1. If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife)

Comment #271155 by Jeff.Satterley on October 25, 2008 at 11:12 am

Peace Anthem for Palestine is absolutely brilliant. I think it sums up everything you need to know about religious conflict.

2. Broken symmetry: Answering the solace of quantum

Comment #263096 by Jeff.Satterley on October 10, 2008 at 8:31 am

The leading contender for mass is the Higgs Boson, proposed as a ubiquitous, syrupy field that interacts with other particles.

Syrupy? I've never heard it described that way before.

Now I want some IHOP pancakes...

3. Free Will vs. the Programmed Brain

Comment #234104 by Jeff.Satterley on August 20, 2008 at 9:45 pm

Janus:

It's not that I am controlled by the physical processes in my brain, it's that I am the physical processes in my brain.

Douglas Hofstadter talks about ideas like this a lot in his works: "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" and "I Am A Strange Loop". Highly recommended reading about the self ("I") and consciousness.

4. A Holocaust Denier Hits Manhattan (And Hearts Hitchens)

Comment #219345 by Jeff.Satterley on July 26, 2008 at 7:38 pm

Comment #219254 by bugaboo

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

-Evelyn Beatrice Hall (paraphrasing Voltaire)

5. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #190681 by Jeff.Satterley on June 9, 2008 at 11:24 am

...an entire universe, containing all of the billions of elements necessary for life to form, may have come about without a builder

I wasn't aware that creationists have discovered about 999,999,890 more elements than science has :-).

6. Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem

Comment #187811 by Jeff.Satterley on June 2, 2008 at 6:06 pm

The argument that somehow you can't argue the doctor's point about losing weight, but you can argue against Spitzer's stance is just ridiculous. The author comparing apples and oranges.

I think the author is confusing an argument against two different assertions. You can argue against Spitzer saying something to the effect of "I believe soliciting prostitutes for sex is wrong" because it is about his own beliefs, and his actions are relevant, since rational people are expected to act in accordance with their beliefs (to certain degrees in different circumstances, but that's not entirely important).
These type of epistemological and moral arguments have more to do with evidence than sound logical arguments. When a person's character are relevant, they can obviously can be used to refute a claim about beliefs/values/etc.

However, the statement "Soliciting prostitutes is wrong" cannot be argued this way. It says nothing about Gov. Spitzer, Gov. Paterson and the rest of the New York State Executive branch (Side note: I'm a former NY resident, what the hell is going on there since I left?!). When making a logical argument, ad hominem arguments are always a fallacy.

7. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183706 by Jeff.Satterley on May 22, 2008 at 2:36 pm

This article is full of misleading statements, trying to suggest that Richard Dawkins is changing his mind about what is written in his book. Many have already been presented, but here's another:

Despite "imagining" in The God Delusion that Northern Ireland's "troubles" would not exist in an atheistic world, he now freely acknowledges that the troubles were largely a political matter.

But Mr. McKnight, if you actually read the WHOLE book, Professor Dawkins says that this dispute is a political matter:

Yes, yes, of course the troubles in Northern Ireland are political. There really has been economic and political oppression of one group by another, and it goes back centuries. There really are genuine grievances and injustices, and these seem to have little to do with religion; except that - and this is important and widely overlooked - without religion there would be no labels by which to decide whom to oppress and whom to avenge. (p. 294)

So, you see Mr. McKnight, this is a political matter, AND it would be much more difficult for it to continue if the world did not tolerate religious persecution. Prof. Dawkins is not compromising his position here, just like most of the other compromises you claim, which seem to be false.