The absolutely brilliant and hilarious chart in most respects goes for the rest of academia too. Only you’ll notice who is missing—we adjunct professors. And that’s appropriate, since we are invisible. via PZ Your Thoughts?
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Category Archives: Science
On Evolution
August 9, 2011 – 11:46 amA 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 [...]
Learn About Dark Matter In One Minute
August 5, 2011 – 11:45 pmMore one minute physics lessons here. H/T: Greg Laden Your Thoughts?
Loveliness is Rare
August 5, 2011 – 6:55 pmOrder, 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 [...]
Some Explanations for Our Universe
August 5, 2011 – 9:20 amThe 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 [...]
Contra-Steinhart: Why We Should Not Identify As “Evolutionists”
July 31, 2011 – 10:33 amWhile I agree with Eric Steinhart’s claims that atheists need to take metaphysics seriously and while I would be open to considering evolutionary models for answering metaphysical, ethical, and cosmological questions if they are promising, below I am going to briefly surmise several serious reservations I have to Eric’s suggestions that we ditch the term [...]
Atheists = Evolvers
July 21, 2011 – 11:11 amI 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 [...]
The History of the Singularity
July 6, 2011 – 10:48 amMany 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 [...]
Adam Winnik Illustrates Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot”
May 1, 2011 – 3:55 pmPale Blue Dot – Animation from Ehdubya on Vimeo. Your Thoughts?
Synthese Intelligent Design Controversy
April 27, 2011 – 1:36 pmThe 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 [...]
Why Can’t God Heal Amputees?
April 22, 2011 – 2:25 pmBecause apparently he doesn’t know enough science. Thankfully UCLA, on the other hand, does: Your Thoughts?
How Science Affects Your Ability To See Beauty
April 21, 2011 – 1:25 amxkcd (of course): Your Thoughts?
Einstein On God And Religion
April 19, 2011 – 11:58 amA nice set of quotes setting the record straight: I’m not crazy about his NOMA-like tacit approval of religion having a say in values. Your Thoughts?
The Singularity as Religion
April 11, 2011 – 1:34 pmI 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 [...]
Lawrence Krauss Replies To William Lane Craig’s Crowing
April 5, 2011 – 10:20 amPhysicist Lawrence Krauss recently debated William Lane Craig and was appalled by both his tactics in the debate and his subsequent representations of it. Krauss is eager to get his own account of events to a wider audience, so in the interest of contributing to that end, I am reproducing it in full below. You [...]
Tyson On How We Can Tell Nature Was Not Designed For Us
March 19, 2011 – 2:17 pmA really nice rundown from Neil deGrasse Tyson: Your Thoughts?
Rachel Maddow Explains The Nuclear Threat In Japan
March 17, 2011 – 12:19 amThis account of how nuclear power works and what the current danger was remarkably clarifying for me: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Dr. Maddow would truly make a superb physics professor (you know, if she actually had as good a grasp of all physics as she has of [...]
Atheistic Design Arguments
March 7, 2011 – 3:45 pmAll 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 [...]
The Atheistic Fine Tuning Argument
March 6, 2011 – 5:56 pmEvery 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 [...]
What is Life?
March 3, 2011 – 12:31 pmCan we define it? Can we recognize it elsewhere in the universe if we cannot even define it? Thanks to Helen. Your Thoughts?
Physics is Grounded in Mathematics
March 3, 2011 – 10:54 amMathematics 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 [...]
Can Atheists do Math?
March 2, 2011 – 10:05 amLeibniz’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 [...]
Atheism and Leibniz
February 28, 2011 – 7:18 pmThe 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 [...]
The Secret Agreement between Atheists and Theists
February 27, 2011 – 4:10 pmAtheists 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, [...]
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