rhetoric

It seems there is still a feeling in some atheistical quarters that Mackie’s formulation of the deductive argument from evil has withstood Plantinga’s challenge. This recently came up here at UD. and led to an exchange: PART A: THE EXCHANGE IN THE MAGAZINE BIAS THREAD CD, 183: >>KF @ 174I found this an interesting aside: So, in an era with the Plantinga free will defence — as opposed to theodicy — on the table, what can be offered that makes God a suspect notion? ________ I think claims that Plantinga defeated the logical problem of evil are wildly exaggerated, if not downright wrong. For an excellent discussion of this, Raymond Bradley’s article is a must: The Free Will Defense Refuted Read More ›

We see in current news: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has activated measures to drastically restrict the availability of Christian content on the internet, Open Doors reported this week. Last December, China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) announced its upcoming “Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services,” a series of regulations designed to eliminate any online religious message that fails to conform to the principles of the CCP. Without express government permission, no organization or individual “shall preach on the Internet, carry out religious education and training, publish sermon content, forward or link to related content, organize and conduct religious activities on the Internet, or live broadcast or post recorded videos of religious rituals,” the CCP declared Read More ›

Here is Dr John Campbell on Ivermectin (IVM): Recall, here is a picture of the kit used in Uttar Pradesh, India where the sort of protocol illustrated helped break the Delta dominated wave: Food for thought. END

According to Gateway Pundit (a handy source not an endorsement): On Friday, the largest group, ‘The People’s Convoy,’ merged with another massive group when it arrived at its final rest stop in Hagerstown, Maryland, which is just 75 miles (90 minutes) away from the nation’s capital. The convoy is now well over 10,000 vehicles long, including thousands of trucks. There are so many participants in the caravan that it has taken over three hours for them to get off the highway, and there is still no end in sight. We will monitor, including watching out for a riot that can conveniently be made into a further Reichstag fire framing incident. DEVELOPING

If you needed a case study on loaded language driven slanted reporting, here is a case study that deserves to be headlined: For context, see the de-spin chart: Remember, this has been with lives on the line. END

BBC announces: Russian forces have launched a military assault on neighbouring Ukraine, crossing its borders and bombing military targets near big cities. A residential building in Chuguev was destroyed after it was shelled. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Moscow’s response will be “instant” if anyone tries to take on Russia. Ukraine has urged the UN “to do everything possible” to stop what it says is a full-scale war. We could title this, the geostrategic price of weakness, starting with the USA. Recall here, my 2016 framework: Of course as this seems overnight the fog of war is very much in effect and we need to bear in mind that we are unlikely to have a full or reliable Read More ›

Yet another headlined comment, here from Vivid answering Sc in the lab rats thread: Vivid, 281: >>[Sc:] “I am aware of critical race theory but I honestly haven’t given it much thought. My gut tells me that there are some morsels of truth in it but that it is greatly overhyped as an explanation for things seen in society.” [Vivid:] It is not overhyped it is the meta narrative of our age. Here are some excerpts from a letter to a few friends several years ago. “Once I came to understand Critical Theory everything became clear. I understand why Van Jones says white people have a virus that others don’t , I mean just wow!! I understand why even though Read More ›

Nowadays, we are often told “The Science is SETTLED,” as though Science is ever finalised or certain. To go with it, those who have concerns or alternative views and arguments are marginalised and too often smeared, scapegoated or even outright slandered. Sometimes — as Dallas Willard warned regarding moral knowledge — in this rush to judgement, legitimate knowledge is derided, denigrated and dismissed, leading to manipulation and indoctrination. Then, of course, wide swathes of the media and many educators will often jump on the bandwagon. As a result, policy and government become increasingly divorced from due prudence, leading to ruinous marches of folly. How can we rebalance the situation? First, as the media are the main conduit of indoctrination and Read More ›

A classic rhetorical tactic is to pose a dilemma, an argument where the opponent is presented with alternatives, all bad so forcing him or her to either make a bad choice or back away from the position taken. In a variant, one of the choices is presented as a lesser of evils, which is to be taken even reluctantly. It is a powerful rhetorical strategy, and so it is often posed even when it is unwarranted, which is where fallacious dilemma arguments come from. This post is about that fallacious case, and the following infographic will help: Here, we see how policy proposal or argued position P is presented with a dilemma, Q XOR R — two exclusive, allegedly exhaustive Read More ›

HT LCD, here is a sobering, 3-hour video on the Covid-10 crisis, by a dissenting expert: U/D: Based on a transcript and a debate on what is in Uttar Pradesh home isolation Covid-19 kits, I post two pictures: and: Here is a kit label passed to Malone from someone in Uttar Pradesh, it seems there were/are likely several suppliers and different levels of kits — notice the electronics in one kit above: I note a Dr John Campbell video that should be pondered: Let me put in the transcript clip from comment 3: Joe Rogan 37:52 So were they [= China, v. early in the pandemic, in its protocols] using Ivermectin as well? No. But other countries have, like Japan Read More ›

In a given time and culture, characteristic fashionable fallacies too often gain persuasive power by mutual reinforcement, and/or by swinging from one extreme to another; bypassing the point of responsible balance. So, too, we end up in a thorny thicket of errors, a hard-to-escape problematique. And yes, that often includes the [neo-]marxist version of the Hegelian triad, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, repeat. Where, too, babylonian captivity to the spirit of the age or the community . . . nowadays, strongly shaped by relativism . . . is of the very essence of ill advised worldly, destructive false “conventional wisdom.” We must ask, then, what are the crooked yardsticks that we have substituted for what is truly straight, accurate, upright? (Have we Read More ›

The events recorded in Ac 27 (a ship getting caught in an early winter storm due to imprudence and defiance of counsel) are a historical micro case study on how key changes too often have to happen in a community: Ac 27:8 Coasting along it [the south coast of Crete, in the second ship for the voyage] with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near which was the city of Lasea. 9 Since much time had passed, and the voyage was now dangerous because even the Fast [Yom Kippur] was already over, Paul advised them, 10 saying, “Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the Read More ›