Over at WEIT, Professor Jerry Coyne has put up three interesting posts during the past few days, with questions for his readers relating to free will, the irrationality of belief in Divine revelation, and climate skepticism. I’d like to briefly respond to his questions. Free will In a post titled, Once again with free will: […]
Author: vjtorley
I've just completed a Ph.D. in philosophy, but I have a fairly broad academic background (B.S. with a pure mathematics major; B.A. with computing and philosophy majors; B.Ec. with economics and accounting majors; M.A. in philosophy; Dip. Ed. in Secondary School Teaching). I'm an Australian, but I currently live in Japan with my wife and baby son.
Tool-making crows are just acting naturally
According to a report in New Scientist, the tool-making behavior of New Caledonian crows may be simply part of their natural repertoire. If this finding turns out to be true, it would cast doubt on claims that the birds are intelligent. A crow that astonished the world by bending a straight piece of wire was […]
James Clerk Maxwell’s bright line
In my last post, I cited 31 great scientists who made scientific arguments for the supernatural, and in so doing, flouted the tenets of methodological naturalism. One of these was the Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, who propounded the theory of electromagnetism. I was surprised that Maxwell’s violation of methodological naturalism generated so little comment […]
Methodological naturalism? 31 great scientists who made scientific arguments for the supernatural
It is often claimed that methodological naturalism is a principle which defines the scope of the scientific enterprise. Today’s post is about thirty-one famous scientists throughout history who openly flouted this principle, in their scientific writings, by putting forward arguments for a supernatural Deity. The term “methodological naturalism” is defined variously in the literature. All […]
Animals, abstraction, arithmetic and language
During the past two weeks, over at Evolution News and Views, Professor Michael Egnor has been arguing that it is the capacity for abstract thought which distinguishes humans from other animals, and that human language arises from this capacity. While I share Dr. Egnor’s belief in human uniqueness, I have to take issue with his […]
Straight talk from Searle on free will
John Searle, who is currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the world’s most highly respected philosophers. In a recent nine-minute interview with Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Searle succinctly defined the problem of free will, in laypersons’ language. Although Searle finds it difficult (as […]
The man who mistook himself for a fish
Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers (who is a cladist) has written an entertaining but misguided post titled, Yes, you are a fish. In today’s post, I’ll argue that the key to classifying organisms correctly isn’t phylogeny, anatomy or genetics; it’s embryology. Only embryology can tell us something specific about an organism’s past and present characteristics, […]
Why a rabbit is not like a can of Coke: PZ Myers’ own goal
PZ Myers is incensed at the publication of a Bible tract by Ray Comfort, who argues that it’s just as absurd to believe that the human body evolved by chance as it is to believe that chance processes could generate a can of Coke, such as the one pictured above (public domain image, courtesy of […]
The amazing placenta: A reply to Dr. Ann Gauger
Dr. Ann Gauger argues that the hypothesis of common descent fails to account for the origin of the mammalian placenta, in an ENV article titled, The Placenta Problem (June 17, 2016). As we’ll see, the evidence she puts forward proves precisely the opposite: common descent is the only hypothesis which explains the facts, without resorting […]
Consider the opossum: the evidence for common descent
Remarkably, the recent spate of articles over at Evolution News and Views (see here, here and here) attacking the claim that vitellogenin pseudogenes in humans provide scientific evidence for common descent, all missed the point that Professor Dennis Venema was making, which was not about the existence of pseudogenes, but about the spatial pattern in […]
Leading thinker on human evolution admits: we’re more than just an ape
Dr. Ajit Varki is Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular & Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. He is a confirmed evolutionist, but at the same time, interestingly, an ardent believer in human exceptionalism. Last April, Professor Varki and Professor S. Joshua Swamidass gave a presentation at the university, organized by the […]
Sex and phlogiston: an essay on intellectual crimes
The philosopher Plato wrote in his work, Phaedrus, that successful theories should “carve nature at its joints.” Scientists have a special obligation to abide by this maxim, since the stated aim of science is to systematically describe Nature, as she really is. The worst kind of intellectual crime I can conceive of would be the […]
Baker’s dozen: Thirteen questions for Dr. Hunter
The purpose of today’s post is to ask Dr. Hunter thirteen questions regarding his views on human origins. I hope he will be gracious enough to respond. Without further ado, here they are. 1. Dr. Hunter, in your original article over at Darwin’s God, you put forward eleven arguments against the hypothesis that humans and […]
In defense of Swamidass
After reading Dr. Cornelius Hunter’s panning of Professor S. Joshua Swamidass’s recent article, Evidence and Evolution, I figured the professor must have written a truly awful piece. Nevertheless, I decided to go back and have a look at his article. And I’m very glad I did. Swamidass’s article was irenic in tone, easy to follow, […]
Jimmy Kimmel vs. Sarah Palin on climate change: my take
Late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel has attacked former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for questioning the existence of a scientific consensus on global warming and for promoting a documentary called Climate Hustle, whose aim is to expose the myths about global warming. Climatologist Judith Curry has written a review of the film, which she found to […]