Mathematics

Mathematic doodling with Vi Hart. I'm not such a mathematician, but this really rocks. It's high speed English, so hold onto your chair, relax and have fun.

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The Kalam Cosmological Fallacies

I didn't think I would need to continue writing about atheism, but circumstances force me. Noblesse oblige, and all that shite. In other words, I ran into somebody who thinks you can prove god logically... in the twenty-first century, using the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Well, let's rip that one apart, shall we? I'll focus on the formal logic here. Others have more practical objections to Kalam. The form of the argument is as follows. Premise A: Whatever begins to exist has a cause. Premise B: The universe began to exist. Conclusion C: Therefore, the universe has a cause. If premises A & B are true, conclusion C must be true. While it can be argued that premise A may not be true, let's just accept this argument. “The universe has a cause” So far, so good, nobody got hurt in this exercise? Now, Kalam makes magic happen... [see the update below] Let's do a “non-sequitur” logical fallacy “therefore cause of the univer...
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Fallacies 'R Us

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After debating with religious people on Twitter for a number of months (mostly Christians, some Muslims and a few... stray bullets), I thought to myself that all arguments for gods are based on flawed logic. A short convo confirmed that, indeed, my fellow atheists on Twitter believe the same. This is a short list with the most common logical fallacies I've encountered. This post will be updated to incorporate new fallacies when they present themselves. The Fallacy Fallacy Warning: Using flawed logic doesn't mean that your conclusion is necessarily wrong, it just means that you cannot base your conclusion on that logic. Let's think about an example to clarify this. Suppose you are going to visit your family, and they ask you at what time you'll arrive. You take into account the inevitable traffic jam and estimate an hour. Then, you step into your car and lo and behold, there is no traffic jam... but you get a flat tire. You arrive at the estimat...
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Guts

I've had a long convo with -a person who wants to remain anonymous-, a former Young Earth Creationist (YEC) about evolution (and religion, and abiogenesis, and morality...). This convo is ongoing with the exact same result; -S- returning to her default position of denial (of evolution) and affirmation (of creation). The latest development is that -S- is now a believer of Intelligent Design (ID); her beliefs have evolved (changed over time). She's not a Christian any more. I'm not sure if she's gone from YEC to Old Earth Creationism. It seems nearly impossible to convince -S- that evolution is possible, probable and, in fact, a scientific fact. Still, one can only try :-) and try, and try, and try again. The thing is that -S- needs to look at evolution from a different angle because she has been bombarded with creationist' propaganda that she chooses to believe over the biologists' evidence. How can you convince someone who believes the ea...
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