Nadezhda

Are you guys reading Boghossian??? His book “Fear of knowledge” is my absolute favorite critique of post-modernists, knowledge deniers, cultural relativists, religion truth butchers etc. Even better than “Fashionable Nonsense”. I imagine you’ve seen his videos? His books are even better. He seems to write in an effortless way, brief, brutal and…[Read more]

Bellen wrote:
No because he didn’t explicitly say that he believes in it.

No. Aboslutely not. Logos is a philosophical term. You don’t “believe” in logos. You use it as part of an argument or as a means of explaining something. He uses the term in a totally tortured and incomprehensible way that, as Reg said…does box him in. Because he uses t…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Can one be both an atheist and religious?

Yes, they are not mutually exclusive. There are millions of people who lack a belief in God yet are religious. None of lacking a belief in God stops you from believing in other supernatural irrational nonsense. An enormous amount of people in Asia and many gullible “new age loving” Americans…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
Without all that, it’s a philosophy.

Thats a pretty big insult to philosophers. His babbling rant barely approaches a philosophy. In response to the 10 minute video I would say:

He has me up until the “I don’t know what they mean by God”. A pretty standard igtheist stance. But then he qualifies that as a “our two concepts o…[Read more]

At least the court proposed that standard services must be made available to customers regardless of their sexual orientation (or race, and gender I would assume). As for customizing a cake? They should provide an unburdomsome alternative, like subcontracting out another person to put male figures on the top and write out any text. But to refuse…[Read more]

If by discoveries you mean bullshit that so many people are all too willing to believe…then I’d say yes…most non-critical-thinking and non-skeptical people are extremely likely to accept this “mind-blowing facts you’ll never believe are totally scientificamal and true-like”.

I don’ think most people here will waste their time. Aliens with…[Read more]

@danielw

I agree with you. For me the most disturbing part of it is the ritual touching and physical violence to a family members genitals. It’s abusive.

But the second most disturbing thing is what you say:

It takes choice away from the child, is yet another forced social conformity, and has potential for negative outcomes.

The loss of bodily…[Read more]

Hi Jake,

I’d say a big yes. If a doctor can properly demonstrate why it is necessary and is sincere about it (absolutely no cultural or religious motivations) then it is a lot more acceptable than a Rabbi performing it (no matter how sanitary he tries to make it).

There are a few rare cases of women having part of their genitals removed to avoid…[Read more]

I thought that an analogy would help. Imagine if it was somehow discovered that if we scrape part of our tastebuds off, we will be a little less likely to get brain cancer (already a pretty low risk), will avoid tongue infections (pretty uncommon), will have 10% less likelihood of having the tonsils removed (few people suffer this anyways) and is…[Read more]

Its no surprise that its almost only American doctors talking about the very questionable efficacy of circumcision as they are also more likely to perform they mostly pointless excision. The UTI benefits are tenuous at best, AIDS protection is about avoiding infection with unprotected sex un places of highinfection rate and none of them take into…[Read more]

African Americans are less likely to be wealthy enough to cover tuition as compared to white people. Based on their disadvantage of being qualified for jobs and in general having less education…should it be reasonable to pay an individual African Americans less because their over all demographic is disadvantaged? No. That’s grossly…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
So i distinguish the two.

Yes. Got it!

jakelafort wrote:
Ethics is a matter of applied reason.

If only that were mostly so Jake. If only. This is true when we are in the realm of applied ethics, legal debates and enlightened discussion. However, ethics all to often by-pass anything we’d recognize as reason. Consider this: in a large amount of countries…the most intellectual and…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
@davis – Jordan Peterson apparently believes they’ve been abusing a distorted version of Post Modernism.

Post modernism, in a political, identity, philosophy term…is already highly flawed and damaged goods in my opinion. Adding agressive toxic idenity-politics people who shame others for the words they choose, does not abu…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
@davis – Everyone seems to be locked down and afraid to move in case they get accused of being sexist, racist and homophobic.

Academics and many politicians are being more careful with their words indeed. To be honest, being more considerate with how you label and identify people is in many cases a good thing. Saying: “…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
@davis – what’s your view of the mess that the modern Left seem to have got themselves into?

There are three different questions in your text, so let me adress them separately:

The mess that we have gotten ourselves into, is turning political conversations into “the left” and “the right”. It’s mostly the fault of pol…[Read more]

@Pope tro

You’re going to have a difficult time trying to put critical thinking and post-modernesque tropes in some kind of disfunctional marriage. Critical thinking, in general, is designed to be cold hard analysis. Categorizing and reviewing the soundness of logical arguments. The multi-perspective family of methods/narratives, often tend to…[Read more]

Most of these are humanists principles, though a few of them are a little odd (touching dishes, taking sabbaticals, do not destroy). They may be good advice but I don’ understand why these are major priorities compared that what is left out, like educating others, fighting discrimination cruelty against the marginalised, loose religion, encourage…[Read more]