Life, The Universe…

Rationale and Thomas Aquinas Part the Second

8 October 2015 by Roger Cavanagh 2 Comments

In my last post on Rationale, I illustrated using the software to map the first of Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways—logical proofs of God—that God is the prime, or unmoved, mover. In this post, I’ll makes some further remarks on working with Rationale to refine and polish a largely complete map resulting in an updated version of the Prime Mover argument and an argument map of the second way: God the the first cause.

Mainly so I can have a picture at the start of the post, I’m displaying a colour version of this wonderful, famous cartoon of Sidney Harris, Then A Miracle Occurs. It doesn’t quite get the Thomistic argument right as the miracle should be at step 1.

Rationale and Thomas Aquinas

4 October 2015 by Roger Cavanagh 2 Comments

This is the third post in my series on argument mapping with Rationale. The previous posts are Argument Mapping with Rationale and More on Argument Mapping with Rationale.

To further practice argument mapping, I decided to map Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways. These purport to be logical proofs for the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas was a theologian in the 13th century CE. Apparently, Aquinas’ writings still influence the teaching of the Catholic Church today.

Aquinas argued that the existence of God could be proved in five ways:

the unmoved mover
the first cause
the argument from contingency
the argument from degree
the argument from design

International Blasphemy Rights Day

30 September 2015 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

International Blasphemy Rights Day, held each year on September 30, is a day to show solidarity with those who challenge oppressive laws and social prohibitions against free expression, to support the right to challenge prevailing religious beliefs without fear of violence, arrest, or persecution.

Source: International Blasphemy Rights Day | Campaign for Free Expression

I did not know this. They should have t-shirts.

I was thinking about writing some obscenity about God or Allah, but what would be the point?

Filed Under: Life, The Universe… Tagged With: blasphemy, campaign for free expression

INTRODUCING… JESUS AND MO

30 September 2015 by Roger Cavanagh 1 Comment

In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think.

Source: INTRODUCING… JESUS AND MO | Pandaemonium

An excellent post by Keenan Malik about the Jesus and Mo cartoons that I have shared several times previously. Do consider supporting the cartoonist’s work through Patreon.

Filed Under: Life, The Universe… Tagged With: Jesus and Mo, Keenan Malik, Pandaemonium

Did the ‘Prophet’ Muhammad Suffer from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy?

11 September 2015 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

If there is but a single religious figure from human history that people should be discouraged from emulating, it’s the founder of the Islamic religion, Muhammad. Should you possess the stomach to read through the compendium of medieval torture pornography that is the Qur’an and the Islamic Hadiths, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Muhammad, according to his own religion’s sacred scripture, was a murderous paedophile, and a child-wife-beater. This is, of course, a somewhat oversimplified description of a character who also possessed charitable, loving, gentle and benevolent qualities as well, but I shall leave the starry-eyed doting over Muhammad to both Muslims and irrationally romanticising scholars like Karen Armstrong, and just focus on his contemptible and capricious conduct. But we must ask; what was it about Muhammad that made him so extremely kind on the one hand, yet so insanely violent, licentious and brutal, on the other? Was he simply a product of his environment, or was there something seriously wrong with his brain?

Source: Did the ‘Prophet’ Muhammad Suffer from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy?

An interesting read.

Filed Under: Life, The Universe… Tagged With: Michael Sherlock, Muhammad

Why You Can’t Help Believing Everything You Read

31 August 2015 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

Believe first, ask questions later

Not only that, but their conclusions, and those of Spinoza, also explain other behaviours that people regularly display:

Correspondence bias: this is people’s assumption that others’ behaviour reflects their personality, when really it reflects the situation.

Truthfulness bias: people tend to assume that others are telling the truth, even when they are lying.

The persuasion effect: when people are distracted it increases the persuasiveness of a message.

Denial-innuendo effect: people tend to positively believe in things that are being categorically denied.

Hypothesis testing bias: when testing a theory, instead of trying to prove it wrong people tend to look for information that confirms it. This, of course, isn’t very effective hypothesis testing!

Source: Why You Can’t Help Believing Everything You Read – PsyBlog

Although this post is almost six years old, it is still interesting reading. It’s certainly consistent with my recent post about Fox News.

Filed Under: Life, The Universe… Tagged With: belief, believing, Jeremy Dean, PsyBlog

Is Fox News full of BS?

20 August 2015 by Roger Cavanagh 1 Comment

With the departure of Jon Stewart from The Daily Show there’ll be one less voice calling out Fox News for its bullshit. Was Stewart really justified in his constant criticism? I came across How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics, a paper on the Social Science Research Network by Bruce Bartlett discussing the impact of Fox.

Bartlett starts by discussing the liberal domination of media in the sixties and into the nineties, and how the abolition in 1987 of the Fairness Doctrine by the FCC increased the scope for partisan broadcasting exemplified by Rush Limbaugh who was an early arrival:

There are many reasons why conservative talk radio worked so well. One is that conservatives finally had a news source that fed their philosophy. Another is that conservatives viewed themselves as outsiders and were attracted not only to the philosophy of conservative talk radio, but its tone and articulation of outrage toward liberals that many listeners themselves had long felt.

Then Roger Ailes convinced Rupert Murdoch to let him build Fox News.

It should be noted that Murdoch has long been a conservative ideologue and Fox News fit into a larger conservative empire he built over the years that includes the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. Although the Journal has long had a conservative editorial page, prior to Murdoch gaining control in 2007, its news pages were free of bias. But soon after, a conservative tilt began creeping into the news coverage.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Life, The Universe… Tagged With: bruce bartlett, Daily Show, Fox News, Jon Stewart, politics, Republicans, USA

Science Isn’t Broken

19 August 2015 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

The scientific method is the most rigorous path to knowledge, but it’s also messy and tough. Science deserves respect exactly because it is difficult — not because it gets everything correct on the first try. The uncertainty inherent in science doesn’t mean that we can’t use it to make important policies or decisions. It just means that we should remain cautious and adopt a mindset that’s open to changing course if new data arises. We should make the best decisions we can with the current evidence and take care not to lose sight of its strength and degree of certainty. It’s no accident that every good paper includes the phrase “more study is needed” — there is always more to learn.

via Science Isn’t Broken | FiveThirtyEight.

An interesting article about the problems of “doing science”: probability values are misleading, different analytical techniques can yield different results, people make mistakes, people cheat, people are biased, failed projects don’t make headlines…

Filed Under: Life, The Universe… Tagged With: Christie Aschwanden, FiveThirtyEight, science, scientific method

Critical Thinking

10 August 2015 by Roger Cavanagh Leave a Comment

There has been a lot written about Jon Stewart’s decision to quit The Daily Show after 16 years as presenter. I’ve been catching up on his last few shows. One of the recurring segments on the show has been interviews in which people often make what seem to be completely outrageous statements. Apparently viewers have been asking whether these interviews are real or faked: “Why would anyone appear when they are made to look dumb?”

Well, it seems that these people didn’t mind, and to demonstrate the point Daily Show regular Jessica Williams re-interviewed some “stars of the past”. One such was Dr James David Manning, a pastor, who had compared Barack Obama to Hitler. He doubled-down on this assertion by saying that he now regarded the US President as a “son of Satan”. This was bad enough, but at the end of the interview Jessica asked the good doctor about his claim that Starbucks were using semen to flavour their lattes:

JW: You think that they’re using semen to flavour their lattes?
DJM: I do, yes.
JW: What empirical evidence do you have that Starbucks is using using semen to flavour their lattes?
DJM: What empirical evidence do I have?
JW: Yes.
DJM: I think if you’re asking for that, you may not be able to find my explanation suitable to meet the empirical standards, but let’s just say, I know.