A Brief Reminder that the World is Magic

ByTucker Sigourney June 13, 2023 0 Comments
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”- C. S. Lewis, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader You have heard it said that the word is governed by "scientific laws"—that, at its smallest scales, the world is a collection of particles of such-and-such a sort (or fields, or...

Speaking to Those in Grief

ByTucker Sigourney June 21, 2022 0 Comments
When I was in college, a friend and classmate of mine lost his roommate to suicide. That was not the first time it occurred to me to wonder what you say to someone in such moments—but it was the first time the question had been so very pressing. I approached him awkwardly in the cafeteria and said something over the crowd-noise about being willing to talk if he ever wanted to. He never took me...

Environmentalism as a Matter of Love

ByTucker Sigourney June 17, 2022 0 Comments
Imagine yourself on a walk, having just finished a soda and wondering whether you should drop the bottle in a nearby bush. Imagine yourself planning a flight to see your family and wondering whether it’s worth the carbon dioxide emissions. Or Imagine yourself wanting to pluck a flower for your mother and wondering whether that’s really fair to the flower. What do you do? These sound like...

You Can Be Intellectually Humble and Dogmatic

ByPaul Rezkalla January 5, 2021 1 Comment
“Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” -G.K. Chesterton There’s a modern temptation—one that perhaps academics are particularly susceptible to—to equate intellectual humility and a sort of agnosticism…a receptivity to alternatives…a willingness to entertain all viewpoints. The less...

What do religious conversion and scientific progress have in common?

ByPaul Rezkalla November 23, 2020 0 Comments
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.” -C.S. Lewis I was recently asked what evidence could falsify the theory of evolution. And later that same week, someone also asked me what evidence could possibly convince me that Christianity was false. I’d been wanting to write a blog on this issue for some...

Are Philosophers and Scientists Studying the Same “Morality”?

ByPaul Rezkalla October 13, 2020 1 Comment
“The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science.”G.K. Chesterton (Heretics) For most of humanity’s intellectual history, ethics, as a field of study in the Western tradition, was solely a philosophical enterprise. Within the first few centuries of the birth of Christianity, ethics acquired and...

Stereotypes and Statistical Generalizations

ByMarshall Thompson October 1, 2020 0 Comments
This post is an extended version of a piece which originally appeared at the Prindle Post. Let’s look at three different stories and use them to investigate statistical generalizations. Story 1 This semester I’m teaching a Reasoning and Critical Thinking course. During the first class, I ran through various questions designed to show that human thinking is subject to predictable and...

Faith and Climate Change

ByMarshall Thompson September 23, 2020 0 Comments
A while back a friend posted the following question on Facebook: “Can you criticize someone who doesn’t believe in climate change if you believe in God?Person A shows facts, stats, etc. to disprove God.Person B ignores it, says it is their faith and belief system which can’t be challenged by logic.Replace God above with Climate Change.Why do we criticize people who don’t believe in...

When and Why Should We Believe Experts?

ByPaul Rezkalla September 10, 2020 1 Comment
Professor Quasimodo says that we should brush our teeth twice a day and Professor Mosiquado says that brushing teeth has no dental benefits and is a complete waste of time. They’re both dental experts! How do we figure out what to believe in a case like this? Well, here’s one promising model: We should trust what an expert says about X if and only if the expert is relaying the consensus...

You Can’t Just “Do Your Own Research”

ByPaul Rezkalla September 10, 2020 2 Comments
“Do Your Own Research.” I’ve seen this phrase more times in the last couple of months than I have, probably, in my entire lifetime. It’s often posted in ALL CAPS and served with a healthy dose of exclamation points—or exclamation “marks” to our UK readers (not that we have any, or any readers, at all, for that matter). Links to pop-science blogs about mask inefficacy, YouTube...