August 21, 2008
Lately I've noticed an atheist parallel to God of the Gaps thinking. I was in the blogosphere the other day when I stumbled on a piece called CSI Deuteronomy where the author takes the fifth book of the Bible to task. The reason was an awkward phenomenon the ancient Israelites were supposed to undertake for unsolved murders occurring outside of city boundaries.
The passage from the Revised Standard Version reads:
July 8, 2008
I was in the blogosphere this morning and came across a question:
"Is it okay for atheists to try to change people's minds? To try to convince people that their religion is mistaken, and that they should de-convert and become atheists instead? And is there any difference between that and religious evangelicalism?"
To begin, I'd respond by saying atheists are fundamentally incapable of any form of evangelism. This is because the word itself is inextricably intertwined with positive affirmations of faith. Now this is not to say that atheists can't or don't undertake similar methods as evangelists in getting their points across. Nonetheless, the question the author asks is valid.
June 19, 2008
TWIM values free speech. Ads get cut, that’s about it. Comments and criticisms from readers, writers, logicians, freethinkers, believers, skeptics, atheists, agnostics,
scientists, theologians, philosophers, cranks, haters and trolls are welcomed. As in the flesh, inflammatory vitriol is subject to harsh rebuttal.
June 11, 2008
In A Different Way Of Knowing, the author begins with slamming insights about the value of the intuitive-creative processes, arguing persuasively that irrational decision-making processes can be valuable. Love, art and music all reject empiricism and involve listening subjectively to our hearts, feelings and intuitions, and nobody would argue that they lack value just because they aren’t arrived at through empiricism. Conceding that some aspects of life are better left to the intuitive method of gathering information, the author proceeds to argue that "the God hypothesis" is not one of them, and is better evaluated via empiricism and the scientific method. I object to the piece on several grounds, five of which follow.
June 3, 2008
I just noticed that I’ve made 212 post to date on my blogs. That makes this the 213th. Why even mention it?
For a long time, this number has haunted me. I can’t explain it in any way I expect you to accept logically, but I’ve seen this arrangement of numbers time and time again over the past three years or so, albeit to a lessening degree of late it seems. I look at my score on Millipede, it ends in 213. Count the money I found in the couch, $2.13. I arrive at some address for some reason, it’s 213 such-and-such boulevard. Not always, but much more often than seems accountable by chance, and FAR more often than occurs with any other arrangement of numbers. I’m not alleging that it means anything, and I’m not alleging that it doesn’t mean anything, but it sure feels like it does. I look at the clock, and it’s 2:13, or 12:13, and it feels more like those numbers somehow saw me, somehow proactively grabbed the attention of my sight. In other words, when I say that I look at the clock and it’s 2:13, it’s not usually an arbitrary glance. It’s like I subconsciously identify the numbers prior to laying eyes upon them, if that makes sense.
I once asked somebody about it, another writer friend of mine named Jeri. Her response was something to the extent of 6 being a number represented by the need for decision, and that if you add 2+1+3 you get 6.
I’m just putting this out there in the event that anybody familiar with numerology or weird fixations on numerical arrangements might have some insight..
June 1, 2008
I read a comment on a thread the other day that seemed to be making a modified version of a false argument I heard proposed about six months ago in the blogosphere. Unfortunately I couldn't track down the comment, but I do recall the first place I heard its premise:
"First, just so everyone's clear: 'Macro-evolution' and 'micro-evolution' are made-up words concocted by creationists to make themselves sound scientific. Biologists don't use them. They're scientifically meaningless. They're just different stages in the evolutionary process; 'macro' is just 'micro' over a longer period of time. Also, 'macro-evolution' (if people insist on calling it that) has been observed, both in the field and in the lab. Just so we're clear."
May 31, 2008
I was recently asked a question by an atheist we'll call Writer A
in a thread:
"Do you think we should seriously entertain the possibility of God's existence despite its failure as a scientifically-framed hypothesis? If so, why, and what means should we employ to evaluate the question?"
My full response to this was,
"Well, that answer depends on questions only you can answer for yourself. I think if the possibility of eternal separation from God is something one might wish to avoid, then one might be justified in seriously entertaining the possibility of God's existence whether they think God has failed as a scientifically-framed hypothesis or not. Contrary, if the possibility of eternal separation from God is not a big deal to one, then I'd say one has no reason to pursue the matter at all. And should one declare the pursuit worthy, the means one should employ to evaluate the question will likely be as unique and diverse as one's path to reverence of the question in the first place." (emph. added)
So I made some changes to the blog. Some of them, like the generic SF skyline header, might be obvious. Other changes might not be so obvious. For example, limited HTML is now allowed in comments. This means you can use various tags to format your comments and include links.
Also, nearly all TWIM posts addressing arguments relating to science, religion and society have been moved to a blog of their own. Posts on this new blog will still be alerted to the regular TWIM readership. In a similar vein, posts relating to my volunteer work with the city of Ventura have also been moved to a blog of their own, and if any readers wish to subscribe to this blog, they must do so independently as updates will not be alerted to the regular readership of TWIM.
Part of the reason for this is that I felt the arguments pertaining to science, religion and society will tend to overpower the theme of a blog. Although I enjoy such arguments, they are not the central focus of my writing, which is creative or intuitive and not singularly scholastic. A post about farts my seem out of place between posts debating the cogency of the various ontological arguments. Another reason is that I decided I wanted to begin including photographs and imagery in my posts. I refrained from doing so previously because I did not want to detract in any way from the arguments. The reader will notice the similar lack of visual imagery at the TowardsClarity site, which is to preserve focus upon the arguments. This is not to say that we don’t appreciate the talented Dale Dreiling, whose illustrations used to grace the columns of TWIM. Now that TWIM will include visual imagery, you’ll notice an "Art" category and you can expect to see lots of good artwork from all sorts of people.