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|  - 'Good Reasons for 'Believing' in God' by Dan Dennett
- Dennett talks about why it's sensible to profess belief in God. He lives up to his reputation of being a bit fluffier than Dawkins.
(tags: daniel-dennett philosophy religion atheism) - Valerie Tarico: Christian Belief Through The Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 6 of 6
- The final part of Tarico's series, which links to the others. "Despite its boundaries, cognitive science, does offer what is rapidly becoming a sufficient explanation for the supernaturalism that underlies organized religion."
(tags: christianity science religion brain psychology cognitive-bias cognition) - WHY DOES THE UNVIERSE LOOK THE WAY IT DOES: A Conversation With Sean Carroll
- "Inflation does not provide a natural explanation for why the early universe looks like it does unless you can give me an answer for why inflation ever started in the first place. That is not a question we know the answer to right now. That is why we need to go back before inflation into before the Big Bang, into a different part of the universe to understand why inflation happened versus something else."
(tags: physics cosmology big-bang universe inflation string-theory) - RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags - Stack Overflow
- "If you parse HTML with regex you are giving in to Them and their blasphemous ways which doom us all to inhuman toil for the One whose Name cannot be expressed in the Basic Multilingual Plane, he comes." Quite right: you should use Beautiful Soup like everyone else does.
(tags: funny programming humour xml parse lovecraft stackoverflow regexp regex html) - The Disenchanted Naturalist’s Guide to Reality
- Alex Rosenberg argues that scientism is a good thing, and puts forward a very reductionist naturalism which he applies to consciousness, morality and a bunch of other stuff philosophers like to worry about. His fellow naturalists disagree in the comments (notably, Richard Carrier and Tom Clark produce good arguments against him).
(tags: naturalism philosophy science reductionism morality consciousness) - Riffs: 11:14:09: Patrol Magazine and Evangelicals Who Won’t “Get Over It”
- "It is astonishing that so many intelligent Christians seem to believe there is a deficit in emphasis on evangelism and scriptural literalism, and that, if the hatches are just battened down on a more solid “worldview,” evangelicalism can resume explaining the universe to new generations of believers."
(tags: evangelicalism christianity) - I’m Belle de Jour
- Former blogging prostitute Belle de Jour reveals her real identity to the Times. She was an impoverished PhD student.
(tags: culture sex identity anonymous science prostitution) - What Stormtroopers do on Their Day Off
- Funny photos of stormtroopers at play.
(tags: humour funny scifi images starwars toys photo photography) - Valerie Tarico: Speaking Evangelese: Tips for Politicians
- Tarico's article on evangelical jargon phrases and dog whistles. Some of these sound familiar
(tags: evangelicalism christianity politics religion jargon language) - Experimental Theology: Christians and Torture: Part 6, Hell and Torture
- Richard Beck over at Experimental Theology has been doing a series of posts on Christian and torture. His survey said: "Christians who believed in a horrific and never-ending hell were more likely to endorse torture. As God tortures so we torture." Unsurprising, perhaps, but interesting to see it backed up by research. In the comments, Beck notes the correlation is not strong, but is significant.
(tags: hell torture politics religion christianity morality)
- Tags:atheism, christianity, cognitive bias, consciousness, culture, daniel dennett, funny, hell, link blog, morality, philosophy, politics, programming, psychology, religion, science, sex
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| - Atheism, Reason, and Morality: Responding to Some Popular Christian Apologetics
- D Gene Witmer on how best to response to Christian presuppositionalists. I ran into one of them online recently, which was fun.
(tags: religion presuppositionalism apologetics christianity philosophy rationality logic induction morality system:filetype:pdf system:media:document) - God is not the Creator, claims academic
- In a sense, this isn't news: a lot of the religions that were contemporaries of Judaism had a creation story involving gods making order out of chaos rather than creating the universe from nothing, though I'd previously read that this was referred to in the Bible more obliquely than the this new theory suggests (e.g. water + Leviathan symbolises chaos in Psalm 74). If this idea catches on, it'll be interesting to see the new ideas the Abrahamic religions come up with to harmonise this with science :-)
(tags: religion bible history christianity creationism creation god chaos) - Plantinga: Religious Beilef as Properly Basic
- A nice introduction to Plantinga's ideas. I've not read his books, so I don't know how accurately they're summarised, but it seems to fit with what I've read elsewhere.
(tags: belief philosophy plantinga epistemology christianity religion alvin-plantinga) - PRISMs, Gom Jabbars, and Consciousness
- Peter Watts talks about a paper which claims consciousness arose out of the need to chose between conflicting motor impulses.
(tags: consciousness science scifi sci-fi peter-watts) - Demon ready to kill in city church
- Magus Shadee (Wiz 5, Necromatic) apparently cast Summon Monster in the big Catholic church in Cambridge. Local clerics of Papem, god of guilt about sex, say they'll summon the City Watch, though it's not clear what they'd do about it. I'd've thought the clerics would be better off casting some defensive spells of their own.
(tags: woo-woo christianity cambridge occult paganism witchcraft)
- Tags:bible, cambridge, christianity, consciousness, creationism, history, link blog, morality, paganism, philosophy, presuppositionalism, rationality, religion, science
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| Dawkins Our Leader was on Minnesota public radio. I was interested because some people on the radio station's live blog of the interview were saying that Kerri Miller, the presenter, was too aggressive. I don't think she was. Dawkins isn't a Muslim or Christian in need of molly-coddling lest he accuse people who disagree with him of being disrespectful. Her directness got quite a few interesting responses from Dawkins: Deism is Wrong but Respectable. There was a bit of fuss on some Christian blogs about this when he said it in the Dawkins/Lennox debate. It seems as if people have an idea of Dawkins as the Pope of Atheism. His arguments are soldiers and any concession towards theism is a sign of victory for God. As Ruth Gledhill found, he seems the opposite of the Pope of Atheism in person. Theism is Ignorant and Infantile. Dawkins feels no shame in referring to popular theism as a belief in an imaginary friend. Rilstone says this metaphor is actually pretty close in some ways, so it's not clear why so many Christians get upset about it. Dawkins wonders why sophisticated theists bother to call themselves Christians when they don't believe in any of the uniquely Christian stuff (virgin birth, water into wine, even resurrection in some cases). He shows a touching faith that a Church of England clergyman would accept this stuff (he's talking about Polkinghorne, whose theological position I don't know). Theist scientists like Francis Collins show a double-mindedness that Dawkins finds curious. Not everyone is convinced that single-mindedness is a virtue, though, as recent convert Sam Harris argues: "If Francis Collins wants to believe that the historical Jesus was actually raised from the dead and still exists in an ethereal form which renders him both clairvoyant and mildly disapproving of masturbation, these beliefs do not even slightly detract from his stature as a scientist." Mysteries exist to be solved, not celebrated. Dawkins says he has faith (I'm looking forward to seeing the first theist quote mining of this statement), not that the mysteries will be solved, but that trying to solve them is worthwhile. The greatest mystery he's aware of is the subjective experience of human consciousness. What of the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus? Dawkins reckons the evidence is poor. Like evolution, we have to rely on the clues that remain. Those for the resurrection aren't very good. Will Dawkins be an atheist on his deathbed, without hoping for an afterlife? Probably: minds and brains seem to be linked, there's no reason to think you can have a mind without a brain. Why has Dawkins written The Greatest Show on Earth? Not to reach the dyed-in-the-wool Creationist, but the people who haven't thought about it yet, the same people he hoped to reach with The God Delusion. | |
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| According to the Steven Novella's Neurologica blog, the Intelligent Design people (specifically the Discovery Institute) are getting interested in neuroscience (see also part 2), attacking the idea that consciousness has a physical basis and advocating Cartesian dualism. This seems to have been rumbling away for a while, but people are writing about it at the moment because New Scientist noticed. You can write a long article on what people have thought about consciousness, so what's the problem with the IDists joining in? First, neuroscientists are objecting to IDists' claims that scientific experiments prove things that those experiments don't actually prove. As Amanda Geffer of New Scientist points out, experiments that show therapy can alter brain function don't prove that the immaterial soul is acting on the brain, merely that the brain isn't indivisible, so parts can act on other parts. The therapy described reminded me of mindfulness therapies, and of Yudkowsky's recent reflections on Which Parts Are "Me"? ( Everything I am, is surely my brain; but I don't accept everything my brain does, as "me"). Novella also objects to IDists quote-mining (I'm shocked, shocked I tell you) from philosophers like David Chalmers in order to bolster their claims. Novella says that Chalmers does not argue for an immaterial spirit, so it is a mistake for those who do to claim him for their side. IDists could quote Chalmers if they wanted to argue that there is a hard problem of consciousness, but it would be dishonest to quote him in support of their proposed solution, or indeed to say that the hard problem Chalmers speaks of has anything to do with evolution. Edited to add: Chalmers discusses the New Scientist article on his blog, and doesn't sound very impressed with the theists' efforts to recruit him for their cause. The Chalmers link came from Chris Hallquist, whose blog I recommend. Is this IDists' new strategy after they got planed in the Dover judgement? A while back, I mentioned that they might need a new way around the establishment clause in the US Constitution. I'm not sure this can be it, as consciousness isn't on the curriculum in most schools, but it does fit in with the wider strategy of looking for ways to undermine physicalism. | |
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| I've just finished off a series of replies to Matt in our discussion on religion, naturalism, physics, morality and consciousness which I mentioned in my previous post. You can view them on his blog, or you can find them below. I've also added to the discussion on Aquinas and divine simplicity which is happening here. Especially in the latter discussion, I'm aware that my lack of philosophical sophistication may let me down at some points, so I'd be interested to hear what other people think of my arguments. ( Read more... ) | |
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| Boingboing pointed out that Peter Watts has put another novel on the web. I liked his previous two, and enjoyed his presentation on the biology of vampires. I've just finished reading Blindsight. It's a first contact novel, but ultimately the aliens are secondary to the interplay between the humans, and to the book's take on evolution and consciousness (which, unlike the result of Strictly Come Dancing the other week, I won't spoil for you). Readers who bought Watts's books also liked Greg Egan, as Amazon might say (they probably liked ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) autopope too), so it helps if you don't mind the exposition and are conversant with your Searle, Penrose and Dawkins (or at least, not worried by having to look stuff up). At least one reviewer I've seen totally failed to understand what was going on, it seems: it's the SF writing Singularity again. The book is bleak, hard science fiction, full of ideas, and leaves you with that slightly altered-state aftertaste you get from the best science fiction. Plus, you know, vampires in space. I liked it. | |
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| Over on uk.religion.gjm11 there are a couple of posters who are idealists, that is, they think that the physical world arises out of consciousness and not vice versa (and, er, therefore God exists). The discussion of idealism has spawned some huge threads on uk.r.c, which I've not managed to follow completely. I think the idealists are probably wrong, so I've waded (or perhaps paddled) into the fray a bit, with a detour to explain bits of Buddhism ( p.p. scribb1e) to Richard Corfield, who some of the ucam.geeks might remember. Even in my misspent youth, I was a fairly materialist Christian (by the way, Egan's expository dialogue is this one, so it looks like he convinced me in the end). gjm11 has made an essay-length posting in response to the arguments of one of the idealists, which his legion of at least one fangirl may enjoy, so I thought I'd share it with you. ( ETA: corrected description of essay and number of fangirls). | |
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