Advocating Reality: A more fitting blog name, no?

'Derek the Advocate' was just too plain.  This is better, I think.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Evolution: Common Misconceptions and Deceptions

There are some critical misunderstandings of evolution out there, and I’d like to help clear some of them up. Ray Comfort is offering $10,000 to the first person who provides evidence of a ‘living transitional form’, and he defines this as a species giving birth to an entirely different species, such as a squirrel giving birth to a bird, or a chicken giving birth to a snake.  Now, I personally think Ray is being patently dishonest, but this raises a good point about what people seem to think evolution is all about. Let’s say that you are a paleontologist, and you have discovered fossils of a previously undocumented animal.  What you are looking at is a snapshot in time, as it were.  A ‘species’ is just that - it is a group of animals with particular shared characteristics, and when you look at a particular species, you are actually seeing the ‘current version’ of that genetic lineage.  If you take our hypothetical fossil find, you can determine approximately when...
Read more

Methodological Naturalism Explained - Why Science Can't Consider The Supernatural

I am going to make a bold statement. "For all practical purposes, it is always irrational to assign a supernatural cause to an event observed in the natural world." Now I am going to attempt to back up that statement. The only reason (of which I am aware) to assign a supernatural cause to a given event is the following: "I do not currently understand the details and outcome of this observation given my current state of knowledge and understanding of the natural world." Also, I suspect that many of you would prefer to add the caveat "And the details and outcome of this event are consistent with a particular supernatural belief or belief system", but that is clearly an example of circular reasoning and cannot be a valid part of this discussion.  The supernatural belief or belief system is, in fact, the item in question, or to be more accurate, the observation cannot be assigned a cause which has not been demonstrated, it can only be assigned a hypo...
Read more

Atheist / Christian T-Shirt Challenge - Given by The Atheist Advocate

I recently shared a link to a great little article by The Atheist Advocate on patheos.com in which Christians are challenged to wear an Atheist t-shirt for one week, in order to learn about what persecution  means, due to the apparent misunderstanding which is often spread by Christians. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/25/challenge-to-christians-wear-an-atheist-t-shirt-and-gauge-reactions/ Pretty good idea, no? Now, I know that '____ Challenge' is currently extremely cliche, but would a good name for this be 'Persecution Challenge'?  Too emotive maybe? I may have found a taker, and I think it would be a really great experience, probably for both of us.  You see, she's a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  I would be required to wear a Mormon t-shirt for one week, while she would be required to wear an Atheist t-shirt during the same time.   If we both agree on this, how should we document eve...
Read more