September 24, 2012
Every now and again I go on organizing and cleaning sprees. You know, rifling through old drawers, discarding rarely-used items and just taking a general inventory of everything I own (which isn’t much these days). Whenever I do this, I inevitably find some old magazine or newspaper clippings that I saved for blogging inspiration. That’s what today’s short post is all about.
September 22, 2012
I haven’t been inspired to write much lately but today I caught wind of the whole ENCODE thing. I don’t know what (a)theists are saying about this, but I can imagine. My bet is that it’s business as usual: snarl, hype, misinformation and a noticeable absence of statements even remotely construable as conciliatory. As the “junk DNA” thing is old news, I don’t have much to say about it, other than to warn atheists against disbelief bolstered by illogic.
August 27, 2012
Jeffrey Jay Lowder has replied to my critique, and I’ve realized that sometimes I talk too much. I suspect verbosity obscured the point because Jeff seems to have misunderstood my criticisms (though I might misunderstand his, only time can tell). I’m responding to his rejoinders elsewhere, but today I want to offer an alternative description of my objections to Jeff’s AHS. But first, a note on brevity.
August 24, 2012
Jeff Lowder offers an Argument from the History of Science (AHS) that purports to establish naturalism / atheism as more likely to be true than supernaturalism / theism:
August 4, 2012
Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, and it’s pretty clear that somebody is killing Iranian nuclear scientists in an effort to stop this. I felt this was interesting because it relates directly to Sam Harris’ remarks that it “may be ethical to kill people based on what they believe.” What do you think? Is it morally right to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists as a pre-emptive measure? Why or why not?
This is just a test post to see if I successfully connected TWIM to it’s Twitter account. At the old TWIM, posts would automatically create a Tweet, but I noticed today that this hasn’t been happening since February! Not that my whole 19 followers probably noticed, but hey.
UPDATE: it works! Here’s the URL in case you want to follow TWIM on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WarfareIsMental
August 3, 2012
The more haters hate, the more they prove the truth of God’s Word:
Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5: 11,12)
Enter hater extraordinaire, Stephen R. Diamond:
August 1, 2012
I support ‘Chick-Fil-A, with a caveat: I probably don’t support the farms they get their chicken from, but I say “probably” because I don’t know where they get it from. Chances are it’s a farm with inhumane practices. At any rate, members of the GLBT mafia calling for the “banishment” of ‘Chick-Fil-A restaurants are spreading anti-American, unconstitutional bigotry, and I challenge any one of them to provide a reasoned argument demonstrating otherwise. Incidents like this really expose the danger of the militant GLBT factions. They are threatening to undermine the very principles this country was founded upon.
July 31, 2012
People who eschew party lines in favor of critical thought always win my respect, and on that note Jeff Lowder is awesome. Over at Secular Outpost, he’s taken Chris Hallquist to task over Hallquist’s smearing and libeling of William Lane Craig as a “liar.” As one who’s suffered through such libel first hand, I’m sympathetic to Lowder’s case. Hallquist has responded, and today I’d like to focus on a snippet that perfectly illustrates the danger of letting emotion lead the brain. Before we start, I’d like to point out that Hallquist has this much going for him: he concedes the difficulty of knowing intent, which is precisely what is required to establish claims of lying. He writes,
Furthermore, Jeff is right to ask how I know Craig is being intentionally deceptive, as opposed to honestly mistaken, in particular cases. This is hard to know.
Unfortunately, Hallquist doesn’t heed his own advice.
UPDATE: it appears John Loftus has also stepped forward to condemn Hallquist. I never thought I’d being saying this, but I must also salute John Loftus in this regard! Good on you, Loftus!
