Perhaps we will morph into a civilization where a turtle with some human cells is legally human and therefore has security of the person but vast swathes of humanity are not. If you vote for people who think that’s cool, at least you will get something you voted for. Happy New Year.
Year: 2019
At Smithsonian Magazine: What space aliens must be like
Fascinating to be so sure when we have no evidence of any space aliens at all. A religion underlies this, you may be sure.
Ethan Siegel asks at Forbes, Did God create the universe?
Siegel makes an interesting comparison with, say, Sabine Hossenfelder. He does great graphics but to say that he is not a deep thinker is to shower him with imprudent praise. By contrast, we go on listening to Hossenfelder with great interest, whether the graphics are good or not.
Surprisingly, a magazine provides truths about the Darwinian eugenics movement
In this 2016 article, the authors tell it like it happened but then the information always falls into a black hole. This got fished out again recently, however.
Researchers: We process information from sight outside our visual cortex
At Mind Matters News: A major consequence of the advance of modern neuroscience is that we now “know” so much less than we used to. But what we do know points us in promising research directions.
Jonathan Bartlett on why we can’t upload our brains to computers
The idea that we can upload our brains to computers to avoid death shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the differences between types of thinking.
Michael Egnor sympathizes with people who think the universe is conscious
Michaael Egnor: There is no doubt that consciousness is a fundamental property of animal and human existence. As philosopher Philip Goff notes, a philosophy that cannot plausibly account for it cannot be correct.
Historian: Christianity has been the world’s greatest engine for moral reform
Thomas Kidd: To cite just one, sociologist Robert Woodberry showed in a landmark 2012 article that Christian missionaries were responsible for much of the global spread of cultural values such as “religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, and colonial reforms” from Latin America to East Asia.
Stephen Meyer interview with Ben Shapiro
Today [oops –> recent], here: Starts with Wikipedia’s “pseudoscience” accusation. And, Creationism [in a cheap tuxedo]. END PS: Here is the smoking gun letter by Sir Francis Crick to his son, March 19, 1953, i.e. as he informed his son about his breakthrough:
Dawkins raises an issue without intending to: Can one “outgrow” God without “outgrowing” morality?
Rebecca McLaughlin: To Dawkins’s credit, he comes dangerously close to acknowledging that religious belief is correlated with better moral outcomes—though he would like to think humans are better than that (117). He finds it rather patronizing to say, “Of course you and I are too intelligent to believe in God, but we think it would be a good idea if other people did!” (122).
At Scientific American: Can science rule out God?
If Alpert’s speculation pans out, naturalism could end up with a religion where God is an unprincipled Narcissist. Cool.
Sabine Hossenfelder: Physicists’ theories of how the universe began “aren’t any better than traditional tales of creation”
Sabine Hossenfelder: Physicists may simply have produced a lot of mathematical stories about how it all began, but these aren’t any better than traditional tales of creation.
Will AI replace scientists?
Jonathan Bartlett put that at #6 on his AI hype list
Sale!: Douglas Axe’s book, Undeniable, available on Kindle for $1.99
We checked; it’s Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (Harper One, 2016). But these sales don’t last.
David Bentley Hart offers an honest assessment of Richard Dawkins’s new book
The book is Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide. Hart thinks Dawkins has finally found his authorial voice but you had better read the rest.