Category: Philosophy
Catholic website counters anti-design claims made by some Catholic philosophers
| August 5, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion |
Fr. Michael Chaberek author of Aquinas and Evolution, has built a website, Aquinas/Design to advance a philosophically responsible Catholic view on the question of design in nature: Thomistic evolutionists maintain that Aquinas’s philosophy/theology is incompatible with the modern theory of intelligent design (ID). At the same time they say it can be reconciled with neo-Darwinism. […]
Rob Sheldon’s thoughts on physicists’ “warped” view of time
| August 4, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics |
Further to Carlo Rovelli’s views on time travel (only a technological problem, not a scientific one) and the order of time in general, views, as set out in The Order of Time, our color commentator Rob Sheldon offers, — If I can speculate about what goes on in physicist’s heads, this issue about time is an attempt […]
Cosmologist Carlo Rovelli: Future time travel only a technological problem
| August 4, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics |
Not a scientific one. Dan Falk interviews physicist Carlo Rovelli about “about the nature of time, whether it has a beginning and if humans might one day master time travel:” Could time travel ever be possible? Well, “time traveling” is what we do all our lives, isn’t it? But you mean, can we jump quickly […]
Quantum physicist David Bohm on why there cannot be a Theory of Everything
| July 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics |
At Scientific American, John Horgan reprints his profile of Bohm (1917-1992) shortly before his death, in which Bohm explains his view: Although he tried to make the world more sensible with his pilot-wave model, he also argued that complete clarity is impossible. He reached this conclusion after seeing an experiment on television, in which a drop […]
President Duterte, this is what it means to say that God is the necessary being at the root of reality
| July 29, 2018 | Posted by kairosfocus under Atheism, Darwinist rhetorical tactics, Logic and First Principles of right reason, Philosophy, Selective Hyperskepticism |
Recently, President Duterte of the Philippines issued a challenge to prove the existence of God. About a week ago, I showed that to believe in God is reasonable and responsible; indeed, he credibly exists. (BTW, the hits:comments ratio was interesting.) Today, I will explore a bit on what it means for God to be the […]
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor asks, how can there NOT be free will?
| July 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Physics |
From Mind Matters Today: Succinctly, researchers using Bell’s theoretical insight into quantum entanglement have shown that there are no deterministic local hidden variables. This means that the final state of entangled quantum particles is not determined by any variables in the initial state. Nature at its most fundamental level is indeterminate. The states of bound […]
If we are alone in the universe, shouldn’t that make us feel more special?
| July 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Design inference, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Philosophy |
Instead of meaningless? How exactly did we get from “Alone” to “Meaningless” via eloquence from tenured pundits? Where do we buy return tickets? A blogging neurologist asks this obvious question. From Steven Novella at The Ness: Until, however, we detect actual aliens or their signals, the rest of the factors in the equation are likely […]
Yes, President Duterte, God credibly exists
| July 23, 2018 | Posted by kairosfocus under Atheism, Darwinist rhetorical tactics, Epistemology (the study of knowledge and its conditions), faith, Food for thought, Mind, Philosophy, Religion, Selective Hyperskepticism, theism |
. . . given what it takes for us to be here as credibly responsible, rational, morally governed creatures. This is of course my response to UD News’ recent articles on the challenge to “prove” the existence of God, as was recently issued by the President of the Philippines, His Excellency Rodrigo Roa Duterte. Of […]
Do science and philosophy offer more relief from grief than religion does?
| July 22, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science |
That’s the claim by Paul Thagard at Psychology Today: In a recent New York Times column, Stephen T. Asma claims that religion can help people to deal with grief much better than science can. His case for religion over science has four flaws. It depends on a view of how emotion works in the brain […]
Richard Dawkins is annoyed by Muslim prayer chants; seeks secular chaplains
| July 22, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science |
From tipster Ken Francis again, who is currently sitting in for Richard Dawkins’s social secretary and wants us to know that at RT: Question More, ‘Tedious old racist’: Richard Dawkins under fire for dismissing ‘aggressive’ Muslim prayer Best-selling atheist author Richard Dawkins has once again been branded “racist” after he tweeted that the sound of […]
Mass slaughter: Can well-intentioned humanism replace values thought to be rooted in reality?
| July 22, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science |
Ken Francis, hat tipped below, writes to inform us of this vid featuring Frank Turek, of I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist fame, debating non-theist anthropologist Dennis Nørmark last year: Nørmark: In his role as a critic of literature, and formerly also of television, for both the newspaper, ‘Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten’, and from […]
Cosmologist: Philosophy is essential to the development of physics.
| July 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics |
From Carlo Rovelli at Scientific American: Against Philosophy is the title of a chapter of a book by one of the great physicists of the last generation: Steven Weinberg.1 Weinberg argues eloquently that philosophy is more damaging than helpful for physics—it is often a straightjacket that physicists have to free themselves from. Stephen Hawking famously […]
At the BBC: Still working on that ol’ time machine…
| July 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Physics |
From the BBC: Albert Einstein thought the three dimensions of space were linked to time – which serves as a fourth dimension. He called this system space-time, and it’s the model of the Universe that we use today. But Einstein also thought it was possible to fold space-time, creating a shortcut between two distant locations. […]
Enemies of science? The current war on objectivity is a genuine enemy
| July 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Logic and First Principles of right reason, Philosophy, Science, science education |
And Big Science is afraid to confront it. From Katherine Timpf at National Review: A course that will be taught at Hobart and William Smith Colleges next year will teach students that “objectivity” and “meritocracy” are examples of “white mythologies” and “social constructs.” … The idea that objectivity is somehow a myth, or that it […]
Science cannot “disprove” miracles
| July 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Philosophy, Religion, Science |
From Amy K. Hall at Stand to Reason: Recently, when I asked an atheist why he was an atheist, the first reason he gave was that “science has disproved God.” When I asked what he meant by that, he started listing miracles in the Bible—such as the virgin birth—that were impossible for him to believe […]
Christian worldview gave rise to science; naturalist assumptions not needed
| July 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science |
From Amy K.Hall at Stand to Reason: Are naturalistic assumptions necessary for doing science? In the video below (or see the transcript here), Stephen Meyer argues that not only is naturalism not necessary, but in fact, it was a Christian worldview that gave rise to modern science. More. From Transcript: The first thing to say […]
Sabine Hossenfelder: Free will is compatible with physics
| July 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mind, Philosophy, Physics |
From Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, at her blog Back(re)action: It occurred to me some years ago, however, that there is a much simpler example for how reductionism can fail. It can fail simply because the extrapolation from the theory at short distances to the one at long distances […]
From Philip Cunningham: Atheistic Materialism vs Meaning, Value, and Purpose in Our Lives
| July 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Philosophy |
Here. Paper. See also: From Philip Cunningham: Darwin’s theory vs. falsification
At Vox: The number zero is weird
| July 8, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Philosophy |
From Brian Resnick at Vox: Zero is in the mind, but not in the sensory world,” Robert Kaplan, a Harvard math professor and an author of a book on zero, says. Even in the empty reaches of space, if you can see stars, it means you’re being bathed in their electromagnetic radiation. In the darkest […]
Can there really be a Theory of Everything? Wouldn’t it really be a theology of everything?
| July 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion |
From John Saxbee at Church Times, reviewing Keith Eyeons’ The Theology of Everything: Renaissance Man joins the 21st century: … Yet scientists continue to pursue a theory of everything, and this irony is not lost on Eyeons, who sets out to reclaim this territory for theologians in general, and for Christian theology in particular. The […]
