I was thinking recently, about how many audiobooks are consumed by people these days. I would guess that the main reason behind this consumption is convenience. Many people just don’t have the time, or don’t create the time, to really sit down and get their head in a book. But I understand that for many, Read More…
Philosophy
Michael Egnor: Mathematics can prove the existence of God
Egnor: Because mathematics can show infinity, eternity, and omnipotence, it can only have proceeded from a mind with those characteristics. That’s God.
Apparently, scientists are the only ones exempt from the fact that we evolved to have biases…
When science becomes a substitute for religion or philosophy, it must bear the weight of being a certain kind of truth. The trouble is, science isn’t that kind of truth.
At Mind Matters News: Researchers: Distrust of science is due to tribal loyalty
There seems to be no recognition that researchers, however fiercely competitive among themselves, also have a tribal loyalty that skews their judgment.
At Mind Matters News: Researchers: If we tell folks more about science, they trust less
Generally, the remedy for loss of trust after widespread failures is reform of the system, not reform of its doubters. Post-COVID, scientists should take heed.
At Mind Matters News: Why many now reject science… do you really want to know? Part 1
COVID demonstrated — as nothing else could — that the “science” was all over the map and didn’t help people avoid panic. Takehome: As the panic receded, the government started setting up a disinformation board to target NON-government sources of panic, thus deepening loss of trust.
Jerry Coyne weighs in against Steve Meyer in Newsweek
Coyne couldn’t prevent it but he can at least trash it. We like this state of affairs.
What would Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas say about Adam and Eve and paleontology?
Thomas Aquinas (1225– 1274) was instrumental in organizing Christian theology along Aristotelian lines. Here, a priest who is familiar with his thought, offers some comments.
Wm Lane Craig on Systematic Philosophical Theology
He has a book that seems to be forthcoming. Here is a Talbot introductory lecture: He has a Q&A: A key clip: Notice, a paper, here. Excerpting Dr Clinton: Ostensibly, the reason for a ‘system’ of theology is that someone, or some group, has come to understand the teachings of the Bible and of their Read More…
Has anything been learned from nearly two decades of keening about science’s replication crisis?
Science is beginning to sound like the medieval church, actually. We are now moving on from keening to caterwauling. But nobody working on the inside can actually do anything about it.
C. S. Lewis and the limits of science
He saw science as a limited language.
John West on C. S. Lewis and science
Klinghoffer: Dr. West reminds listeners of an insight of Lewis’s that doesn’t get the attention it deserves, perhaps because it comes in the Epilogue of the last book Lewis completed, the fascinating The Discarded Image.
Following the science seen as “impossible and stupid”
Eugyippus: “During the pandemic, Germany closed schools on a wider scale and for a longer duration than most other places in the civilised world. “
Is the real problem with science education today lack of support for the Consensus?
The trouble is, the context of the article is an attack on a teacher who doubts the COVID orthodoxy. We would want to avoid the weeds for sure but in principle it is reasonable to doubt the COVID orthodoxy.
What blocks new ideas in science?
Clancy: Wang, Veuglers, and Stephan, create a new category for “highly” novel papers, which cite a pair of journals that have never been cited together in the past, and also are not even in the same neighborhood. Here, we mean journals that are not well “connected” by some other pair of journals.