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......
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......
Impossibly Possible – Logical and Metaphysical Possibility Explained
Something that comes up quite often in conversations is people saying things are logically impossible. This, at times, is used correctly however, there is often a misunderstanding over what is meant by logical and what it means by possible. Possibility When speaking of possibility we are talking about the likelihood something can happen. This is binary, Either something is possible, or not possible. If something is not possible it is impossible. If something is possible we then go into the......
Reason and the Reasoning Process
As a site that proclaims to have ‘Answers in Reason’ we have very few articles about what this actually means. When we speak of reason, we are speaking of the cognitive process of; actively thinking through a topic and coming to conclusions based on all available/known arguments and data. To summarise Plato, reason is the highest and most powerful human capacity. It allows us to rule over other passions and can direct us towards a virtuous life. Whilst reason is......
There Can Be Only ONE!
The repetitious nature of folks trying to prescribe a singular definition of atheism, and claiming that other definitions are, “talking about something else” or are “wrong”, seems to never die. What’s worse, these folks who take you saying that there are actually multiple uses of atheism claim that YOU are the one being prescriptive and restrictive, yet you’re the one saying there are multiple definitions… This article discusses some of the recent behaviours and examples of bad logic and mental......
The Problem With ‘Atheism is the Default Position’ Arguments
As an atheist, even one that doesn’t feel that in tune with many other atheists, I still want atheists to come from a position of strength. I want us to have good arguments, sound reasoning and solid logic. This is a big part of why I have the Bad atheist arguments series and the SciPhi Shortz videos and podcasts that address common misunderstandings and bad memes. Whether we like it or not, the behaviour of atheists reflects on us all.......
“We Are All Born Atheist!” – SciPhi Shortz: BAM!
Are we Really Born Atheists? We atheists have a number of things in our toolbelts, and one of those is memes. Many of these memes are oversimplifications or just flat out wrong, so I thought I would create a series to address some of our worst memes and explain why they are so bad. Something that shows a lack of epistemological understanding is the claim we are all born atheists. An atheist is one who ascribes to atheism. Atheism is polysemous,......
Rationality: How Can a Belief Be Rational? – SciPhi Shortz
What does it mean to be rational? It is common to hear that all beliefs are irrational, but is that really the case? In this SciPhi Short we will be briefly examining rationality and how it relates to belief. We will be covering: – What is a Belief – What is Rationality – States of Rationality: arational, irrational, rational Rationality: How Can a Belief Be Rational? – The Video 00:00 – Intro 00:40 – Rationality PPT Starts 00:43 – Hello......
You Won’t Believe This! (Article Reading) – SciPhi: 033
What Won’t We Believe? With the success of our ‘article reading’ style posts, we thought we would do another. We are going to be discussing Davidian(Joe)’s latest article ‘You won’t believe this… ‘ whilst Joe does the article reading. The article is about belief and logic. It speaks about how both beliefs and propositions are binary and uses the medium of both binary and a football field to describe how we ought to answer a proposition. Post about Beliefs...
What Does it Mean to Be Logical?
Why should we be interested in logic? What does it mean to be logical? How does logic tie into rationality? Questions we should be thinking about, especially if we view ourselves as logical and/or rational people. What Does it Mean to Be Logical? Something is logical if it adheres to the rules of logic. There are different types of logic, as an example, for a syllogism* it would use syllogistic logic. Or more specifically it is a specific kind of......
