Advocating Reality

I wrote this some time ago and never published it. It's pretty simple but I hope that it helps to get the point across. How We Evaluate Claims When we are presented with a particular claim, regardless of the content, we go through a process to determine whether or not the claim is true. If we can find nothing with which to justify the claim, we can simply stop there. There is no need to accept a claim which has not been positively justified. We certainly can go on to search for disconfirming evidence, something which would show that the claim is not true; however by this point it isn’t necessary to do so in order to reject the claim’s truthfulness. However, time and time again, we see and hear people making the argument that ‘you can’t prove that it’s NOT true’. We don’t have to. It is never reasonable to accept a claim based on the non-existence of disconfirming evidence alone. Bertrand Russell demonstrates why this is so with his teapot analogy. For example, it may be that ‘...

Suppose for a moment that you are a high-level Microsoft technician.  You understand servers, networking, clients, backups, etc. and you have excellent customer relation skills.  You are well-spoken, well-educated, confident, and competent. What difference does it make what type of clothes you are wearing?  Does your outfit somehow change your skill set, or your ability to do your job? If someone does not like the way you are dressed, are they justified in assuming that you are somehow incompetent? Is comfort or personal preference a factor at all?  If not, why the hell not? Someone might argue that your clothes tell people certain things about you.  If this is true, then choosing to wear particular clothes in order to send a particular 'message' would be considered dishonest, wouldn't it?  On the other hand, someone who wears the clothes that they prefer or that they consider to be 'comfortable' is the one person being honest (and is the person who...

The dietary laws in the Old Testament are often said to have been God sharing important knowledge with mankind, and that science has proven these laws to be useful and healthy.  I contend that anyone who says this does not actually know what the dietary laws are.  I will not outline each and every law, but I want to touch on the ones that don't seem to make sense. Deuteronomy 14 14:6 "You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud." Except camels, rabbits, or 'hyrax', or pigs (14:7-8) 14:9-10 "Of all the creatures living in the water, you may eat any that has fins and scales. 10 But anything that does not have fins and scales you may not eat; for you it is unclean." 14:11-18 "You may eat any clean bird. 12 But these you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, 13 the red kite, the black kite, any kind of falcon, 14 any kind of raven, 15 the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, 16 the l...