gun as well, lives could have been saved. Frankly, if you don't understand what the Founding Fathers were thinking about when they wrote the 2nd Amendment, all you have to do is read current headlines about the growing crisis in Hong Kong. But what do these recent mass murderers who used guns and the Tsarnaev brothers (Boston Marathon terrorists) have in common? Not much, really-- except the desire to kill. Yet … [Read more...]
A slight change of plans
It's all good. Well, okay, it's only mostly good. There was that whole yellow jacket incident. The past 72 hours or so have been very interesting. Almost nothing has gone according to plan, but the best explanation for that is that I didn't really have a well-developed plan in the first place, just a convicted thought about needing to improve my productivity. For a guy who spends most of his time writing, I don't get nearly enough real work accomplished. I had the initial impulse to permanently delete my Facebook account primarily because of my own lack of discipline, as far as productive work is concerned. I announced this decision to the general public before discussing it with my wife, which rarely works out for the best because she's not as quick to jump to hasty conclusions. In case you haven't figured it out yet, she's the real brains in our family. Lisa's first concerns were the pictures of the grandkids our daughter posts on Facebook all the time. Didn't I still want to see them? She then asked, what about your high school English teacher and the friends you've made in Australia, and those connections you truly care about? She reminded me the problem with Facebook isn't the people as much as how I've been using the medium. I'll admit that I was more than a little surprised that her reaction wasn't anything but, "Thank God!" Changes had to be made, though, and changes have already occurred. Changes NEEDED to be made because I just can't spend the rest of my life arguing with idiots on Facebook. It doesn't produce income. Liberals and atheists tend to … [Read more...]
