The Power of the Cumulative Case

Last week I talked a bit about the issues with presenting evidence and arguments that do not lead to an exclusive conclusion and one way to obtain an exclusive conclusion. Many times a single argument cannot produce an exclusive conclusion. However, there is another way to eventually obtain that single conclusion.

Investigations take place all the time. People investigate different happenings and phenomena throughout the world. Investigations are how we come to understand and are able to explain things. In any investigation, a series of evidences are compiled. Any explanation that is to be considered plausible must account for all the evidence. Investigators attempt to enter an investigation without any assumptions prior to seeing evidence. The truth is that an investigator has a reason for investigating otherwise investigating would be of little value.

Good Without God?

This post originally published in March of '09. I have added links to similar posts. 

Its been quite interesting to see how many atheists there are who believe that objective morality exists. Actually, I would say that the majority believe in objective morality. However, objective morality is inconsistent with the atheist worldview; they don't have a foundation for acting in a "moral" way versus an "immoral" way. I'm not saying that atheists can't be moral; they can. I'm just saying that they can't justify it. Here's why.

Morality implies "oughtness". How something ought to behave. That implies that you understand that that thing (that ought to behave in a certain way) was designed to behave in the expected way. Example: A watch ought to keep time. It is designed to keep time; therefore, it ought to. If it were not designed to do anything, it ought (is expected) to do nothing.

Psychology Class- Part 10 of 12

In Part 9 I provided a primer for this week's post (if you haven't read it, you might get lost on this one). This post is another "Reflection on Learning" assignment. As before, the question is in red. Let's get right to it:

Psychology Class- Part 9 of 12

In Parts 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 I talked about an interesting interaction between the emotions and reason. Next week I will post another "Reflection on Learning" that details the results of letting emotions lead one down the wrong path. But before I can do that, I need to provide extra info that needs its own post. The contents of this post were not submitted in my class, it is just to bring you up to speed, so that you won't be lost next week.

In the third week of class we discussed Defense Mechanisms. Some of you might already be familiar with the term and what it is, but for those who aren't...