Brian Lynchehaun

Author's details

Name: Brian Lynchehaun
Date registered: January 16, 2012

Latest posts

Islamophobia, a discussion — May 13, 2013
Philosophers: Please Take a Stand — February 18, 2013
Impersonations — January 25, 2013
Taxes ARE Theft (but so what?) — January 14, 2013
Shame is not a lever lightly pulled — January 7, 2013

Author's posts listings

Jul 30 2012

In Defence of Abused Fallacies

Categories:

Brian Lynchehaun, critical thinking, philosophy, skepticism

Y’know, if you don’t think that a horse is defined as such due to some innate form of ‘horseness’, then you should go read some Aristotle.* If you don’t think that Evolution has any basis in reality, then Darwin has some things to tell you. If you think that we can’t know anything at all …

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61 comments

Jul 23 2012

Science vs Philosophy

Categories:

Brian Lynchehaun, critical thinking, philosophy, science

by Brian Lynchehaun

Recently, a number of people have opened their mouth to deride Philosophy. Notably, they tend to be people who are well-placed academics such as Krauss and Dawkins. Likewise, Atheistlogic has stuck their oar in too, though much more articulately. Atheistlogic spells out the general objection quite well, I think, so I’m going to focus on …

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68 comments

Jul 16 2012

The Essentials of our movement

Categories:

Brian Lynchehaun, critical thinking, philosophy, psychology, skepticism

by Brian Lynchehaun

[This is written by Brian. And I'm glad to be writing again. Feel free to violently disagree. ] DJ Grothe and his ambivalent stance regarding sexual harrassment. Dawkins and his ‘Dear Muslima’ letter. Penn and… well, frankly, everything. All of these freethinkers and atheists and skeptics taking a wrong turn here… They must be bad …

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51 comments

Feb 27 2012

The Watchmaker Analogy: not an argument

Categories:

Brian Lynchehaun, critical thinking, philosophy, religion, theology

by Brian Lynchehaun

The ‘watchmaker analogy‘ has been around for quite some time (about 209ish years by my count), and it was refuted shortly after it’s explication (in fact, Paley was refuted by Hume before Paley was born). Several folk have gone after it, in a variety of ways but the damned thing just keeps showing up. To be …

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26 comments

Feb 13 2012

Vaccines and the State

Categories:

Brian Lynchehaun, critical thinking, ethics, health, philosophy

by Brian Lynchehaun

Here’s a report from Australia: “The Australian government has decided to deprive parents of their tax benefits if they do not immunise their children against diseases. Some families could lose over $2,000 per a child. And while the benefits of vaccination, for individual children, and for the population, far outweigh any risks, some parents question …

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41 comments

Feb 06 2012

Science says we should blame the victims

Categories:

Brian Lynchehaun, critical thinking, feminism, hypocrisy

by Brian Lynchehaun

Let’s face facts, people: if you get assaulted, or worse, it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have been walking in that area. You shouldn’t have been out at night. You shouldn’t have been alone. You shouldn’t have worn that dress or those shoes, or been wearing such an expensive watch/handbag/ribbon. I mean, there are studies to …

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80 comments

Jan 30 2012

Hate the belief, not the believer

Categories:

Brian Lynchehaun, philosophy, theology

by Brian Lynchehaun

There’s a post that I come back to on this site again and again. It’s something that I frequently link to when having discussions with believers and non-believers alike whenever they start getting their back up and feel that they are under attack when I’m pressing on their beliefs: we are not our ideas. However, I’ve …

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36 comments

Jan 23 2012

Economists and Ethics

Categories:

Brian Lynchehaun, crapitalism, critical thinking, ethics, philosophy

by Brian Lynchehaun

It’s something of an inevitability that when the various heinous acts of corporations are brought to light, the Economists march out in lock-step to explain to the dissenters A) how emotional and irrational the dissenters are acting and B) sure, isn’t this the best possible thing that could be happening for ‘those people’? This line …

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13 comments

Jan 16 2012

Why people don’t like to answer theistic questions…

Categories:

Brian Lynchehaun, critical thinking, philosophy, religion, theology

by Brian Lynchehaun

To readers who prefer short posts, I’d like to apologise in advance: this is not a short post. Unforunately, the nature of this extended argument is such that there’s no easy way to break it into 2 or 3 posts without killing the flow. In a discussion I’ve been having recently with one particular believer, …

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9 comments

The Crommunist Manifesto

"The stubborn persistence of chauvinism in our life and letters is or ought to be the proper subject for critical study, not the occasion for displays of shock." – C. Hitchens