In this post on the overconfidence of evangelical atheism, we saw a physicist-philosopher taking serious issue with Lawrence Krauss’ triumphal tome which purports to explain how the universe came from nothing, and why there is something rather than nothing. It turns out that Krauss’ nothing is something and he really hasn’t explained everything. Faced with [...]
Tags:A Universe from Nothing·David Albert·infinite regress·Lawrence Krauss·Massimo Pigliucci·New Atheism·philosophy·physics
It’s been a good week for chastising evangelical atheism. First, there was the free-will symposium which allowed us to wonder about the obsessions of the atheists and religionists tempestuating this non-issue in their teapot. Second, we have a Columbia University philosopher gently taking down The Atheists Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions by Alex [...]
Tags:A Universe from Nothing·Alex Rosenberg·David Albert·Lawrence Krauss·New Atheism·Philip Kitcher·scientism·The Atheist's Guide to Reality·warranted beliefs
I’ve never quite understood why some New Atheists think it so important to resolve the issue of free will, or why they think it so important to deny free will. It seems like they are tilting at metaphysical windmills, using physics and neuroscience as determinist jousts. Even if there is a definitional or material sense [...]
Tags:determinism·free will·Jerry Coyne·materialism·New Atheism·Owen Jones·Paul Bloom·Sam Harris·Templeton Foundation
In this interview with German writer Martin Walser, we witness someone struggling with faith, existence, meaning, and history:
Once you have awakened to the question of faith, you cannot simply return to your everyday agenda like a committed atheist could. You cannot retreat to the comforts of atheism. Behind us are two thousand [...]
In this powerful interview with Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, Philip Pilkington poses the following question:
If what you say is true – and I believe the evidence is unquestionable in this regard – then economics is not a science whatsoever. It more so resembles a school of morality or even a philosophical cult. [...]
Tags:Azande·Evans-Pritchard·impervious ideology·non-falsifiable·superstition·tautology·Voodoo economics·Yanis Varoufakis
Old Aristotleian habits die hard and the human penchant for bifurcating or othering is alive and well. In this handy primer on the distinctions between analytic and continental philosophy, we learn that “philosophers in one camp discount the work of those in the other simply because of their personal distaste for [analytic] symbolic logic [...]
Tags:analytic philosophy·continental philosophy·Nietzsche·physics·psychology
Thinking is a strange thing. So strange, in fact, that most people think that whatever is doing the thinking must have a life of its own. This idea, commonsense dualism, has been around a long time and is the default position for most people regardless of culture. It’s a hard habit or intuition to break, [...]
Tags:commonsense dualism·Descartes·Franz Joseph Gall·monism·neuroscience·phrenology·soul beliefs·strict materialism
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
If you haven’t been following 3:AM’s interview series, you should. The Brian Leiter interview was one of the most cogent assessments of philosophy I’ve read in years, and the recent Eric Schwitzgebel interview is on par. Both reward close reading and deserve extended comment, but I want to touch briefly on Schwitzgebel’s assessment of the [...]
Tags:Brian Leiter·commonsense·crazyism·Emerson·Eric Schwitzgebel·evolved mind·metaphysics·Nietzsche
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
