Special Topics: Conspiracies, God, the Big Bang and More
Join the discussion on some of the popular topics from the Critical Thinker podcast.
NOTE: This course is included in the site-wide bundle which unlocks every course in the Academy.
While I was producing the Critical Thinker Podcast I did a few episodes that where very popular but that can only be described as "special topics" -- critical thinking about conspiracy theories, God and the Big Bang, etc.
In this course I've collected a few of these and made them available here.
What Will I Learn in This Course?
In this course you'll learn:
- about the relationship between critical thinking and conspiracy theorizing
- an argument for default skepticism about global conspiracies
- the history of some real conspiracies (COINTELPRO and MK-ULTRA)
- an introduction to Karl Popper's "falsifiability" criterion for scientific statements, and how this applies to conspiracy claims
- the Kalam argument for the existence of God
- the philosophy of causation, time and Big Bang cosmology
- five reasons why majoring in philosophy in college is a good idea
- an introduction to fallacies, and an illustration based on a viewer question
What Do I Get With This Course?
When you enroll in this course you get
- 5 video lectures, totaling 2 hours of viewing time
- Full transcripts for each of the lectures, embedded below the videos
- Discussion comments for each of the lectures, allowing you to ask and respond to questions and comments
- 4 pdf ebooks totaling 66 pages, suitable for printing or viewing on a desktop computer or tablet device