Tag: Reason

Why try to be good? (3)

Last post I referenced a newspaper editorial that suggested that the recent civil unrest in England was symptomatic of a much larger malaise – a lack of ethics in public life generally. Now a leading UK thinktank (and not a conservative one as far as I can gather) has come out arguing that English society […]

John Dickson on why people believe things

People may hold their political, religious or ethical beliefs for all sorts of reasons, but we all like to think that we are very rational in the way we come to our own views. But some recent studies suggest few of us are as logical as we might think, as historian John Dickson reported in […]

ECREE: Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!” Ever since Carl Sagan said it, this aphorism (often abbreviated to the acronym ECREE) has been used to critique claims of miracles or the paranormal. It sounds neat and logical, and it can help you feel you have the ‘high logical ground’, but is it true?