Category: Science and Religion
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Is Neuroscience Relevant to Understanding Prayer and Meditation?
Substack latest. If you can poke a hole in anything I say, I'll buy you lunch when next our paths cross.
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Will Science Put Religion out of Business?
A tilt at transhumanism. Substack latest.
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William Lane Craig . . .
. . . on the headwaters of the human race. A very intelligent article. I have had similar thoughts. Here is an excerpt from an entry dated 30 August 2011: But how can God create man in his image and likeness without interfering in the evolutionary processes which most of us believe are responsible for man's…
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Will Science Put Religion Out of Business? Against the Folly of Transhumanism
A correspondent writes: Here's how I think science will eventually put religion out of business. Soon medical science is going to be able to offer serious life extension, not pie-in-the-sky soul survival or re-incarnation, but real life extension with possible rejuvenation. When science can offer and DELIVER what religion can only promise, religion is done.…
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The Adam and Eve Controversy in the Blogosphere
Here
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Jerry Coyne’s Latest Outburst re: Pope Francis, Big Bang and Evolution
It doesn't merit a lot of attention, but I will mention two stupid moves that Jerry Coyne makes. Or if not stupid, then intellectually dishonest. First, Coyne states that "We know now that the universe could have originated from 'nothing' through purely physical processes, if you see 'nothing' as the 'quantum vacuum' of empty space." …
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Steven Pinker on Scientism, Part One
Herewith, some commentary on a very poor article by Steven Pinker, Science is not Your Enemy. I will first state in general why I consider the article of low quality, and then quote a large chunk of it and intersperse some comments (bolded). This is Part One. Part Two to follow if I have the time…
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Sensus Divinitatis: Nagel Defends Plantinga Against Grayling
Anthony Grayling writes: The problem with Alvin Plantinga’s defense of theism is a simple but wholly vitiating one [Where the Conflict Really Lies, reviewed by Thomas Nagel in “A Philosopher Defends Religion,” NYR, September 27, 2012]. It is that it rests on the fallacy of informal logic known as petitio principii. Plantinga wishes to claim…
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Thomas Nagel, Heretic
Andrew Ferguson writes on the the explosion of hostility toward Thomas Nagel after the publication of his 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos. Here is my overview of the book. More detailed posts on the same book are collected under the Nagel rubric. For a non-philosopher, Ferguson's treatment is accurate. Here are a couple of interesting excerpts in…
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Plantinga Receives Rescher Prize
David J. Theroux would have me link to his Philosopher Alvin Plantinga Receives Prestigious Rescher Prize. I am happy to do so.
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Is Neuroscience Relevant to Understanding Prayer and Meditation?
One aspect of contemporary scientism is the notion that great insights are to be gleaned from neuroscience about the mind and its operations. If you want my opinion, the pickin's are slim indeed and confusions are rife. This is your brain on prayer: A test subject is injected with a dye that allows the researcher to study…
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Nagel’s Reason for Rejecting Theism
This is the second in a series. My overview of Thomas Nagel's new book, Mind and Cosmos, is here. I agree with Nagel that mind is not a cosmic accident. Mind in all of its ramifications (sentience, intentionality, self-awareness, cognition, rationality, normativity in general) could not have arisen from mindless matter. To put it very roughly,…
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Thomas Nagel Reviews Alvin Plantinga
Plantinga's latest is entitled, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. Here is Nagel's review. Like everything Nagel publishes, it is well worth careful reading. The review ends as follows: The interest of this book, especially for secular readers, is its presentation from the inside of the point of view of a philosophically…
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Something and Nothing Again: Krauss Takes Another Stab at Defending His ‘Bait and Switch’
In the pages of Scientific American, Lawrence M. Krauss writes: As a scientist, the fascination normally associated with the classically phrased question “why is there something rather than nothing?”, is really contained in a specific operational question. That question can be phrased as follows: How can a universe full of galaxies and stars, and planets…
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Can God Break a Law of Nature?
This is the fourth in a series of posts on Plantinga's new book. They are collected under the rubric Science and Religion. In the third chapter of Where the Conflict Really Lies, Plantinga addresses questions about divine action and divine intervention in the workings of nature. A miracle is such an intervention. But aren't miracles logically…