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,…
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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…
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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…
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. Consider the rules of chess would apply to playing…
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When something is subjective, it is based on personal opinion*. We are saying that there is no real external truth value, just opinions. *The term subjective can mean different things, though they are mostly akin to this definition, and this is how it is being used in the article. Preferences and Standards We can see this reflected in music taste. Our personal preference is something that is true for us, and it wouldn’t make sense to say someone is wrong…
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I’ve been trying to think of another way to explain beliefs as I still hear folks saying they are ‘absent of belief in regards to x’ or ‘have no beliefs’. Whilst I am sure they believe what they are saying, it makes me feel I have failed in my explanations. Rather than spray out the propositional logic or all the different definitions of a belief, I started thinking about how something like this might be represented in a database, perhaps…
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Propositional Logic and Beliefs Season 3 is all about trying something new. As you might have seen we have been running the SciPhi show on YouTube but in the background we have been planning and producing a bigger and better season 3 for you. Our last episode was on scepticism, and ties in nicely with tonight’s release on logic and belief. What’s also new is this is not only an AUDIO podcast but also available as a VIDEO, not to…
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Propositional Logic and Beliefs Season 3 is all about trying something new. As you might have seen we have been running the SciPhi show on YouTube but in the background we have been planning and producing a bigger and better season 3 for you. Our last episode was on scepticism, and ties in nicely with tonight’s release on logic and belief. What’s also new is this is not only an AUDIO podcast but also available as a VIDEO, not to…
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I was invited on Cheshire’s live stream ‘A Goblin Reads’ with Dave as she had seen my discussion with Aron about his belief that ‘Rocks are atheist!’ who then wrote a post called ‘What is Atheism?‘ In planning for this, I started reading Aron’s article where he argues why his definition of atheism is the ‘correct’ one and how SEP got things ‘wrong’ and his definition is the ‘original’. Whilst his article has had a lot of effort put into…
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When getting involved with discussions, especially on twitter, I keep hearing the phrase ‘The McRae Virus’ – often when discussing definitions or logic. I find this a strange way to dismiss a logical argument that doesn’t fit one’s narrative. Before entering the world of internet debates and things, I thought that an atheist was someone who believed or claimed gods do not exist. When I joined the debating world on Facebook many years ago, I was ‘corrected’ by many fellow…
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