Home Schooling

Scientology claims to have all the answers. It entices people in with a hopeful message. People take the tests. The tests ask personal questions and discover insecurities in the person. They promise answers and a path to fixing these emotional scars. In 1938, a science fiction writer from Nebraska, USA named L. Ron Hubbard claims to have had a near-death experience. He was getting some dental surgery and had been administered painkilling drugs. It was then that L. Ron had a vision. He said he was dead for 8 minutes and was given the secrets of the universe. The Guinness world record for most published works by one author is  1,084  by L. Ron Hubbard whose first work was published in February 1934 and the last in March 2006. In 1950 he wrote the book "Dianetics: the modern science of mental health." The book is supposed to help you clear past traumas. The book is promoted as "a milestone for Man comparable to his discover...

Origin Story Beauty contest between the female gods. Zeus didn't want to judge it. So Prince Paris of Troy was chosen. Prince Paris couldn't choose, so aphrodite promised him the most beautiful woman on earth if he chose her. So he did and was given Helen of Troy, the mortal daughter of Zeus, Wife of King Menelaus of the Acheans. One interpretation of this origin story is that Helen of Troy ran away to Troy with Paris. In response to losing his wife, King Menelaus convinced the Acheans to protect his honor and get Helen back. So the Acheans waged a 9 year war with the Trojans. Story Picks Up Near the end of this war, the God Apollo sent a great plague against the Acheans by firing arrows at them. They asked a priest of Apollo why it was happening. The priest said that they were being punished because Agamemnon had stolen the daughter of a priest of Apollo as a wife. The priest advised to return her to her father to stop the plague. Apollo is the God of archery...

Inductive Reasoning Aristotle’s deductive arguments were the most popular and effective way to arrive at true statements for 1800 years. That was until the Enlightenment and a man by the name of Francis Bacon came up with his own technique. He was a nobleman and politicians in England during the reign of King James. He was dissatisfied with traditional methods of truth seeking. He saw it as restrained by existing belief systems and commonly accepted claims. One of the most famous failings of deductive reasoning is the black swan fallacy. ·         A: All of the swans I have ever seen have been white. Therefore, all swans are white. ·         B: Here's a black swan. ·         A: All swans are white, therefore that can't be a swan. Bacon saw the problems with these kinds of statements.  “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end w...

How did Induction Change the world? Galileo (1564-1642) Origin Galileo came from a poor family of musicians in the town of Pisa. His father was skeptical of authority and imposed that on Galileo from an early age. Galileo was an intelligent young man and considered becoming a priest but his dad encouraged him to study medicine. Galileo instead took to mathematics after accidentally attending a lecture on geometry. Once he had graduated he took a job as the Professor of Math at Pisa University. He also took a position as the Ballistics Consultant at the arsenal of Venice. He entered into public debates on calculating the “shape, location and size of hell” but also showed that bodies of different weights fell at the same speed. With this success he got a better teaching job in Padua and then became Chief mathematician and philosopher at Florence With the money Galileo was now making, he bought and improved telescopes. They were invented by a Dutch spectacle maker but...

Induction, Deduction, Schmucktion – what’s wrong with using intuition? Why do we need science? We have brains for a reason don’t we? Why can’t we just use them to arrive at knowledge? Our intuitions will lead us to truth! Sense Deception Illusion in Philosophy Book under Descartes Arrows same length  Fake hand and hammer experiment Pareidolia Hot hand, cold hand, room temp hand Page 100 of thinking fast and slow That gorilla basketball video https://youtu.be/dQ47ocCsUPs Perceptual Deception Is the earth flat? Do we observe the sun move or the earth? How fast are you moving? (107,000 km/h) Have you ever touched anything? Is air open space? Are solid things, solid? Do heavier things fall faster? What color is white light? Are my hands clean? Refraction of light Your body is what percent human? How do you protect someone against diseases? Keep them away from the disease or give them the disease? Did Tyrannosaurus Rex exsist closer to the time of stegosaurus or us today? ...

What is Science? All science is born out of philosophy and logic. Philosophy asks the questions, logic provides tactics in finding the answer. The word science comes from the Latin word “to know”. Science is a collection of tactics used to discover truths about the world around us by use of experimentation and observation. Deductive Reasoning Aristotle loved making observations about the world. He categorized living things. Reptile comes from the Latin "to creep", avian meaning bird comes from the Latin word Avis, Mammal comes from the Latin for breast, because almost all mammals drink milk from their mothers. The word amphibian comes from the Greek for 'both life' referring to their lives both in and out of water. Aristotle used observations to recognize common characteristics of different animals. This way he was able to organize them into groups. He reasoned that if an animal lays eggs in water then it must be related to the other animals that do. By do...

Charles Darwin described a mechanism within nature which shaped species. However, some understood this observation as a philosophical truth. They believed that if nature acted in that fashion then it would only be natural for humanity to organize itself in the same way. So the question became, should we try to emulate nature? People always talk about the benefits of natural foods and a natural lifestyle. You might hear the objection to an idea that “it’s not natural”. The rhetoric brings to mind pictures of cleanliness and health. However, is this true? First, natural foods  – there’s some truth. Natural foods before agriculture sucked. However, too many additives, saturated fats and refined sugars cause obesity and heart disease. However, it’s also “natural” for us to seek out fatty and sugary foods. Our hunter-gather ancestors would’ve had little access to such dietary resources and taking advantage of the added sugar and fat would have been valuable. However, in the ...