Category: Naturalism
Astrophysicist as advice columnist: Question, should I study string theory?
| May 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Multiverse, Naturalism |
From Sabine Hossenfelder at her blog BackRe(Action), responding to a physics major who has heard from cosmologist Brian Greene that string theory can be a grand theory of everything: Greene states very carefully that superstring theory “has the capacity to embrace” gravity as well as the other known fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak, and strong). What […]
Homo naledi’s small but sophisticated brain challenges belief in “an inevitable march towards bigger, more complex brains.”
| May 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Human evolution, Mind, Naturalism |
From ScienceDaily: The recently-discovered species Homo naledi may have had a pint-sized brain, but that brain packed a big punch. New research by Ralph Holloway and colleagues — that include researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa — published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examines the imprints of […]
At RealClearScience: Anti-religious feelings hindered acceptance of the Big Bang
| May 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Big Bang, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Religion |
From science writer Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience, addressing a point raised in astrophysicist Brian Keating’s Losing the Nobel Prize: … anti-religious sentiments provided underlying motivation to debunk Lemaître’s theory. Many atheist scientists were repulsed by the Big Bang’s creationist overtones. According to Hoyle, it was cosmic chutzpah of the worst kind: “The reason why scientists […]
Cosmologist Sean Carroll introduces user-friendly videos explaining naturalism
| May 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Education, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Video |
From multiverse cosmologist Sean Carroll we learn that eighty videos are about to hit YouTube: Some of you might be familiar with the Moving Naturalism Forward workshop I organized way back in 2012. For two and a half days, an interdisciplinary group of naturalists (in the sense of “not believing in the supernatural”) sat around […]
A cautious defense of panpsychism (everything is conscious) as an alternative to despair of the whole field of consciousness
| May 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
From complexity theorist Adam Barrett at The Conversation: Recently, “Integrated Information Theory” has been gaining attention – and the backing of some eminent neuroscientists. It says that absolutely every physical object has some (even if extremely low) level of consciousness. Some backers of the theory claim to have a mathematical formula that can measure the […]
Inspiring Philosophy on quantum mechanics and the death of materialism
| May 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism, Physics |
Inspiring Philosophy Philip Cunningham kindly forwarded this, noting that “Quantum mechanics has repeatedly confirmed the startling conclusion that (material) reality cannot exist without consciousness.” True, but defenders of a rational approach to science tend to forget that many people today are educated to think that reason and evidence are tools of oppression, that only […]
Surprise!: Chimpanzee sounds not much help in understanding human language
| May 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Intelligent Design, language, Mind, Naturalism |
From ScienceDaily: It’s very difficult to determine when, how and why human language began. While fossil primates provide important clues about human evolution, the sounds they made and the soft tissue involved in making those sounds weren’t preserved. But chimpanzees — one of our closest living relatives — provide important points of comparison for inferring […]
Carry that teapot carefully. There is consciousness in tableware.
| May 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
From John Ellis at PJ Media: The belief that inanimate objects, like rocks and tableware, contain consciousness is quickly picking up steam among respected philosophers and scientists. … The problem for these “credible philosophers, neuroscientists, and physicists” who take panpsychist seriously is, as Goldhill points out, “The materialist viewpoint states that consciousness is derived entirely […]
At Skeptic: Five Questions about Human Errors for Proponents of Intelligent Design
| May 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From Nathan H. Lents at Skeptic: Even if ID offered intellectual gains over creationism through the principle of irreducible complexity, and a focus on observations rather than biblical scripture, it did little to explain how poor design could be so rampant in creatures that were specifically designed by an intelligent force. Therefore, glitches in nature, […]
Cognitive scientist: We are more than our brains but don’t get any high ideas on that account!
| May 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
From cognitive scientist Alan Jasanoff, author of The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are, at Aeon: But lost in the public’s romance with the brain is the most fundamental lesson neuroscience has to teach us: that the organ of our minds is a purely physical entity, conceptually […]
Dennis Venema’s Adam and the Genome: Has materialism distorted the perspective?
| May 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From Brian Miller at ENST: In a previous article I described how scientific training can condition some scientists’ minds to resist the evidence in nature for intelligent design. Now, I will demonstrate the effects of this process using as a case study the book Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science, co-authored by […]
Kirk Durston: What progress have we made over six decades in understanding the origin of life?
| May 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Origin Of Life |
From Kirk Durston at P2C-Change: So what progress has science made over the past 60 years? I just counted the number of papers and articles on the origin of life I have filed on my computer—54, and that is only a small sampling of what is out there. Reviewing this collection, the news is not […]
Vid: Frank Turek on Darwinism’s effect on morality, reason, and the ever-elusive God of the Gaps
| April 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Naturalism, Religion |
Frank Turek, apologetics expert and cultural commentator, best known for I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist: Morality: Reason: God of the Gaps: Hat tip: Kenneth Francis.
Philosopher Stephen C. Meyer on how intelligent design is detectable
| April 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Design inference, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
Recently, Trinity International University’s Henry Center’s online journal Sapientia asked, “Can Science Detect Intelligent Design? An Introduction,” sponsored by Hans Madueme. Design theorist Stephen C. Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell, replied at Evolution News & Science Today: Where did the information in the cell come from? And how did the cell’s complex information […]
At Scientific American: “Inexplicable lab results may be telling us we’re on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm”
| April 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Mind, Naturalism, Physics |
From computer engineer Bernardo Kastrup at Scientific American: It turns out, however, that some predictions of QM are incompatible with non-contextuality even for a large and important class of non-local theories. Experimental results reported in 2007 and 2010 have confirmed these predictions. To reconcile these results with the current paradigm would require a profoundly counterintuitive […]
Evolution News slams “sloppy” IV book by BioLogos advisor
| April 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Naturalism, theistic evolution |
From Evolution News: InterVarsity Press publishes some great books and used to be a place to which you could reliably turn for thoughtful, well-researched commentary on evolution and intelligent design. They still have excellent titles on the backlist, including Intelligent Design Uncensored and Darwin on Trial. But in 2016, IVP announced a “partnership with the […]
From Real Clear Religion: Mathematics as a challenge for naturalism
| April 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Naturalism |
From M. Anthony Mills: In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers […]
Maverick Philosopher on Daniel Dennett, who objects to post-modernism but helps it along anyway (without meaning to)
| April 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Philosophy |
From Maverick Philosopher: From an interview with Daniel Dennett in the pages of The Guardian (2017) … My understanding of postmodernism – and you’re a very prominent atheist – is that in the absence of a single meta-narrative, which is God, you had competing narratives… [Dennett:] Yes and one’s true and the others are false. […]
Taking aim at the idea that consciousness is an illusion, as claimed by Daniel Dennett
| April 22, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
A friend writes to draw our attention to this lecture, assuming you are in England now that April’s there: — Durham Castle Lecture – Professor Markus Gabriel 25th April 2018, 20:00 to 21:30, Senate Room, Durham Castle, University College ‘Are We Real? Consciousness and Fiction’ It is a widespread believe in our contemporary natural […]
Origin of life: Rob Sheldon on “lies, damn lies, and models”
| April 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Origin Of Life |
Pos-Darwinista writes to draw our attention to the following Abstract: Universal biology and the statistical mechanics of early life Nigel Goldenfeld, Tommaso Biancalani, Farshid Jafarpour Published 13 November 2017.DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2016.0341 All known life on the Earth exhibits at least two non-trivial common features: the canonical genetic code and biological homochirality, both of which emerged prior to […]
