by Carl Howard | Jun 5, 2012 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Feminism and LGBT, Language, Science and Skepticism
Ages ago, it occured to me that some words are just red flags for ridiculous arguments. Not exactly groundbreaking, I know. Yet it was surprising that there’s quite a lot of them. In my biased experience, when someone uses one of these words in an argument, this is...
by Carl Howard | May 10, 2012 | Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Science and Skepticism
I’m not talking about creationists, that goes without saying. I’m talking about the fact that a very high percentage of arguments by people who claim that evolution and religion are compatible are in fact nonsense. Via Jerry Coyne, an article in the Chronicle of...
by Carl Howard | Nov 14, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Philosophy, Science and Skepticism
A quick follow-up to last week’s post about the dancing squid. An interesting related post was made on the Seed of Reason blog in 2009. The post speaks of the danger of basing too much of our conclusions about the lives of animals on direct observation — which I would...
by Carl Howard | Nov 7, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Science and Skepticism
You might have seen this video making the rounds a few months ago. It’s of a whole (small) squid on a bowl of rice in presumably a Japanese restaurant. The diner pours soy sauce over the squid and it starts to wriggle around coming alive. My first impression of the...
by Carl Howard | Aug 22, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Interesting Stuff, Science and Skepticism
You’re probably familiar with the original Sokal’s Hoax. If not here’s a brief summary otherwise skip down to the Sokal 2 heading. The Sokal hoax was perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a professor of physics+mathematics dismayed at the excesses of postmodernism in academia....
by Carl Howard | Jul 18, 2011 | Atrocities and Oppression, Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Evolution and Biology, Science and Skepticism
I reckon most people aren’t too comfortable with the idea of punishing children for the actions of their forefathers. At least when the idea is stated explicitly. Consider Exodus 20:5-6. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God...
