What follows arose up within me in the wake of yet another soul-crushing example of the disturbing ignorance that passes for insight or knowledge in Christian Middle Earth. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’m referring to a tweet that orgasmically exalted...
logic
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 174: Live from Lubbock, TX
Dr. Heiser answers questions from a live audience. Thank you to Wayland Baptist University for hosting and Nathan for organizing the event. Thank you to everyone who came and joined us in Lubbock, Texas. In this special live-recorded episode of the Naked Bible...
Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Mike Bara: An Explanatory Illustration
One of my favorite blogs is The Emoluments of Mars. It’s the brainchild of “Expat,” who has committed himself to the mind-numbing task of critiquing the conspiratorial pseudo-science behind ideas like the “face” on Mars, glass domes on...
UFO Sightings and the Appeal to Ignorance
I came across a wonderful book today that I’m recommending to all who want to think clearly: An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments . The book teaches sound logical reasoning by illustrating flawed logic. Here’s an example that is ubiquitous within the...
Non Sequitur Thinking in Science – It’s a Problem There, Too.
Mostly in popular science, but not exclusively. I thought I’d post here on this because I tend to go after this issue most of the time over at PaleoBabble. But it’s an issue here. The most exotic context for this is, of course, the “That technology...
PaleoBabble Logic: A Fun Non Sequitur Illustration
A non sequitur is a conclusion that does not follow from the data considered. PaleoBabble research is riddled with them. One of the more frequent flaws in thinking that produce non sequiturs is the confusion of correlation and causation: just because two things...
Is Eyewitness Testimony of UFOs Evidence They are Alien in Origin?
Think about the title to this post. It doesn’t assert that all or even most UFO witnesses are liars. It doesn’t say they are cranks, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or otherwise buffoonish. In my experience, people who report UFOs are anything...
Exposing PseudoAstronomy vs. David Sereda
Exposing PseudoAstronomy is a podcast hosted by Stuart Robbins. (Stuart is a postdoctoral researcher in astronomy whose focus is on planetary geophysics). I highly recommend it. He just posted the latest episode: Podcast Episode 83: David Sereda’s Claims Clip Show,...
Naked Bible Podcast 031: Exegetical Fallacies
This episode continues the series on studying the Bible at the word level. The episode utilizes the audio of a short screen capture video that Dr. Heiser created to illustrate a range of exegetical fallacies that amateur researchers frequently commit when doing Greek...
Giorgio Tsoukalos and Elephant Men
Check out Jason Colavito’s post on the elephant god Ganesha. Giorgio Tsoukalos thinks he was an actual alien UFO pilot. Really, do you need to know any more than that? Was Gamera a real alien, too?
The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy and the Talpiot Tomb
That’s the title of Mark Goodacre’s recent post on the Talpiot tomb debate. I highly recommend the post, as it illustrates this logical fallacy very clearly and applies it to the Talpiot tomb material.
More on the New Talpiot Tomb
Lots of material being generated pretty quickly. Here is a worthwhile overview from Mark Goodacre’s NT blog. The post that Mark directs us to by Tom Verenna that serves as a collection of response is here (just in case you don’t click through to the...
Doctoral Degree for Ancient Astronaut Theorists
I saw two items today that have convinced me that the PaleoBabble blog needs to begin awarding the PhD in Non Sequitur Thinking for ancient astronaut theorists. The first is this wonderful post from the Skeptophilia blog. Please read it. It is an uncannily accurate...
Are We Alone? A Summary of the Issues
I just listened to a short podcast from the Skeptoid blog entitled, “ Are We Alone .” It’s a good, succinct survey of the problems and obstacles to being optimistic about other inhabited worlds and intelligent civilizations — in terms of there...
Could We Tell An Advanced ET from God?
Famous atheist Michael Shermer asks that question here . It’s a good overview of things to think about in this regard. I am in basic agreement that the existence of an advanced ET would be embraced as God by many, perhaps most. But despite the article’s...