debate

What If God’s Plan Involves Choices?

Now, ignoring for the moment that I am fanatically agnostic, I started to contemplate today the pro-life argument against abortion. The argument I most commonly hear is that a fetus is a living person with a right to life, even if that life is a miserable one. Sometimes, in the case of the pro-lifer being a Christian, this is backed up my a statement that life is a precious gift from God, and that it is a sin to cast it away, no matter what the circumstances.

What I wonder is this: If God is omniscient and omnipotent, but permissive in the sense that He wishes humans to have free will, then can we be so sure that the life of a fetus has independent value in His eyes? Before you dismiss this possibility without further thought, please allow me to expound. Continue reading

Logic 103: The Dark (Dark) Side of Logic

In response to requests from my logically-sound readers, you can now find links to Logic 101 (which covers the basic structure of logical arguments), and Logic 102 (which covers the Argumentum ad Baculum, Argumentum ad Hominem, Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, and Argumentum ad Misericordium) here.

Actual Article Begins Now:

All right, Logic fans, it is time for the next exciting episode in our cutting edge expose’ of the sneaky little fallacies which try to undermine the very foundation of dialogue as we know it. Last session, we talked about four of the most common fallacies at large in the world today: the Argumentum ad Baculum (where you threaten folks with evil things if they don’t agree with you), the Argumentum ad Hominem (where you call someone else evil in order to undermine their credibility), the Argumentum ad Ignorantiam (where you say something’s true because it hasn’t been proven untrue), and the lousy, low-down Argumentum ad Misericordium (where you say someone should agree with you because you are so pathetic). We also covered a bit about how to get goth girls to talk to you, because that seemed to be very relevant. Speaking of relevance, all these fallacies were revealed to be “fallacies of relevance”, because they address situations where the premises you are using to prove your conclusion are irrelevant to the actual argument.

Everyone clear? All right. We are ready for our next foray into the treacherous waters of logical argument:
The Dark (Dark) Side of Logic. Continue reading