The Warfare Is Mental

Al Moritz On Fine-Tuning

December 10, 2010

I meant to post this a while back when the conversation was actually fresh, but it fell by the wayside. I found it while doing some housecleaning around here. You know, some “getting ready for next year” type of stuff. Anyways, Al Moritz is biochemist who’s written articles for TalkOrigins and also comments now and again at Common Sense Atheism. He’s also a theist, of the Roman Catholic variety. Recently, CSA’s commenters tackled some arguments of his in this post. Al wrote:

Barbara McBeath On Ghosts

December 9, 2010

I recently read an essay titled My Ghost Theories by Barbara McBeath. I found much of what she said pertinent to the ongoing discussion of anomalous phenomena myself and others were having last year. For example,

Researching and studying the subject of ghosts for so many years, and having my share of ghost experiences, I know that this is something that cannot be researched in the lab. The scientists and serious researchers must go out into the field and study this where it takes place. This may be one reason why such a large part of mainstream science seems to have ignored this phenomenon. It is something that cannot be studied in the enclosed and controlled laboratory. This phenomenon seems to occur on it’s own terms and conditions. And, another thing – to me there are so many amateur and professional ghosthunters and researchers who appear that they feel the need to claim to be psychic, just so they can give some answers. I acknowledge that there are some people that have psychic abilities, but very few can back up what they say, so it does not prove anything. So, like I said, some ghost researchers may have had many ghost related experiences, but there are no experts – just a whole lot of personal beliefs and theories!

The Science Of Morality: Luke Muehlhauser Responds With A Personal Attack!

December 2, 2010

I kid you not, in no less than twenty minutes of posting my critique of his speech, Luke Muehlhauser fired off two admittedly hurried responses here and here, the former of which contains a personal attack. He labeled me a “troll” when all I did was write a critique of his speech on my own blog! Do those sound like acts a person with a desire for careful and rigorous philosophy would perform? To contrast, I took two hours crafting my critique, let it settle for three more, and then proofread it three times. Nonetheless, let’s see if we can refute some or all of Luke’s claims without resorting to the unprofessional insults and distortions he’s growing unusually fond of.

Luke Muehlhauser Misleads Audience At Colorado State University

December 1, 2010

Well. I hopped over to Common Sense Atheism today, where I found the transcript from Luke’s talk at Colorado State University, titled The Science Of Morality: No Gods Required.

First off, I wondered how it came to be that Luke – a newbie atheist who was a self-described irrational Christian just a few years ago – was granted the authority to educate students at a major university. What are his credentials? Should anybody with a popular blog be allowed to educate the populace in our public institutions? Lest any hasty inductors be tempted to cry ad hominem, allow me to clarify.

Atoms, Morality, Desirism & Language

October 6, 2010

That desirism is “not a moral theory” is a common objection, one that its founder Alonzo Fyfe handles in a systematic way. Today, I will try to explain why I’m skeptical of Alonzo’s response to this objection. I suppose it would be best to dive right in with some actual examples of the objection:

Scientific Anti-Realism?

September 16, 2010

Modern society is so entrenched in scientific realism and scientism that I just assumed intelligent people had no viable options other than aligning with those camps or being ridiculed. Enter the philosophy of scientific anti-realism. I can hear the insults now: “Science works you jackass!” “Oh great, another Jesus-lovin’ science denier!” “Tell that to the computer you just used to type this POS blog post you crea-tard!”

From the little bit I’ve read on this so far, one of the central premises of scientific anti-realism seems to be something like: That our best scientific theories are successful is no warrant to believe they are true.

What Is Reality: Reviewing The Grand Design, III

September 14, 2010

After the general patterns established last chapter, I was surprised to see a change of pace in Chapter 3. One might get the impression that scientists drawing a dichotomy between natural and supernatural explanations are headed inexorably towards a declaration of scientism and a denigration of religion. That wasn’t the case here, well… at least not as explicitly as in some other books of similar nature. Of course, we’ve still got five chapters to go.

The Rule Of Law: Reviewing The Grand Design, II

September 11, 2010

Chapter 2 of The Grand Design is titled The Rule of Law, and the authors give us a brief history of the concept of natural laws. If nothing else, it was an excellent vacation from what would have been an mundane bus ride otherwise. It was a good chapter, with a little bit of everybody: Aristarchus, Ptolemy, Aristotle, Galileo, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Democritus, Kepler, Newton, Descartes… even Thomas Aquinas and William Dembski get a brief mention [okay, I’m kidding about Dembski, and that’s no offense to him]. The authors gave a valiant effort at summarizing the history of natural law in a few pages, and they do a mighty fine job if you ask me.

Reviewing The Grand Design, I

September 7, 2010

So I picked up the new Hawking / Mlodinow book, The Grand Design. I have a feeling this book will generate much discussion on (a)theist blogs, so I want to be sure I’ve read the arguments in earnest. Thus, a new book series [no I haven’t given up on reviewing The Atheist Afterlife, either].

As far as the aesthetics go, well… it’s a nice book: hardcover, 6×9″ format, with black-and-white and full color illustrations interspersed throughout on quality, encyclopedia-feeling stock. I guess that’s why they charge $30.00 for it! Personally, I prefer the utility of a trade paperback; the last thing I want to do is muddy this thing up with highlights and notes. The book is only about 200 pages long, so I figured I’d devote a post to each chapter, and then follow those up with a cohesive review. In this first installment, we’ll discuss chapter 1, which serves as a short introduction.

Whoever Wants To Discuss Creationism, Let’s Get Down

September 4, 2010

No post here, this is an open thread for whoever wants to discuss creationism.

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