The ‘Ontological Argument’= busted

Anti-apologism 1: The ‘Ontological Argument’= busted.

When dealing with religious apologists it's always better to nail them into the real world and insist on the same standard of evidence that is required for Gravity, Plate Tectonics or Evolution, because no apologist can ever provide these. Insisting on real scientific proof is a perfectly legitimate position, any time that someone is proposing the existence of something in the real world, including a god.

However, it is worth knowing about some of the more ridiculous philosophical ideas you might find used by apologists, and I’d like to discuss a few.

The first is The Ontological argument

The Big Snip

[caption id="attachment_1249" align="alignleft" width="200"] Gratuitous picture of a pretty girl in a wedding dress. Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]

The Big Snip. Vasectomy, that is. This is a contraceptive procedure performed on men, wherein the connections to the male testes are severed, by cutting a tube called the vas deferens; thus, vas-ectomy. The result is that though the man can continue to enjoy sex normally, he’s shooting blanks, as it were, since his seminal fluid, which is mainly produced in the prostate, contrary to popular opinion, contains no sperm and is therefore incapable of fertilising an ovum.

This procedure has become very popular in many countries, where it is offered as a normal form of contraception. Many men are persuaded that this is the right course of action to take for a number of reasons. But in fact, vasectomy is something that no man should ever, under any circumstances, consider doing, and I will explain why.

The Call of Duty?

[caption id="attachment_1241" align="alignleft" width="236"] Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]

The last time I was back  in Scotland, I was asked, ‘Would you ever live here again?’ I gave a non-committal answer to avoid offence, but inside myself, I believed I knew; no, I would not.

In truth, I had not then and still have no plans to live in Scotland again. I love the country and the people, but I am both a Scot and a European; the day life in rural France gets too humdrum, it won’t be to Scotland that I turn.

In the last few months I’ve thought a lot about this, however.

Sticks, Ice-Creams and Specks of Dust

[caption id="attachment_1235" align="alignleft" width="249"] Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]

A long time ago, when I lived in Arbroath in Scotland, my role before opening up the old Fleming Partners office was to do the school run. Our kids went to a small village school just outside the town itself and there was no bus.

On these runs I always tried to entertain the boys by talking about whatever came into my mind (and would not take more than 10 minutes.) So one day I explained why humans can see in colour and many animals can’t. This is because, I said, there are two types of vision receptor cells, rods and cones. Cones see colour and rods see brightness—monochrome, in other words. (I do know it’s a bit more complex than that, but these were primary kids.) Humans have both rods and cones, and many animals, like dogs, only have rods. So we see colour and they don't.

This went fine and was met with all the usual approval that could be mustered from a 5-year old and an 8-year old.

RIP My Lovely

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Sniff! She died. She’s been with me these last five years, and she’d been around a good few years before we met. She was like a female character out of a Springsteen lyric, kinda worn and raggedy, but she stuck with me through thick and thin.  I don’t know how many films or repeats of TV series I’ve watched with her, or how many words I wrote with her, but I do know the paint was gone from most of her keys at the end…I did explain it was my old laptop that died, didn’t I?

45% of Americans are Retards.

[caption id="attachment_1224" align="alignleft" width="234"] Pic: NASA[/caption]

45% of Americans—well, people in the United States of America, which is, as far as they seem to be concerned, all of America—are retards. Not only is this truth shocking, it is dangerous and threatens all of us.

That 45% of Americans are so gravely afflicted has already caused pause for many commentators, including other Americans. The scientist and media personality, Bill Nye, for example, lamented it publicly, and not for the first time, in a YouTube video posted yesterday.

If there is consolation, and there’s not much, it only comes from the fact that for the last twenty years that the Galup polling organisation has been researching this, the figure remains relatively unchanged. So how did Galup come to its findings?

Man-Trap!

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Ever seen a real man-trap?

My neighbour was given this with a load of other bits and bobs. She thought it was a toy, but closer examination made me disagree. For a start, it was quite clearly a gun of some order, but it didn’t have any kind of handle. There wasn’t a conventional trigger either.

It might have been a toy cannon, but it didn’t have a carriage. Yet opening it up revealed that it was chambered to take a real twelve-bore shotgun cartridge. Plus it’s made of very heavy cast iron. It’s just not like a child’s toy at all.