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Naturalism

Meeting: Alternatives to methodological naturalism

  April 16, 2016 online From Blyth Institute: We are pleased to announce the 2016 Conference on Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism, which aims to explore new methodologies that can be employed in a variety of disciplines that are not based on methodological naturalism. E-mail proposed abstracts to info@blythinstitute.org (200-500 words) More. E-conference is available. Blyth previously hosted the Engineering and Metaphysics conference, with proceedings. From News: Methodological naturalism is Darwin’s sucker punch: Science is coterminous with naturalism. The purpose of science, therefore, is to come up with theories that are in line with and support naturalist (nature is all there is) explanations. If those explanations seem weak (cf crackpot cosmology and evolutionary psychology) , we must wait for better naturalist explanations. No other Read More ›

Is reality information?

Wouldn’t that make information reality? From Rachel Thomas’ evaluation of the work of physicist John Archibald Wheeler at PlusMaths: Wheeler categorised his long and productive life in physics into three periods: “Everything is Particles”, “Everything is Fields”, and “Everything is Information”. (You can read more about his life and work in his autobiography, Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam.) The driving idea behind the third period was spurred by his contemplation of the age-old question: “How come existence?” And his answer, first published in a brilliantly written (and very entertaining) paper in 1989, was it from bit: “It from bit symbolises the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in Read More ›

The flying horse defends himself against Dawkins

We received this memo, and if we knew how, we probably wouldn’t tell you. We suspect we know who it is from. We will just copy it here: Look, I don’t want to interfere, as you people all seem to be enjoying the fight. But just a couple of things for the record: Richard Dawkins walked out on a journalist who professes to believe I exist. I hear Dr. Dawkins even tried coining a new word for the Urban Dictionary, modelled on the name of someone who criticized him for doing so. The skinny: I am a supernatural being, and thus beyond the purview of this-worldly science. Whether I exist can’t be deduced simply from common sense either, because the Read More ›

The Dover case, John West, and intelligent design

Recently, Evolution News & Views has been discussing the decade-old Dover case that, in my view, cleared the decks for serious discussions about Darwinism. No surprise, lots more people express doubts, now that the failing American school system is no longer  an issue. West, a director at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (ID Central), writes, It was during the bleak months following Dover that I made one of the biggest decisions of my professional life. Rather than cut and run, I decided to risk everything. Convinced of the critical importance of the intelligent design debate, I gave up my tenured position as a university professor to devote my full energies to Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Read More ›

Brainpickings: Best science books 2015

Yes, that time of year again, and Maria Popova’s list at Brainpickings: offers few surprises and some items of at least social interest, including #3, Lisa Randall’s Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: Randall starts with a fascinating speculative theory, linking dark matter to the extinction of the dinosaurs — an event that took place in the outermost reaches of the Solar System sixty-six million years ago catalyzed an earthly catastrophe without which we wouldn’t have come to exist. … But the theory itself, original and interesting as it may be, is merely a clever excuse to do two more important things: tell an expansive and exhilarating story of how the universe as we know it came to exist, and invite Read More ›

Methodological naturalism: Darwin’s sucker punch

From Steve Meyer, author of Darwin’s Doubt, The discovery of digital code, hierarchically-organized information processing systems, and functionally-integrated complex circuits and nano-machinery would in any other realm of experience immediately and properly trigger an awareness of the prior activity of a designing intelligence — precisely because of what we know from experience about what it takes (i.e., what kind of cause is necessary) to produce such systems. But Bishop and O’Connor seem entirely unmoved by discoveries showing the existence of such informational and integrated complexity in living organisms, not because the existence of functional digital code or the nanotechnology in life is in any way in doubt, but because they have committed themselves to viewing the world as if it Read More ›

Why do naturalists grudgingly use the word “design”? Part I

Lee Spetner, author of The Evolution Revolution, offers the following snippet from a recent book, The Plausibility of Life: “Here and throughout this book we use the word design to mean a structure as it is related to function, not necessarily implying either a human or a divine designer; it is a commonly used term in biology.” Kirschner, M. W., & Gerhart, J. C. (2005). The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [p. 2] Well, actually, they go a bit further than that: [From blurb:] In the 150 years since Darwin, the field of evolutionary biology has left a glaring gap in understanding how animals developed their astounding variety and complexity. The standard answer Read More ›

Naturalism, it turns out, is no match even for the animal mind

From Evolution News & Views: What can we hope to learn about animal minds? Consciousness (a mind) perceives and acts on information. But there are at least two — more basic and probably unconscious qualities — that distinguish life from non-life, and seem to act by processing information: self-preservation and adaptability. Life forms constantly try to preserve themselves in a living state — that is, they try to survive. They adapt their methods as needed, whenever possible. A rock falls from a high cliff and breaks; a cat has somehow learned to relax, turn in mid-air, and land on his feet. Or consider Slijper’s goat and Faith the dog, both of whom, born without forelegs, adapted to a lifestyle that Read More ›

Is evil a disease?, asks New Scientist

Thoughts spurred by ISIS, apparently. From New Scientist: What turns an ordinary person into a killer? The idea that a civilised human being might be capable of barbaric acts is so alien that we often blame our animal instincts – the older, “primitive” areas of the brain taking over and subverting their more rational counterparts. But fresh thinking turns this long-standing explanation on its head. It suggests that people perform brutal acts because the “higher”, more evolved, brain overreaches. The set of brain changes involved has been dubbed Syndrome E – with E standing for evil. Yes, evil is an intelligent choice. Not a “natural” one. As Aesop’s fable tells it, the scorpion doesn’t sting because he is evil, but Read More ›

Lottery luck exceeds number of electrons in universe?

But isn’t that precisely what naturalism teaches about everything? Further to When organized crime got ID? (There always needs to be someone whose knowledge is in fact an intelligent commentary for a naturalist theory of mind to be valid, which means by definition that it isn’t), cheating supposedly random lotteries is once again in the news. From WUSA9, we hear, WASHINGTON (WUSA9) – A man who sold himself a $1,000,000 winning D.C. Lottery ticket is just one of many retailers a WUSA9 investigation found winning the lottery at rates statisticians say border on impossible. At least three retailers won the lottery around 100 times according to an analysis of D.C. Lottery records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. … Read More ›

Pew Research: Highly religious Americans less likely to see faith-science conflict

Here. Highly religious Americans are less likely than others to see conflict between faith and science. People’s sense that there generally is a conflict between religion and science seems to have less to do with their own religious beliefs than it does with their perceptions of other people’s beliefs. Less than one-third of Americans polled in the new survey (30%) say their personal religious beliefs conflict with science, while fully two-thirds (68%) say there is no conflict between their own beliefs and science. People’s sense that there generally is a conflict between religion and science seems to have less to do with their own religious beliefs than it does with their perceptions of other people’s beliefs. Less than one-third of Read More ›

Philosopher Ed Feser on physicist Larry Krauss

Readers may remember Larry “All scientists should be militant atheists” Krauss. At The Public Discourse, Thomist philosopher Ed Feser offers, Scientists Should Tell Lawrence Krauss to Shut Up Already Dr. Feser, may we assume that you are not a fan? In a recent opinion piece for The New Yorker, physicist Lawrence Krauss proclaims that “all scientists should be militant atheists.” Why? You won’t get any clear answer from the article, which is even thinner on argumentation (as opposed to sheer assertion) than the usual New Atheist tract—indeed, even thinner than the usual Lawrence Krauss tract, which is saying something. Most of the piece is about Kim Davis, Hobby Lobby, and other matters of public controversy entirely irrelevant to either science Read More ›

Bencze: The mind as a hybrid between two realms

Philosopher and photographer Laszlo Bencze on a reasonable understanding of methodological naturalism. Galileo was a methodological naturalist because he was not a methodological supernaturalist, the only other option. Galileo was interested in the natural world, specifically the movements of the planets and their moons. He studied these movements via natural methods, i.e., he observed them through a telescope. He did not use supernatural methods in his studies. What might “supernatural methods” be? He might have written his questions about the solar system on slips of paper and burned them with incense in expectations of receiving visions explaining everything. Of course that “supernatural methodology” sounds very silly. I’m not aware of any serious Christian thinker who ever used that method of Read More ›

Further to “How BioLogos describes the intelligent design community, commenter Ted Davis, a Biologian, replies:

Further to “How BioLogos describes the intelligent design community, commenter Ted Davis, a Biologian, replies: I know everyone at BL and hundreds of ASA members, and I can never recall any one of them endorsing metaphysical naturalism. Not one. In every single case, if Denyse were to ask someone ” whether scientific explanations require metaphysical naturalism,” the answer would be, No. So, Denyse, having pretended to ask a question on your behalf, I’ll now ask you one on my behalf: Who’s ducking that question? Oh dear. This is one of those awkward situations. Of course no claimed Christian ever directly admits to metaphysical naturalism. Why would they? They would have to quit their jobs and their churches. That does not Read More ›

Playwright Tom Stoppard: Does he see the problem with naturalism?

If a pop playwright does see that, things are  surely changing, big time. In his new play, The Hard Problem, British playwright Tom Stoppard, writer for Shakespeare in Love proposes the following plot: Above all don’t use the word good as though it meant something in evolutionary science. Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brain-science institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness? This is ‘the hard problem’ which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry. Is the day coming when the computer and Read More ›