Alvin Plantinga argued for the evolutionary argument against naturalism (PDF link): if modern humans macroly evolved over a large period of time, our cognitive processes are tailored more towards seeking survival rather than truth. If evolutionary theory were true, that would mean that modern forms of government came extremely late in the game. It could … Evolutionary Argument Against The State?
My friend Marcia recently linked to JumpFromPaper, a niche fashion design duo that create cartoon-aesthetic bags. I haven’t decoded it yet, but my first thought was that “JumpFromPaper” is code for “rewiring everyone cerebral functions so that non-Euclidian geometric space and the furthest reaches of Humean skepticism fuse together into a Lovecraftian, infernal mental existence.” … These Cartoon Bags Will Completely Destroy Your Perception Of Reality
From an over two year old post at The Futurist, emphasis mine: Lastly, the religious ‘social conservatives’ who continue their empty sermonizing about the ‘sanctity of marriage’ while doing absolutely nothing about the divorce-incentivizing turn that the laws have taken, have been exposed for their pseudo-moral posturing and willful blindness. What they claim to be … Every Pastor That Has Whined About Gay Marriage Should Read This
You can do searches for how to make your own shaving soap, more from scratch that what I did here. It’s basically soap with some other ingredients added. If you buy all of that stuff and go jump through the hoops, like here, it may come out more cheaply but it’s more time consuming and … How To Make Your Own Shaving Soap For El Cheapo
I’ve mentioned a few times on here, and in a roundabout way in the review of Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, about non-Aristotelian epistemology. This is sometimes called Middle Eastern (ME) or Hebraic epistemology. ME epistemology utilizes divine revelation as a legitimate, basic form of knowledge, the same way we accept sense perception or memory … A Quick Thought on Non-Aristotelian Epistemology
Ravi Zacharias’ Can Man Live Without God explores the moral and material, not spiritual, consequences of atheism, particularly on a cultural scale. I think Zacharias intends to explain that atheism (he terms it “antitheism”), flowering to its logical consequences, intrinsically leads to philosophical and existential despair. The book’s audience seems to be people of various … Book Review: Can Man Live Without God
While having nighttime coffee with a traveling friend earlier this week, in the midst of our conversation we thought of the futility of fame. We all want to become famous for different reasons or for different things, but that goal is mostly out of our hands. Mass fame is the result of chance circumstances—i.e., the … Stop Trying to be Famous
Paleo Bread is new from Julian Bakery, and I bought a loaf and had it shipped. Nothing earth-shattering there. I’m not too huge on eating bread or grain-based food in general (for some good reasons), so I thought trying this stuff out would be a fun experiment. The first thing you notice is that the … I’m Not a Foodie Food Review: Paleo Bread Coconut
In turn of the century letter-writing—I can’t exactly point to where—I have read on “dying a good death”. In a general sense this means dying under favorable circumstances, and most of us would take the phrase to mean favorable material circumstances: living to a prosperous old age, free of disease or dysfunction, in the company … How to Die Properly
Ellison’s Invisible Man, not H.G. Wells’ more enjoyable The Invisible Man, deals with race relations both in the south and north of 1940’s America. The treatment is abstract, though, as everything is filtered through the nameless protagonist’s first person perspective. The story follows him through a series of unfortunate circumstances, starting at college, to his … Book Review: Invisible Man
I wonder how I had missed this article, on the Department of Homeland Security’s List of Naughty Words* that will flag their systems or whatnot. DailyMail covered their nethers well by posting an image of the words, not the words themselves. Poking around to see if any other blogger-types actually published the words, Soveriegnman.com looks … A Blatant Use Of Words You Are Not Supposed To Publish On Your Blog
Because of this, and most recently this, there’s been a lot of discussion lately about gun ownership/rights, the 2nd amendment, etc.—as there always is when the media cycle restarts and a report of a shooting hasn’t been done in a while. There exists one common argument that gun rights people* use to counteract proposals for … A Bad Argument For Gun Ownership Rights
Like most male American highschoolers with little literary orientation, the first exposure to Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms was the loose reference in the first Golgo-13 Nintendo game. I had a chuckle when I thought of the stoic Duke Togo grunting in frustration from the inability to wave goodbye to his amputated arms. But then … Finish Your Summer Reading List: A Farewell to Arms Book Review
Ben Pike tipped me off to this blog post, “Abortion Rights are Logically Required by Libertarianism“. Below is the email I wrote back to him. It was a rough email, not intended as post material, so it’s kind of jumpy. But the thoughts are there. Basically, reading this and the original post over a few … Abortion and Property-Rights Theory: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
I changed things around. It was a matter of scalable convenience; the theme I was using was customized and I didn’t want to keep merging code or design or making sure stupid plugin x functioned whenever the theme had an update or a door was slammed in Kathmandu. Now I’m using the twentyeleven default theme … This Post Is About Web Design and Not Chik-Fil-A*
Short post today. Read below the delicious red meat-quote on Austrian vis-a-vis Marxist or Keynesian, etc., economic theory, from an interview with Robert Higgs: Most of all, an understanding of Austrian economics reveals that mainstream economics is the exact opposite of what it claims to be: it is not science, but scientism. Relying on crude … Are You an Electrical Current Or a Human?
Check out this article, on the latest stats on the number of commuters who bike to work. Though it doesn’t count people in my situation, who do a bike-to-mass-transit combo, there shows an increase of cycling commuters. There’s probably a million lists like these online that will try to guilt you into riding a bike, … Some Reasons to Commute by Bike to Work, and Some Reasons Not To
This is a quick post, but at a recent meeting at work the question about year-based cyclical adjectives came up. Me and another colleague did a little research and came up with some answers. “Biannual” – occurring two times a year (“semiannual” seems to have the same meaning but it doesn’t feel as accurate to … A Quick, Unsatisfying Post About Recurrent Time Adjectives
Note: I made some of the explanations clearer and images more contextual, and the images now load via fancybox instead of a new window. Now change that favicon! You know that little picture next to your web address in the URL locator? That’s a favicon, and it shows up in important places like right next … A Post for All the Bloggers on Bluehost
Most of us have heard of the various “God started the universe” arguments but haven’t known what exactly the formal name of it was. Well, they are generally called cosmological arguments, which isn’t too obscure, but the specific one apologists invoke unknowingly is the Kalām Cosmological argument. I never knew the name until I landed … Rollicking Good Times with the Kalām Cosmological Argument