- Questions are not answers
- Plant an idea
Why was The Gospel of Thomas voted out of the Canon?
- Correlation does not mean causation
- Ancient Aliens
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Similar does not mean identical
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That you see no explanation doesn’t mean there isn’t one
My lack of omniscience does not mean I need to surrender the point
- Don’t assume what you need to prove
- Make you feel like a moron if you ask for data
- Conclusions aren’t islands
- If that’s true, what other things must also be true?
- What other things must be false?
I don’t think that the Biblical writers would have interpreted Gen 6 in a supernatural way
- What about 2 Peter 2? Sinning angels
- “Possible” and “plausible” are not the same
- Possibilities have to be coherent
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The fact that we can’t know _every_thing doesn’t mean we can’t know _any_thing
If I can’t know something perfectly I might as well empty my skull…
- Extreme thinking — unlivable existence
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Just because we don’t have all the information doesn’t mean we have no information, or that what we have is bad information
- A conclusion is only as sound as all of its premises
- We can still think linear thought
- Read “The Shallows”
- 200-300 words
- Lincoln & Douglass debate (6-7 hours)
- Absorbed information but cannot process
- A flawed argument in defense of a true proposition isn’t sound research or thinking
- Vulnerabilities will surface
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Don’t draw a conclusion that confirms to selected data; a sound conclusion accounts for all the data.
Outliers in the data are as real as the data you prefer.
- You have account for it or you cheated
- Try to win the argument by inundation of data
- Send it to a field expert?
- It’s good to have people find flaw in your arguments
- Divergent data points can be simultaneously true; they just can’t be mutually contradictory.
- Elohim - polytheism?
- Explain how it can or can’t be
- Primary sources are better than secondary sources (or no sources).
- Acient people should be allowed to speak for themselves
- Meaning of the text resides in a reader
- Peer review is better than no review (or echo chamber review).
- You want to know what you’re saying holds up to scrutiny
- Your standards or evidence and coherence need to conform to reality
- Put it in a real life situation (if you can)
- Mainstream science/scholars would never say that — so it must be true
- Deep suspicion
Look for:
- Data-driven
- Do they account for things that don’t work?
- Honest with data?
- Committed falacies?
- Coherent (=conclusions are sound and address outliers)
- Overclaiming