Rebecca Goldstein has an interesting post on BigThink about Baruch Spinoza and how prescient many of his ideas were. Spinoza's conception of God was the one believed in by Einstein. This conception, often summarized as being equivalent to the laws of nature, is an example of the wide diversity of notions that the word 'God' … Continue reading Goldstein: The Vindication of Spinoza
Month: November 2013
Could Miracles Happen?
Atheists should be tolerant of religion
Recently, there was an NPR story by Marcelo Gleiser on how scientists should respond to people's anxiety about science and God. Jerry Coyne responded in a post asking if faith should ever not be contested (excluding dying grandmothers and such). In his response, Coyne referred to a famous quote by Karl Marx. Religious suffering is, at one … Continue reading Atheists should be tolerant of religion
Tim Maudlin on Fine Tuning
A very interesting article. I’ve never been too impressed by fine tuning arguments. To me, they’ve always sounded like, “the universe is fined tuned to produce…the universe we have”. But this article does a good job of summing up the issues and is well worth the time.
Cosmology group researcher Tim Maudlin has a great post in Aeon Magazine about cosmic fine-tuning. Read it there and feel free to discuss it in the comments here!
Why science, philosophy, or religion cannot determine morality
There are some famous thinkers, Sam Harris and Michael Shermer, among others, who are currently attempting to sell the idea that we should have a "science of morality". They assert that moral propositions reduce to matters of fact about the wellbeing of conscious creatures. Many philosophers, such as Massimo Pigliuci, take umbrage at this, seeing … Continue reading Why science, philosophy, or religion cannot determine morality
Ancillary Justice: an excellent read
I just finished reading Ann Leckie's new novel, Ancillary Justice, after reading about it on John Scalzi's site. I found it one of the most absorbing books I've read in a while. If you enjoy space opera science fiction, with AIs, strange societies, and generally mind bending ideas, then you owe it to yourself to … Continue reading Ancillary Justice: an excellent read
Why extraterrestrial civilizations may be exceedingly rare
There's been a lot of news lately about the estimate of habitable planets in our galaxy. It sounds like there may be 40 billion planets in the habitable zones around their stars. This is cool stuff! The nearest one might be only 12 light years away. It's very tempting from this news, to conclude that … Continue reading Why extraterrestrial civilizations may be exceedingly rare
Evaluating God scientifically
Victor Stenger has a post up at Huffington Post on how science disproves God. He goes through many of the attributes of the popular conceptions of God and shows how scientific evidence contradicts them. And he's right, to a degree. But he then concludes with: The hypothesis of God is not confirmed by the evidence. … Continue reading Evaluating God scientifically
Will we be able to upload our minds?
I’m pretty much a subscriber to the computational theory of mind (broadly speaking), which holds that the mind is information in the brain. If this theory of mind is accurate, then there should be no barrier to someday uploading a copy of our mind into a computer, providing we can find a way to record … Continue reading Will we be able to upload our minds?
Patterns who have achieved consciousness
Are you the same person today that you were yesterday? Or last week? Or last year? What about ten years ago? Let's look at it in two ways: physically and mentally. Physically, our bodies are constantly performing maintenance. Waste is being flushed away and the food that we eat is constantly being transformed into tissue, … Continue reading Patterns who have achieved consciousness
SelfAwarePatterns 