I’m irritated a lot.

Perhaps I’m too irritable.

Anyways, there’s one thing that I’ve found very irritating, and very debilitating in an argument. It’s when people make up their minds on what you believe/feel, and refuse to change their opinion about it later. It can ruin your chances in any debate when people think you believe one thing when you insistently tell them that you don’t.

Perhaps I need counseling.

Sorry

But I find blogging boring. Unless, of course, it’s about something that irritates me. In which case it is fun. But whatever.

Perhaps I need to be more irritated.

A thought

I’ve just thought about something, and it’s (surprise!) yet another thing that irritates me. So, round two.

This time, I’m taking aim at gullible people (no, that word is not in the dictionary, so don’t bother looking it up). You know, the people who instantly believe what they are told. But that’s not the biggest problem. It’s when they vehemently defend that belief afterwards, rather than changing their mind like they did in the first place. It’s a sort of double standard, where one is gullible, then suddenly “stuck” in their position until someone finally knocks sense into them.

And no, this isn’t just aimed at people who believe wacky things because of gullibility. It happens to everybody. I’m sure there are good scientists who have believed their preliminary results so fanatically that they miss the truth, and then it takes months before they are convinced of their error. So no, this isn’t just a rant against ignorance. It serves a point for skeptics: don’t become too firmly entrenched in your position. You may be a good skeptic, but you should keep your objective viewpoint at the ready for whenever you need to judge a new idea. Remember, anything new and revolutionary is not necessarily wrong (although many times it will be). You just need to check first.

Ignoramus alert!

Meet Michael Behe, intelligent design advocate. He’s the guy that came up with irreducible complexity (and later admitted, under oath, that complex biochemical systems could evolve in 20,000 years or so) and still believes it. Apparently, he hasn’t read my rebuttal of ID. Or any of the other ones. Or any of his own research that proves irreducible complexity slightly less irreducible. Or whatever.

That has been our Ignoramus Alert of the day. Thank you for watching. If you are the subject of an ignoramus alert and do not think you really are an ignoramus, I couldn’t care less. It’s a generic label anyways.

Ignorance is bliss

At least, close to it, judging by the amount of willful ignorance I see.

Isn’t modern society delightful?

What defines a reliable source?

What is it that makes a particular source valid?

We all have seen people using the Bible as historical fact. People will always do that, even though the Bible has been passed down through word-of-mouth several hundred years, translated and retranslated through several different languages, and was modified by others along the way. The Bible is an obvious case of a less-than-trustworthy souce, but how can we be sure that any source is valid?

Fanboyism

Fanboyism really irritates me.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of fanboys out there. There are some that believe Windows is the best product ever, some that think Linus Torvalds (the guy who made Linux) is God, some that go nuts over Opera, etc. And they’re just as bad as religious nutcases when they get in an argument.