I'm all on-board with this project. The staff here is eminently competent to do this. CrashCourse is very famous, and I do like the videos at times. But all these channels on Youtube seem to me at least, to be lacking in their approach when they do approach topics. But, it's youtube. I can't expect the analytic philosophy to be found in every video. But I still dislike that.

Last edited by Dennis (4/12/2016 9:11 am)

"He thought that out of 5, one was bound to stick." I dislike such remarks about Aquinas.


EDIT: This video is total hogwash. I cannot believe that sophism is entertained at this level.

"Aquinas's cosmological arguments also don't prove the existence of a sentient God. . . but it might also be an egg, or a turtle, or just a big block of stone."

"Aquinas was wrong in his insistence that there can't be an infinite regress of anything."

"Aquinas takes it as a given that there had to be a starting point, for everything."

And oh, the argument is self defeating.


I'm so livid by this sophism. Thankfully, I never liked CrashCourse's attitude. This drama..... 


We get the 5th way's treatment as well! Oh my gosh. This was dreadful.

Last edited by Dennis (4/12/2016 10:12 am)

They do it because they already don't really take theism seriously, but they need content for their work. It seems respectable to try to go after an argument rather than spending all your time griping about the Westboro Baptist Church or something stupid. Some of them might have even managed to convince themselves that this is in fact what they're doing, because after all a lot of the easily available coverage on the five ways is dismissive and bad. I think Ed recounts an early academic experience where he's going over the five ways and he comes to realize that all of the introductory material on them is obviously wrong if you pay attention and he slowly has to work that out with his students. If all you're doing is trying to create some middlebrow intellectual YouTube content, you're not going to question the introductory bad criticisms very much if at all.

Modernity contains within it a dialectical rhetorical tool purposely constructed for overthrowing the classical view. It probably needs to be detected in great detail historically, but it is easy to recognize superficially in our regular assumptions about knowing.