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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The burden of proof – There are zero gods

I was discussing the “burden of proof” the other day. I lost the discussion, but I learned some things. The burden of proof is a philosophical concept where, whoever asserts something (anything), has to support the claim with evidence. For instance, if you say you own a race-horse, somebody would want to see you with the horse. Atheists, all over the world, are cautious when discussing the existence of gods. Usually, we say that we reject the claim of gods until there is evidence in favor of gods. That is, the theists will claim there is a god, and the burden of proof lies on the theist. Atheists, normally, do not say 'there are zero gods', because, then, the burden of proof lies on the atheist to prove there are none, which seems impossible. As I don't mind making a fool out of myself, I will claim that there are no gods. This means the burden of proof is on me. What is a god? My claim relies on the basic concept of gods; they are supreme be...
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