A process atheist is someone who agrees that every question that used to be answered by appealing to God can be better answered by appealing to some form of evolution. So you might wonder about the meaning of the term evolution. Since the term evolution is abstract, it’s definition will be abstract: a process is [...]
A process atheist is someone who agrees that every question that used to be answered by appealing to God can be better answered by appealing to some form of evolution. Dan Fincke gets credit for coining the phrase “process atheism”. Process atheism is one type of atheism among many. Process atheism is a positive and [...]
Order, complexity, regularity, patterning, are all examples of features that I’ll just refer to as lovely. It’s a term of art, and it’s a lovely term. Within many familiar systems, loveliness is very very rare. It’s very rare within the models of simple physical theories and even more rare within the models of complex physical [...]
The following is a quick-and-dirty survey of the current literature on explanations of our universe: It is widely thought that our universe is highly unusual. It has certain features that make it lovely. Note that the term “lovely” is merely a term of art. It has no connotations beyond designating that our universe has certain [...]
It’s been great to get feedback from so many readers! I appreciate the time and effort you’ve taken here. One shared concern is that I’m trying to compel people to believe some abstruse doctrine. I’m not — at least not yet! All I’ve said so far is that an atheist has no reason to object [...]
Here’s an argument for an evolutionary metaphysics: (1) Our universe is very complex and congenial (it is lawful; it starts in a low entropy state; its laws are finely tuned for the planetary evolution of life, etc.). (2) Anything that is very complex and congenial requires an explanation. (3) The best explanations for the existence [...]
Here’s a nice statement of atheistic faith by Carl Sagan: “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” (1980: 1). Such a statement is as faith-based as any statement in the Bible or in Christian theology. After all, it’s just a mirror-image of the statement that God is all that [...]
I’ve advanced this thesis in some previous posts: every question that used to be answered by appealing to God can be answered better by appealing to some form of evolution. It’s hard for me to understand why that slogan would be a matter of faith. The fact that some thesis is speculative or metaphysical doesn’t [...]
Many atheists come to atheism through skepticism. And sometimes that skepticism is radical. It’s hostile to anything that doesn’t meet the alleged standards of our best science. It’s hostile to any theory that is merely speculative. Of course, to be consistent, these radical skeptics ought to apply their skepticism to themselves. If you’re a skeptic, [...]
Here’s a nice way to deny theism by offering a positive alternative: Every question that used to be answered by appealing to God can be answered by appealing to some form of evolution. I doubt that any theists would agree with that statement. And it’s worth stressing that biological evolution by natural selection is only [...]
I always hate to be called an atheist – it characterizes me in terms of what I don’t believe, rather than in terms of what I do believe. And that sucks. Worse, the label itself seems purely negative: ok, so there’s no God, but what is there? And worst of all, the label comes with [...]
Monotheists believe in one God. Most Christians, despite various problems with the Trinity, say they believe that there is exactly one God. But why do they say this? The main arguments for the existence of God are all compatible with the existence of many Gods. They are all compatible with polytheism. Consider briefly (1) the [...]
Many philosophers portray the cosmic process as an ascending curve of positivity. As time goes forward, the quantities of intelligence, power, or value are always increasing. These progressive philosophies have sometimes been religious and sometimes secular. Secular versions of progress have sometimes been political and sometimes technological. Technological versions have sometimes invoked broad technical progress [...]
Charlie Stross, author of the highly-praised novel Accelerando, has written an interesting skeptical article on the technological singularity. The article makes many good points — except when it comes to “religion”. When it comes to “religion”, specifically religion and mind-uploading, what he says is remarkably silly. Here it is: Uploading … is not obviously impossible [...]
The rapture isn’t going to happen on 21 May 2011. And that implies an ordered series of disconfirmations: (1) Harold Camping is wrong about the Bible; (2) his way of reading the Bible (that is, Biblical numerology) does not reveal anything trans-scientific about the future; (3) evangelical ways of reading the Bible reveal nothing trans-scientific [...]
The philosophy journal Synthese has become embroiled in a controversy regarding a special issue entitled “Evolution and its Rivals”. The chief editors of the journal have behaved in ways which have struck many philosophers as inappropriate. You can learn more about the controversy at the Leiter Report. If you’re an academic, you may wish to [...]
Many thanks to Zike for pointing me to The Church of Google. The Church of Google website gives nine lovely arguments for the divinity of Google. The Church of Google website also gives excellent replies to objections against the divinity of Google. Brilliant! Guest Contributor Eric Steinhart is a professor of philosophy at William Paterson [...]
Singularitarianism is religious. Specifically, it is a kind of millenarian movement. It will therefore develop according to millenarian patterns. Millenarian movements can develop in several ways. The first way is good: the movement turns into a positive mature religion. The second way is bad: the movement turns into a self-destructive cult. The third way is [...]
I think much of the culture and discourse around the singularity is religious. I say this based in part on my reading of David Noble’s book The Religion of Technology and my reading of Robert Geraci’s Apocalyptic AI. Both are fantastic books. And I’ve compiled a long list of articles and books on technology and [...]
All design arguments reason from the organization in our universe to the existence of some divine designer. What does this designer do? Design implies deliberate selection from a plurality of alternative possibilities. It cannot be selection from one possibility nor can it be random selection. It has to be rational selection. According to Leibniz, God [...]
Every one of the standard arguments for the existence of God can be reformulated as an argument against the existence of God. Consider the Fine Tuning Argument. The theistic version of the Fine Tuning Argument goes like this: (1) The Fine Tuning Argument is sound. (2) If the Fine Tuning Argument is sound, then there [...]
Mathematics is effective in science. Wigner (1960: 14) regards this effectiveness as magical: “The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.” The prudent reply that it is surely not very scientific to base scientific reasoning [...]
Leibniz’s version of the cosmological argument (his Sufficient Reason Argument) runs from the continency of our universe to the existence of some necessary being. This necessary being is the ground of our universe. The ground isn’t part of our universe – it stands in no spatial, temporal, or causal relation to any thing in our [...]
The cosmological argument is really a family of arguments. Some of the cosmological arguments are very concrete. Aquinas’s Second Way and the Kalam Argument (popularized by William Lane Craig) reason back to some first cause of the universe at the beginning of time. Atheists (like Quentin Smith) have given various replies to these first cause [...]
Atheists and theists have a strange secret agreement. You can see it if you look at the way they treat the arguments for God, like the cosmological argument. The theists say: (1) If the reasoning in the cosmological argument is correct, then God exists. (2) The reasoning in the cosmological argument is correct. (3) Therefore, [...]
