Tag: bad arguments
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Adventures in Misgendering
The rapidly changing landscape of supposed non-binary genders is dizzying to most of us – myself included. This isn’t an attempt to help you navigate that mindfield of pronouns – because in all likelihood, by the time you read this, it would have all changed anyway. Which pronouns they want us to use, or not use, is irrelevant in most ways. We’re being told that “misgendering” is now rude – more than rude, really – a cardinal sin of oppression. One of my sons, a high-school senior, was recently the subject of an “intervention” by his classmates for his refusal … -
Psychological Exegesis (Guest Post by cco3)
Jordan B. Peterson has been gaining popularity, due to his tenacity in social and political arenas. However, this popularity has spilled into his other pursuits as well. For example, his lecture series on Genesis is recorded on YouTube as having nearly 750k views. The first in the set of lectures has nearly 2m views, and those numbers don’t even count podcast listeners like me. That’s quite a show of interest on a topic that otherwise garners little interest from the public. I’ve only listened to the first lecture, so I can’t comment on how Peterson actually goes about handling the …
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Francois Tremblay as Philosophical Flat-Earther
Classical foundationalism is dead. But that does not stop foolish atheists like Francois Tremblay from continuing to promote such an outdated epistemological starting point. Francois Tremblay is an atheist who complains about, “Chris Bolt, who wrote a rant against the principle that, ‘It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.’” He writes, “I find this fascinating because this principle is so obvious and so straightforward that the idea of someone arguing against it seems strange at best.”
Right, so it’s an “obvious” and “so straightforward” principle. It’s “strange” that someone would argue against it. …
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Van Tilian Turf Wars (Part 1)
At least three types of Van Tilian presuppositionalists have emerged from the recent surge in popularity of presuppositionalism.
Fundamentalist
The first group are the fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are not necessarily to be identified with fundamentalism in general, but rather with fundamentalist tendencies when it comes to discerning apologetic methodology. This brand of presuppositionalism takes a more biblicist approach to apologetic questions and disputes. Though arguments may be offered in the context of apologetic discussion, these arguments are typically less philosophically precise and more explicitly biblical or dogmatic. Examples of those in the fundamentalist strain of presuppositionalism include Answers in Genesis, Sye …
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False If It Helps?
Many people come to believe and embrace Christianity by means of some tragedy or crisis. They’re driven in desperation to look for something that will help them rationalize and file away their grief, and many times, they find Christianity. Many other times, they grab hold of other things, such as drugs, alcohol, other religions, or even a perceived freedom achieved from relinquishing religion. In any case, tragedy has a way of forcing people into a spiral of desperation while their flailing arms are reaching for something outside themselves hoping that thing can withstand the force, and grant stability once again. …
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[F]utilitarianism
There is a school of thought to which many ethicists subscribe, whose students never seem willing to move on from the lambda-omega-lambdas, and whose parties are always unusually loud and long even after the music has been stopped for years and all the drink has dried up. This troupe of tautological idealogues loves to insist upon its own opinions and swears so should you. In doing so they both establish and undercut their point. These are the Utilitarians.
Utilitarianism is a philosophy of ethics that is summarily defined to say, “the morally right action is the action that produces …
