General

A collection of 155 posts

conceptual nominalism

The Second Amendment and Rights

A thread has recently exploded when I posted about the Second Amendment and drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable weaponry. On the thread, one particularly obvious common denominator sprung up with all of the gun advocates, the idea of "rights": A right is no less a right

General

Another Comment on Comments

Just to let you all know, in the context of the issues over comments going into moderation, that things should be improved by the end of the weekend. I am under the impression that they are sorting blogs out on an individual basis, and I sent in an email to

General

John Adams on Christianity

A friend of mine forwarded on some great quotes from Norman Cousins' In God We Trust concerning Founding Father John Adams and his opinions on Christianity:Christianity to him was the "brightness of the glory and the express portrait of the character of the eternal, self-existent, independent, benevolent,

blogging

Another Comment on Comments

This is just a further post on the comments situation act has rightfully enraged a whole bunch of you. I just want to say, once and for all, that this is not a case of censorship for nefarious reasons of Patheos, or the owners Belief Net, wanting to shut down

blogging

A Comment about Comments

As many of you may have realised, there have recently been many comments that have been thrown into moderation through DISQUS. This is because the powers that be at BeliefNet and Patheos have produced a list of words for filtering that would apparently please Google a great deal (I presume

homosexuality

Wide-Eyed Widdecombe: Science May "Produce an Answer" for the Gays

For those predominantly nonEnglish readers, Ann Widdecombe. Ladies and gentlemen, Ann Widdecombe... I'll let Wikipedia do the introductions: Ann Noreen Widdecombe (born 4 October 1947) is a British politician[2] and author serving as a Brexit PartyMember of the European Parliament (MEP) for the South West England constituency

conservatism

Ben Shapiro Schooled by UK Interviewer

[caption id="attachment_23045" align="alignright" width="155"] Steven Crowder [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)][/caption] I don't really know much, if anything, about Ben Shapiro other than he is conservative political commentator. Having just skimmed

Democratic Party

Chomsky on How Trump Was Elected

Noam Chomsky does a really good job of explaining how Trump got elected back in 2016. There is no rocket science to this and much of this I have talked about previously. However, I like the way that, as the commentator states, Chomsky did this so concisely. https://www.youtube.

Demographics of Religion

World's Happiest Countries Revealed: And Religion?

CNN have recently produced a list of the world's happiest and least happy countries. There are no prizes to those who guess the correlation between lack of religion and happiness. This is a recurring pattern that we have seen over the years. Of course, we can talk more

atheism

A Great Myth about Atheism

This has come up in conversation on the last thread, and being in second day of my Russian chemo, I thought I'd repost for your delectation: This post was one of my most popular pieces on my previous blog, and I have, over time, revised it slightly to

conceptual nominalism

Human Rights Don't Exist until We Construct and Codify Them

Human rights don't exist. By this, I mean, as I so often state, they do not have ontic existence - they do not exist outside of our minds. Like all abstract ideas, for a conceptual nominalist like myself, the existence of such mental entities (labels, morality and so

united states

How Americans View Themselves and Their Country

We live in polarised times. I recently posted a piece on how fear and the interpretation of fear plays into politics, and to some extent paranoia. I happened across this video on YouTube and was wondering what my American readers think about this. She talks extensively, after being away from

anti-vax

Anti-Vaxxer Wakefield Has Great Influence in Trump's America

There's nothing about Trump's America that surprises me anymore. In fact, whenever I think about what would be a good and proper thing for a responsible world leader and massively powerful and influential country to do, I am met with the exact opposite. Trump and the

conceptual nominalism

More on "Objective" Morality

I recently posted a piece on objective morality in response to Jeremiah Traegar's article here at ATP. In discussing my response elsewhere, there were the following points that I would like to deal with here in order to kill two birds with one philosopher's stone. My

abstracts

My Views on "Objective" Morality

Jeremiah Traeger, here at ATP, recently posted on objective morality and referenced my beliefs in this context, especially regarding conceptual nominalism. I will look to succinctly set out my beliefs here again to stimulate some discussion. What is a conceptual nominalist? Let me elucidate: Abstract Objects Abstract objects are incredibly

Brexit

Brexit and Democracy

This is my second in a series on the EU, Media and Democracy, inspired by a debate I was recently in. I would argue that the EU was never a worry for the vast majority of British people until it became a worry because it was artificially generated and this

capitalism

On Free Market Economics: History, Morality and Background

Buckle up; we're in for a long ride over this series, for those who have not yet read it. Free market economics seems to be the cornerstone of both right-wing and libertarian political ideology, broadly espousing that the companies and corporations and consumers of the world arbitrate supply,

Christianity

On Christianity and Homosexuality

Here is something I wrote on some time ago, and I have expanded this repost here to include the remarks from the person I was debating with. I am reposting these pieces because it has come up in conversation on another thread. This first part deals explicitly with the intersection

General

Inheritance Tax: Why We Don't Like It, but (Rationally) We Should

Inheritance Tax. People love to hate it, but we shouldn't. Let me remind you of an earlier piece before taking it on. I have not particularly studied anything about Inheritance Tax (IHT), so this is coming purely from my own thinking about this. Yesterday, the Daily Mail predictably

Holy Trinity

Divine Simplicity and a Trinitarian God

In theology, the doctrine of divine simplicity says that God is without parts. The general idea of divine simplicity can be stated in this way: the being of God is identical to the "attributes" of God. In other words, such characteristics as omnipresence, goodness, truth, eternity, etc. are

Easter

The Resurrection Debunked: Extraordinary Claims

As mentioned in my previous post, someone in Malawi is about to have a debate on national TV with a Christian about the Resurrection accounts and I have been asked to help provide some ideas for the debate, so here goes. There are three aspects to the debunking of the

evolution

Evolution, Transitional Fossils and Theodore Turner (and his TERRIBLE Comments)

Theodore Turner is doing what See Noevo used to do: providing stimulus for posts after placing ridiculous comments on the threads. I know many will think why bother replying but it is hopefully useful for lurkers and ammunition for others in similar arguments. Anyway, the comments in question were: I

Creationism

Quote of the Day for Hilarity: Theodore Turner on the Flood

Theodore James Turner has been commenting at length on my pieces concerning the Exodus. One could mistake many of his comments for good counter-argumentation - they are long and exclusively quote from someone called Gerard Gertoux, whom he puts a lot of store in. Turner places an awful lot of

Exodus

The Exodus Debunked: Chronology

“…In the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come  out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which [is] the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.” (1

conceptual nominalism

Second Amendment: Gun Rights. But What Is a Right, and Do We Have Them?

We hear the term "right" bandied around an awful lot, especially in the context of gun control. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution states that citizens have the right to bear arms. The phrasing is as follows: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of