For its commencement speaker this year, Emory University has chosen John Hopkins neurosurgeon and humanitarian Ben Carson. Carson’s personal story and scientific accomplishments are extraordinary (as his CV attests), which presumably led Emory seniors to put him on their list and administrators to choose him. Because Carson is famous and has already given 73 other [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Evolution'
Commencement Creationist at Emory University
May 8th, 2012 · 2 Comments · Evolution
Tags:Ben Carson·commencement speaker·creationism·Emory University·Johns Hopkins·NOMA·non-overlapping magisteria·Seventh Day Adventist·Stephen Jay Gould·young earth creationist
Chemical Ghosts in the Machine
February 12th, 2012 · 5 Comments · Evolution, Philosophy
If we think deeply about evolution, we eventually will ask questions not about the origin of species but about the origin of life. For some theistic evolutionists, this is the point of Designer intervention. They find it hard to imagine that chemicals could combine in way that gives rise to life. For those less inclined [...]
Tags:Aleksandr Oparin·chemical origins·DNA·God in the Gaps·Harold Urey·origins of life·prebiotics·replication·RNA·Stanley Miller
Cosmos & Evolutionary Progression
January 20th, 2012 · 7 Comments · Evolution, Philosophy
Ever since humans began thinking and talking about the world, they have had ideas about its nature and cosmic placement. Cosmological thinking surely goes back to the Upper Paleolithic and has been fodder for debate for perhaps 45,000 years. Systematic thinking on the subject began 2,500 years ago when a group of thinkers (mostly in [...]
Tags:cosmology·directed evolution·directional evolution·Full House·mathematic fallacy·microbial world·mode of life·nature of universe·progressivism·progressivist·Stephen Jay Gould·teleology·Tim Maudlin
Altruistic Infants Aren’t Little Devils
January 4th, 2012 · 3 Comments · Evolution, Morality
Someone forgot to tell a group of 15-month-old infants they are flawed and that without proper (religious or moral) instruction, they will be unfair and selfish. Rather than being born this way, they appear to have been born another way: with built-in expectations of fairness and a willingness to share. These are the conclusions reached [...]
Tags:altruism·cooperation·infants·Jessica Sommerville·Marco Schmidt·moral faculty·moral sense·morals·prosocial·sharing
Troubled Grandeur in This View of Life
September 28th, 2011 · 9 Comments · Evolution, Philosophy
In the celebrated closing of the Origin of Species, Darwin hits his lyrical stride with a paradox:
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of [...]
Tags:Arthur Schopenhauer·creation·cruelty·Darwin·destruction·dialectic·Friedrich Nietzsche·grandeur·life·nature·nihilism·omnibenevolence·Origin of Species·paradox·pessimism·red in tooth and claw·Richard Dawkins·Richard Schacht·suffering·theodicy·transcendence
Methodology & “Evolution of Religion”
August 21st, 2011 · 2 Comments · Evolution, Evolutionary Adaptation, Evolutionary Byproduct, Methodology
Over the past decade several books and articles have appeared which purport to explain the “evolution of religion” as an adaptation, usually invoking group level selection as the source. These explanations nearly always depend on the fallacious assumption that if something evolved, it must be have been selected and therefore is adaptive. These explanations also [...]
Tags:accident·adaptation·byproduct·Charles Darwin·confirmation bias·design·evolutionary psychology·fitness·group level selection·hypothesis·Matt Rossano·methodology·Michael Ghiselin·natural selection·Panglossian·pleiotropy·storytelling·testing·theory
