DISQUS

Moms and dads feel bad putting their kids in daycare in part because they legitimately worry that the kids won't receive as good care as they would were they care for by their parents. You might advise them, "Find a better daycare, then!" This sounds like reasonable advice if you haven't ever actually searched for daycares.

Is this guy Ryan being obnoxious and stupid deliberately or indeliberately?

That's pretty repugnant, but not as repugnant as the Old Testament. Or the New one.

Using the Bible as evidence of the Christian God is as reasonable as using the Iliad as evidence of Zeus, Ares, and Athena.

Even if he does need to explain this, there's still a difference between this view and theistic ones. Namely, there is no undefeated evidence of theism, but there's lots of evidence that the universe was once condensed into an infinitely hot and dense point.

Note, also, that you should not assume that this point "came into existence". Logically speaking, there's no grounds for assuming that if something exists, it came into existence, i.e., that there must have been a time in which it didn't exist prior to when it did.

Paul, please go study evolutionary biology. All of your criticisms and doubts have been dealt with at length.

Will, I like Walter's suggestion that you debate Stanley Fish, even though he is a joke and an intellectual fraud. Before doing so, take a look at this paper ("The Vacuity of Postmodern Methodology") in Metaphilosophy. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/1186...

I've seen Fish present his thoughts before, and he actually makes the bullshit moves that Shackel complains about. In particular, Fish did "the postmodern shuffle". He said that there's no objective reality. When someone pointed out this is self-refuting (if true, then Fish's claims are not true, etc.), he retreated to saying trivial things like, "Our understanding of the world is mediate by concepts."

Paul,

We didn't evolve from any of the other species of apes you see alive today. Rather, we share common ancestors with them. Also, though the disparity between our intelligence and theirs is significant, remember that we involved from other homonid species, some of which were more intelligent than the other currently living apes.

Here's the problem, Will. Religious belief is deeply irrational. There isn't any undefeated evidence for the existence of supernatural beings, and the a priori arguments all suck. The people who advance these arguments are disingenuous. They don't actually believe on the basis of the arguments or on their supposed evidence. Rather, they are just rationalizing stuff they believe on faith, i.e., without evidence and despite counter-evidence. So, when you argue against a religious believer on religion, you're arguing with an intellectually dishonest person about the very issues she's dishonest about. You'll have to sit through her conflating possiblity and probability, lying about standards of evidence, lying about burdens of proofs, etc. At the end, you won't convince her, and you'll feel foolish for bothering.

The only reason to argue with such people is to help honest third parties.

(For what it's worth, I do accept that maybe 1 out of 50,000 or so theists might not be irrational in light of her theism. Also, I realize this post is smug and dismissive, but theism is ridiculous and deserves that.)

Paul,

Is your post in jest? Asking why there are still apes is like asking why there are still bacteria.

Here is the text of the Canadian Oath of Citizenship:

"Oath of Citizenship

I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful
and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada,
Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully
observe the laws of Canada
and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen."

Are they serious? You have to swear allegiance to Queen Elizabeth?

What I find most amusing about Naomi Klein's and Ben Barber's work is that their books are pure consumer goods. The point of these books is conspicuous consumption and image. Obvious, it's not about substance. It's an insult to them to criticize them as if they meant it as serious scholarship.

Sunstein suffers from language problems perennially. His problem is that he wants to seem more provocative and interesting than he actually is. So, in The Cost of Rights, we get a terribly confused argument that all rights are positive because enforcing them requires a positive right of assistance. What he should have said was that many rights are negative (i.e., what it takes to respect the right is for people to refrain from certain behaviors), but in order for negative rights to have much worth, be enjoyed, and be enforced, you need government to supply the rule of law. But Sunstein doesn't want to say that, because it doesn't sound nearly as cool as saying all rights are positive.

Sunstein is a pretty good legal theorist, I guess, but whenever he has the choice between (philosophical rigor + clarity) and provocativeness, he takes the latter.

He recently wrote an equally silly paper about John Stuart Mill's place in the canon for The Chronicle Review. You can check out Brian Leiter's response, and a link to the piece, here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/a...

Wolfe apparently likes to write about things he is ignorant about.

I don't know what his reputation is in his field, but in mine (philosophy) he is considered a joke among the few people than even know who he is.