vjtorley

Recently I came across two thought-provoking articles which contained insightful quotes that I wanted to share with my readers. One is from a former magazine writer and editor named Misty, who is now actively involved in home-schooling, and the other is from a theologian and philosopher named Callie Joubert, who holds degrees from the UKZN (Ph.D.), Univ of Johannesburg (D.Phil), Univ of Stellenbosch (M.Phil./B.Phil.) and Unisa (BA). The first quote comes from an account by Misty of her personal pilgrimage from unbelief to faith: I had lived as an avowed atheist for more than a decade and couldn’t imagine that The Truth even existed, much less it could be found. Especially when I couldn’t even accept that God was real. Read More ›

When I read about Eugene Goostman, the computer program which is so good at “small talk” that it fooled 33% of the judges at a recent contest into thinking it was a human typing at a keyboard, I couldn’t resist the idea of giving it a challenge. After working for ten years as a computer programmer, researching the nature of mind for a philosophy thesis, and teaching English conversation for more than a dozen years in Japan, I figured I’d be able to bamboozle Eugene with some very simple, innocent-sounding questions. And I was right. From a couple of brief, exploratory forays, I quickly established that Eugene was able to answer questions of the “Hello, how are you?” variety, that Read More ›

In a recent piece titled, This Is Why You Have No Business Challenging Scientific Experts, science journalist Chris Mooney argues that qualified scientists have a special kind of inside knowledge which laypeople will always lack, no matter how well-informed they may be. Hence when a consensus exists among scientists in a particular field, laypeople would be well-advised to trust the experts. The privileged knowledge possessed by qualified scientists is the topic of a new book, titled, Are We All Scientific Experts Now?, by Cardiff University scholar, Professor Harry Collins (pictured above right, courtesy of Alexei Kouprianov and Wikipedia), a founder of the field of “science studies”. Collins’s contention, as summarized by Mooney (pictured above left, courtesy of Harris Social Media Read More ›

By now, I imagine most of my readers have heard about Principal Kevin Lowery’s controversial graduation ceremony speech, delivered at the Cowan Civil Center on May 23, to the students of Lebanon High School, Missouri. The Freedom From Religion Foundation published a letter on June 2, alleging that Principal Lowery had violated the US Constitution. Embarrassingly, the person who authored the letter appears not to know who wrote the American national anthem, and he also misquotes the American Declaration of Independence! The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is headed by husband-and-wife team Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor (pictured above), should be covering its collective face in shame. This will take a long time for the FFRF to live down. Read More ›

One of the advantages of having an academic background in philosophy is that you learn how to spot bad arguments. The origin of life is a subject where fallacious arguments proliferate. In this post, I’ve put together a list of a dozen common fallacies that bedevil scientific speculations regarding the origin of life. The next time you come across a paper on the origin of life in a science journal, you might like to check how many fallacies the author of the paper commits. For the sake of convenience, I’ve listed the fallacies here: 1. The fallacy of begging the question. 2. The fallacy of conflating the issues. 3. The fallacy of confusing the unknown with the undemonstrated. 4. The Read More ›

The liberal blogosphere is apparently up in arms over recent remarks by straight-shooter Senator Marco Rubio on the Sean Hannity Show and subsequently reported in the Huffington Post, exposing the science denialism that occurs on the political left. “Here’s what I always get a kick out of, and it shows you the hypocrisy. All these people always wag their finger at me about science and settled science. Let me give you a bit of settled science that they’ll never admit to,” Rubio said. “The science is settled, it’s not even a consensus, it is a unanimity, that human life beings at conception. So I hope the next time someone wags their finger about science, they’ll ask one of these leaders Read More ›

Over at the alternative news Website alternet.org, freelance writer and secular advocate Dan Arel has recently published an article criticizing the Discovery Institute’s coverage of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos series. Arel’s article, which bears the sensationalized title, Neil deGrasse Tyson Praises Scientist Who Knew to Check His Religion at the Door; Creationists Go Apoplectic, takes aim at a recent post by David Klinghoffer over at Evolution News and Views, criticizing the “whitewash” by Cosmos, which concealed the religious sources of scientific inspiration for Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. Leaving aside the polemical remarks directed at Klinghoffer, the gist of Arel’s argument can be summarized in the following excerpts from his article (emphases mine – VJT): Creationists want religion out Read More ›

Alfred Mele is a professor of philosophy at Florida State University and the author of two books on free will: Effective Intentions (2009) and Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will, which is due out in October 2014. In a recent essay on Big Questions Online, Professor Mele defends, as “a definite possibility,” what he calls the ambitious view of free will: the view that when you freely choose between two options (let’s call them A and B), your past history and the laws of Nature do not determine your choice, which means that there is a real chance that you will choose A, and a real chance that you will choose B. On this ambitious view, while there may Read More ›

Over at his Website, Debunking Christianity, John Loftus has put up a very brief post titled, What About the Origins of Life Itself? It reads as follows: We know that we descended from a common ancestor. We know this. Evolution is a fact. Many believers agree about this, even a growing number of evangelicals. But what about the origins of life itself? The answer is simple. Ready? Since the evolution of life has a natural explanation then so also does the origins of life, we just don’t know how yet. Give science time. Don’t punt to a god explanation just as believers shouldn’t have done before Darwin. Comprende? A commenter named formerlutheran responded: Science has yet to figure out exactly Read More ›

Professor Edward Feser and Intelligent Design defender Dr. Lydia McGrew have been having a lively exchange of views on classical theism, miracles and Intelligent Design. Dr. McGrew, who is also a Christian apologist, concluded her blog post, Things God can do to reveal Himself, with these words: God has revealed Himself personally, by audible language, in incidents in Scripture. We know that. There is therefore no reason in principle why God could not reveal Himself personally, by the language of programmed code and intricate nanotechnology, in biology. Theory must accommodate fact, or it is bad theory. It is my hope that classical theism can rise to the occasion. Professor Feser’s reply to Dr. McGrew can be found here. Dr. Lydia Read More ›

Professor Larry Moran has graciously responded to my five questions on the neutral theory of evolution in a recent blog post at Sandwalk, titled, Answering creationist questions about Neutral Theory (6 May 2014). I’ve highlighted Professor Moran’s responses below. 1. Do you agree or disagree with the view expressed by Motoo Kimura that natural selection is necessary to explain evolution occurring at the morphological level? Professor Moran: Some evolution at the morphological level can be attributed to natural selection and some is due to random genetic drift. The latter category includes neutral morphological changes and a small percentage of detrimental morphological changes. I was influenced in this view by Masatoshi Nei’s book Molecular Evolutionary Genetics (1987). [Professor Moran then proceeds Read More ›

Yesterday, “News” brought readers a fascinating story about a report from Science Daily, titled, Reconstructed ancient ocean reveals secrets about the origin of life (25 April 2014), which was also picked up by Linda Geddes, writing for New Scientist. Reading the Science Daily article, I was struck by the extraordinary naivete of mainstream science reporters covering the origin-of-life issue. Consider the following excerpt, taken from the final two paragraphs: “In the presence of iron and other compounds found in the oceanic sediments, 29 metabolic-like chemical reactions were observed, including those that produce some of the essential chemicals of metabolism, for example precursors of the building blocks of proteins or RNA,” says [Dr. Markus] Ralser, [Group Leader at the Department of Read More ›

What kinds of structural, functional and behavioral complexity can the neutral theory of evolution account for, and what kinds of complexity can’t it account for? According to Professor Larry Moran, to evince confusion on these vital questions is a sure sign of being an “IDiot.” But it is the “neutralists” themselves who are confused on these issues, as I intend to show in today’s post. (I have chosen to use the term “neutralist” to describe someone who adheres to the neutral theory of evolution, as Nature magazine uses that term, although Professor Moran evidently prefers the term “mutationist.”) In a recent post titled, Sal Cordova tries, and fails, to understand evolution by Professor Larry Moran (April 22, 2014), Professor Larry Read More ›

Professor Jerry Coyne has recently written a post titled, Atheism of the gaps, in which he urges skeptics to “make believers read about unbelief” before listening to their arguments, and “make atheism-of-the-gaps arguments.” In the first section of his post, Professor Coyne throws down the gauntlet: If people can fault us for not reading Aquinas, Augustine, Origen, Tertullian and (ugh) Alvin Plantinga and David Bentley Hart, well, then, we can do the same to them. If they haven’t read extensively in the honorable intellectual tradition of nonbelief, then they have no credibility as believers. Frankly, Salon should publish a piece that says this. And what does he suggest that believers read? Tell believers that we won’t pay any attention to Read More ›

In a recent post over at his Sandwalk blog, Professor Larry Moran has been attempting to set the cat among the pigeons, with a list of five issues which, he anticipates, will lead to bitter recriminations within the “big tent” of the Intelligent Design movement. Professor Moran is shocked, shocked, that Intelligent Design advocates sometimes publicly disagree on certain issues, as illustrated by a recent series of posts (by Sal Cordova, Dr. Branko Kozulic and myself) on the neutral theory of evolution. He writes: The reason why this is so remarkable is that it almost never happens under the creationist big tent. Different Intelligent Design Creationists have widely conflicting views ranging from Young Earth Creationism to Theistic Evolution Creationism but Read More ›