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Philosophy

Was Anders Breivik “not-insane”?

Other psychiatrists now find Norway massacre gunman Anders Behring Breivik ‘not insane’ prison now possible

“The experts’ main conclusion is that the accused, Anders Behring Breivik, is not considered to have been psychotic at the time of the actions on July 22, 2011,” the Oslo district court said in a statement which reopens the debate on whether the self-confessed killer can be sent to prison.

“That means that he is considered criminally responsible at the time of the crime.”

The new evaluation counters the findings of an initial probe that found Breivik was suffering from “paranoid schizophrenia,” which meant he would most likely be sentenced to psychiatric care instead of prison.

Recall our first highly controversial post questioning:
Was Norway shooter a Social Darwinian terrorist? Read More ›

The Reason for Imperfect, Self-Destructing Designs — Passover and Easter Thoughts

[HT: idnet.com.au] Would an intelligent designer deliberately build a biological system that self destructs. Can something be intelligently designed that is reproductively unfit? Absolutely! But first consider the essay ID’s Broken Watchmaker Analogy, where a Darwinist unwittingly concedes an important point (in an otherwise confused, ignorant and illogical rant): Products of intelligent design typically have capabilities that exceed usefulness and complications that would be profoundly maladaptive in a living system Alexander Nussbaum By that line of reasoning, the existence of humans evidences design. Why? Compared to bacteria, humans are profoundly maladaptive. Darwinists like Bryan Sykes concede the human species might exist for only 100,000 more years. The question then arises, in light of this, why are we here? Why aren’t Read More ›

PROGRESS REPORT: Responding to LT on Cause and Contingency as aspects of the first principles of right reason

This morning, on opening up my email acount, I encountered a comment from one of UD’s critics, LT, in which he pointed to this post at his blog, which begins: I am starting to come around to the way of thinking espoused by Kairosfocus [–>NB: I can claim no originality on this],  who has argued that we must build our worldviews from first principles and compare how different worldviews address various difficulties. The comparative aspect is important. If we have proper grasp of a fact–as in, for instance, an apple falling to earth–we should be able to reconcile the fact and the worldview. A worldview in which apples do not fall to earth (yes, I understand that “fall” is a Read More ›

Q: Is Logic simply a matter of axioms at play in an abstract logical world unconnected to external reality? A: Nope

As we continue to look at the issue of first principles of right reason, one of the key steps being taken by critics of the Law of Non-Contradiction [LNC] is to assert that we are here dealing with axioms unconnected to the real world, at least in relevant cases.

First, let us clip a recent comment to refresh our recollection of the why behind the classical laws of thought, which can here be seen as self-evident and thus “natural,” rather than arbitrary projections unto reality conditioned by genes and memes: Read More ›