Straw men are easy to push over. So are people’s arguments when we oversimplify them, reducing them to a flimsy caricature of what their proponents actually mean. Hence the name for this particular logical fallacy: the straw man fallacy. Boston College professor Peter Kreeft writes that it “consists in refuting an unfairly weak, stupid or
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Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther, a German monk, initiated a split in Christianity that came to be known as the Protestant Reformation. After the Reformation, deep divisions between Protestants and Catholics contributed to wars, hostility and violence in Europe and America. For centuries, each side denounced the other and sought to convert its followers.
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My daughter is a baker. When people ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she responds breezily: “A baker, but I already am one.” You see, with unschooling there is no postponement of living and doing. There is no preparation for some amorphous future, no working toward something unknown. There is
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One never knows these days what to expect out of college campuses. It seems that every time one turns around, somebody’s sensitivity is being offended. Such was the case the other week at the University of Maryland at College Park. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, college officials met to discuss ‘hate symbols’ and
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In October the New York Times asked a question: “Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?” Writing at Psychology Today, psychotherapist Amy Morin offers 10 reasons: 1. Electronics offer an unhealthy escape. 2. Happiness is all the rage. 3. Parents are giving unrealistic praise. 4. Parents are getting caught up in
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Barbara Simons is a female computer scientist, which means she’s in a minority in the male-dominated computer field. But she is also a part of a significant minority of tech minds who think that we ought to go back to paper ballots in order to ensure proper security. Simons, a retired pioneer researcher at IBM
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