The Gumball Analogy
Introduction You are presented with a jar full of gumballs. There are no broken gumballs inside the jar, they are all whole gumballs. Most sceptics and atheists will have heard the Gumball Analogy already. It’s a pretty common analogy used by sceptics and atheists who have discussions on places like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Fans of The Atheist Experience will certainly recognise it, as it’s an argument created, used, and popularised by Matt Dillahunty. Though I have also had people......
What you ought to do.
Created by Kristyn (who is Autistic) If you like our comics we think you’ll love the Fresh Air Podcasts and YouTube channel...
If There’s No Evidence, It Doesn’t Exist
Introduction There’s an argument that I have seen pop up a lot over the last few years from my fellow atheists and sceptics. It’s an argument that I think needs to be addressed, for several reasons. Among these reasons are that it shows bad epistemology, bad reasoning, and bad logic. The argument also shows bad scepticism. Something that I would hope that most sceptics would want to avoid. So, what is the argument? That argument is that something does not......
Composition Error Fallacy
Too many times I’m seeing this kind of ‘reasoning’. “Nazis don’t like inclusivity.” “OH, SO YOU’RE SAYING I’M A NAZI BECAUSE I DON’T LIKE INCLUSIVITY!” If you like our comics we think you’ll love the Fresh Air Podcasts and YouTube channel...
Confused Claims, Contradictions and Incoherence
Confusion is rife on the internet, especially on places like Twitter where people seem more interested in “beating” the last tweet in a discussion than maintaining a coherent thought process. Many of us atheists might think these contradictions might be limited to god claims, holy books, and fundamentalists but that is far from the case. Recently I’ve had some conversations with people that whilst I might not agree with their individual statements they could be valid on their own, however,......
Why Should We Choose Our Language Carefully?
Language is a tool for imparting ideas and desires to one another. A living language like English has so many twists and turns in with many words not only being polysemous but also being used in a metaphorically descriptive way rather than relating to any normative use. If you were to tell me the traffic was crazy today, I wouldn’t think for a moment you had been giving it a psychological evaluation. Even if you told me your child was......
What Do You Know About Knowledge?
Knowledge, is it just things you know? What do we mean by know and knowledge? Why does there seem to be muddiness in its application? For the most part, when I discuss knowledge I am talking about epistemic or propositional knowledge, but what does that mean? What are other uses of knowledge? Is there a way for us to know what we and others mean when using terms like know and knowledge? Knowledge Of-That-How Knowledge can be split into 3......
In Response to Daniel Goldman on Belief
Introduction Recently I encountered Daniel Goldman a couple of times on Twitter. The first time was during a discussion about the use of the words atheism, theism, agnosticism, etc. The conversation was pleasant enough, especially when we consider how many of those kinds of discussions go! The second encounter was a discussion about belief, and how it is defined. Daniel disputed the definition of belief that I presented, and a discussion about said topic ensued. There was a lot of......
Misunderstanding The Null Hypothesis and Knowledge.
The null hypothesis is used in science, and we atheists tend to have a lot of respect for science, the scientific method, scientific and empirical evidence. We think of ourselves as logical and rational people. We feel we know a lot about the topics we discuss, especially when it comes to science. In conversations with religious folks, especially many young-earth creationists, we will correct their misrepresentation and misuse of terms like evolution and scientific theory and demand they “learn the......
Forming a Hypothesis
‘Hypothesis’ is a scientific term that, whilst it may have some colloquial application, is defined as: a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. Oxford Languages Or an idea that proposes a tentative explanation about a phenomenon or a narrow set of phenomena observed in the natural world https://www.britannica.com/science/scientific-hypothesis However, this is quite a limited definition and doesn’t fully explain what a hypothesis is, the prerequisites or how it......
