DiscussMormonism.com

PG, it appears your thoughts on the matter overlook the distinction between sincerity and justification in belief formation. While sincerity may rebut charges of deliberate fraud, it doesn't inherently justify one's beliefs. Deluded individuals, like the Mopologists, often believe they have good re...

Heh, that's true. You can't think too much about The Lord of the Rings . Giant eagles can carry hobbits, so why don't they just dive-bomb the ring into Mount Doom? It might not exactly be a sure bet, with flying Nazgûl around, but it seems better than the "simply walk into Mordor" plan that they fol...

No, I've never been to one of those. I've read quite a few arguments by most if not all of the kinds of believers gemli mentioned, though, and none of them has ever mentioned their own sincerity as a justification for their belief. That's just not at all a common reason for believing things, even am...

I think Peterson clearly wins this round. Whatever is wrong with the thinking of theists and flat-earthers and all, very few of them think that their beliefs are justified by their own sincerity. I mean, who does ever think that? The reason to mention sincerity is to rebut the charge of deliberate f...

The old rules were even worse about down time: they stipulated "monthly expenses". Player characters had to drop 1000 gold pieces per level per month, supposedly in maintaining a lifestyle commensurate with their experience level. The idea was to keep the players hungry for loot even as the profits ...

The union of 2 points in free space is egg shaped when the points expand equally in all directions at the same rate. The two spheres may become enormous, but their union becomes a static shape, when their union is complete. No, that’s a lentil shape. It only looks ovoid from some angles. It always ...

The "jumped-up monkeys thinking with lumps of meat" line is one I use in teaching quantum mechanics. ( Etwas entwickelte Affen, die mit Fleisch denken müssen ... .) I want to get students to get over just feeling overwhelmed and stupid, which is what we all are, and start struggling with understandi...

Doctor Steuss is persuasive, as usual. I withdraw my objections to the logo.

I've been having trouble with Disqus posting replies to Tim's Blogger blog, and it's getting frustrating. I think the problem is probably that Disqus is unhappy with my iCloud proxy e-mail. I'm not worried about anyone finding out my real-life identity—as a German professor my freedom to hold whatev...

I think this is an important point, though elusive enough that we may all be groping a bit to address it. One thing I want to try to say is that to some extent everything is what Gadianton calls "narrative". People who think that they have the cold, hard facts that don't require any story to make th...