Nigel Barber has a post up discussing a society without marriage, at least as we understand it, and its implications for the future of marriage in western societies. Anthropologists are constantly pointing out that the range of human behavior is vast. Whenever people start thinking they've figured out the human condition, it always pays to … Continue reading A Society Without Marriage? | Psychology Today
Category: Zeitgeist
Mystics and/or Atheists
James McGrath, a theologically progressive Christian, has a post up discussing the many varied conceptions of God: Mystics and/or Atheists. As I indicated on another post, the word 'God' can be used to refer to so many things, that it is accurate to say that we are all theists and all atheists in relation to some … Continue reading Mystics and/or Atheists
Random Brain Waves Save Free Will? – Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com
The Neuroskeptic has a post up about an experiment which seems to contradict the famous Libet experiment: Random Brain Waves Save Free Will? - Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com. I've personally never found the Libet experiment particularly compelling when it comes to free will arguments, but many do. Related articles The Hand-Waver's Guide to The Brain (jfnet.wordpress.com) The … Continue reading Random Brain Waves Save Free Will? – Neuroskeptic | DiscoverMagazine.com
Buzz Blog: Getting Einstein to Say “I Was Wrong”
Buzz Blog: Getting Einstein to Say "I Was Wrong". An interesting post about how slow Albert Einstein was to accept the expanding universe cosmology. It demonstrates that all of us, no matter how brilliant, are often unable to see past our own blind spots. Of course, most of us would love to have Einstein's hit … Continue reading Buzz Blog: Getting Einstein to Say “I Was Wrong”
8 Incredible Facts You May Not Know About Human Evolution
An interesting article at io9: 8 Incredible Facts You May Not Know About Human Evolution. For most of the time that modern humans have existed on the planet, we've been hunter gatherers. It's not until about 10,000 or so years ago that people started settling down and farming, with civilization cranking up around 5000 years ago. … Continue reading 8 Incredible Facts You May Not Know About Human Evolution
Goldstein: The Vindication of Spinoza
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
Could Miracles Happen?
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!
