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The concept of natural creative power (natura naturans) is found in both Wicca (where it is the ultimate deity) and in atheistic philosophers (who do not deify it). Natural creative power is the ultimate immanent power of being; it is being-itself. Unfortunately, being-itself, as the deepest and most abstract of all universals, also seems to [...]
Archive for the ‘Philosophy of Science’ Category
Atheism and Possibility
December 20th, 2011 
Eric Steinhart Criticizing Wicca: Levels
December 17th, 2011 Eric Steinhart Some statements are based on evidence, while others are not. And there is evidence for the existence of some entity if and only if the existence of that entity is asserted in a statement that is based on evidence. To say that a statement is based on evidence is to say that it is empirically [...]
Some Naturalistic Ontology
December 16th, 2011 Eric Steinhart Over the next few posts, I’m going to do some heavy metaphysics. So a bit of background is necessary. An ontology is a taxonomy of categories (usually at a very high level of generality). To avoid misunderstanding, the ontology I’m working with is outlined below. This ontology is naturalistic in exactly the sense that objects [...]
Posted in Atheism, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Rationalism, Science 
26 Comments »If You Don’t Believe In Objective Values, Then Don’t Talk To Me About Objective Scientific Truth Either
November 27th, 2011 Daniel Fincke I recently argued that when any of us act, we must act for reasons. When acting for reasons we must decide that the end we pursue is the best, most worthwhile, goal to pursue and that the action we take in order to achieve that goal is the most suitable one. I should also add [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Authority, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Metaethics, Metaethics, Morality, Morality, Naturalistic Fallacy, Naturalistic Fallacy, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Science, Science, Teleology, Teleology 
Tags: Coherency, Coherency Theory of Truth, Epistemic Normativity, Fictionalism in Science, Goodness is Effectiveness, Incoherency of Moral Nihilism, Moral Nihilism, Moral Normativity, Morals and Values, Naturalistic Fallacy, Normativity, Norms and Moral Norms, Norms and Values, Objective Values, Objectivity in Reason, Positivistic Nietzscheanism, Presuppositionalism, Problem of Induction, Scientific Truth vs. Moral Truth, Subjective Values, Subjectivity in Reason, Values in Reason, Values in Science, Values Nihilism 109 Comments »Defending Philosophy 1: A Reply To Dr. Coyne
October 29th, 2011 Daniel Fincke A little Nietzsche to set the tone: Of the friend Our faith in others betrays wherein we would dearly like to have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we only want to leap over envy. And often we attack and make an enemy in order [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Historical Philosophy, Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Science, Science 94 Comments »Some Explanations for Our Universe
August 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
An Example of Atheist Faith
August 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
Evolutionary Metaphysics is not Faith
August 1st, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
Why Atheists are Obligated to Hold Positive Speculative Beliefs
July 26th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
The History of the Singularity
July 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
On the Rapture
May 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke 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 [...]
Synthese Intelligent Design Controversy
April 27th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
Singularitarianism as Religion Entails Testable Predictions
April 14th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
The Singularity as Religion
April 11th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
The Atheistic Fine Tuning Argument
March 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
Physics is Grounded in Mathematics
March 3rd, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
Atheism and Leibniz
February 28th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
Defending The Apparent Truth Of Evolution's Mindlessness
February 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke Last Christmas Eve, I argued that the belief that God “guided evolution” was not a rationally respectable way to reconcile science with faith but rather it was essentially an effective denial of the theory of natural selection, in its scientifically explanatory sense. Part of the revolutionary character of the discovery of evolution by natural selection [...]
Posted in Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments Against The Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Arguments for the Existence of God, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Creationism, Creationism, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, God, God, Historical Philosophy, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Science, Secularism Tags: Alvin Plantinga, Eugenie Scott, Huston Smith, Jerry Coyne, National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT), National Center for Science Education (NCSE) 4 Comments »Why Philosophers Should Publish In Science Journals
February 16th, 2011 Daniel Fincke John Wilkins shares his experience: Generally my papers cause a mild reaction – like a dose of poison ivy. But i just had a paper published in Zootaxa, a mild mannered systematics journal, and as well as a two week turnaround, unheard of in philosophy (my last big paper took a year and a half), within [...]
Why Materialism is Unscientific
February 10th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart You’ve probably heard the old question: Why is there something rather than nothing? It’s unfortunate when theists screw this up. They say: Because God created the universe! Of course, since God is something, you can’t use God to answer the question. The universe coming from God is just something from something. And [...]
True Religion?
August 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Many a religious person defending her own religious beliefs will argue that a given politically, morally, or intellectually unflattering interpretation of her faith is simply not a true representation of her faith. While the question of who has the right or the adequate means to decisively determine with any rational clarity which competing interpretation of any [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism, Bible, Bible, Christianity, Christianity, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Featured, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, History, Judaism, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Pseudoscience, Rationalism, Religion, Religion, Religious Extremism, Religious Extremism, Religious Moderates, Religious Moderates, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Science, Science, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Separation of Church and State, Theocrats, Theocrats Tags: Literalism, Philosophy of Science, Primitivism, Ronald Dworkin 12 Comments »Evolution and Epistemology
May 17th, 2010 Daniel Fincke If our minds take to be true only what evolution has conditioned us to think is true for the sake of fitness for survival, does this mean that our beliefs cannot be genuinely true but only some sort of useful ways of thinking that do not necessarily track how the world actually is? And if [...]
Posted in Atheism, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Evolution, Featured, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science Tags: "On Deriving and Defending An Axiology of the Will To Power", Alvin Plantinga, Eric Steinhart, Evolution and Truth, John Wilkins, Nietzsche's Perspectivist Theory of Truth, Perspectivism, Theories of Truth No Comments »On Facts, Theories, And The Philosophy Of Science
October 9th, 2009 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers fisks Nicholas Wade’s review of Richard Dawkins’s The Greatest Show on Earth, in which Wade gets pedantic about a distinction between facts and theories which only shows his own ignorance about how the two relate to each other. Along the way Wade badly invokes the philosophy of science. First off Myers quotes Stephen [...]
The Signs Of Intelligent Life
September 20th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Brilliant from xkcd: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Comic Strips, Epistemology, Hilarious, Philosophy of Science, Satire Tags: Anthropomorphism, Ants, Pheromone Trails No Comments »Is Old Earth Geology A Godless Plot To Hate God Perpetuated By Godless God Haters?
August 21st, 2009 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers has a fascinating post on the history of geology which traces the first discoveries of evidence for an old earth by regular old tyme religious people during centuries wherein challenging belief in God was very few people’s top priority. The advent of Darwinism did not set in motion a conspiracy of atheists who [...]
Posted in Biology, Creationism, Epistemology, Evidence, Evolution, Geology, Philosophy of Science, PZ Myers, Religion and Science, Science Tags: Alexandre Brongniart, Answers In Genesis, Baron Cuvier, Evidentialism, Fossils, History of Science, Paradigms, Paris, Presuppositionalism, Robert Hooke, Theories, World View Canard No Comments »
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