Word: argument
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Alternately, some pretend that their vices are part of a larger ethical stance, including my Populist friend who assures me that his preference for sauce-slathered ribs over foie gras is purely due to his desire to be one with The People. (I’ve also heard this argument from a Social Studies concentrator, who claimed that watching “The OC” every week was crucial to her understanding of the American psyche.) Or, one can over-intellectualize the matter, like I did with professional wrestling...
...This argument was coupled with emphasis on career aspirations: climb the corporate ladder and then worry about children, in vitro, or adoption from China. If Charlotte could manage her own gallery before bringing up a daughter, so can you. If technology and female empowerment have given us anything, it’s the option of merging financial success with family stability. Listen young ladies, simply put the wedding bells on hold and you can have...
Intelligent design is the trendy re-interpretation of an ages-old philosophical idea known as the teleological argument for the existence of God, better known as the “argument by design.” Simply put, the theory posits that the complex architecture of, say, a watch proves that an intelligent “designer” created it rather than a cocktail of random natural processes. According to the theory, the same should then apply to the natural world and specifically to life, which contains an abundance of seemingly “designed” complexities...
...problem is that this argument was demonstrated to be philosophically unsound long before Darwin ever came around. (There are many good objections, but here’s an especially juicy one: if the premise that all complexities were designed is accepted, then what could account for the complexities of the designer itself?) And then, like the second blow in a one-two punch, came Darwin, who spared us forever from having to use bad philosophy to fill in the holes that science could not yet address...
...feature separates Darwin’s theory from the teleological argument: Darwin’s theory is backed by mountains of empirical and verifiable evidence. The teleological argument is backed by, well, a sort of musing that resembles a frustrated second-grade test-taker more than it does any real scientific process: I don’t know the answer, but there must be an answer, so I’d better guess something instead of leaving the line blank...