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As Universe Today puts it: A new computer simulation is showing Earth’s magnetosphere in amazing detail – and it looks a lot like a huge pile of tangled spaghetti (with the Earth as a meatball). Or perhaps a cosmic version of modern art. Read much more about what it means for our planet to be tangled in [...]
Archive for the ‘Science’ Category
How and Why Do We Deceive Ourselves?
January 11th, 2012 
Daniel Fincke Robert Trivers, author of the new book The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life explores some of the stranger scientific studies of self-deception: Robert Trivers: Why Do We Deceive Ourselves? from The RSA on FORA.tv Your Thoughts?
The Illusion of Control
January 6th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [Much of the content and practice of religion is based on regulating (arousing, maintaining, and inhibiting) the illusion of control. This illusion is briefly described here. The neural basis of this illusion is clearly exposed in Wiccan texts. The illusion of control is said to be an adaptive illusion with personal and prosocial benefits. The [...]
Posted in Atheism, Epistemology, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Paganism, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Wicca 
2 Comments »Spiritual Exercises for Atheists
January 5th, 2012 Eric Steinhart Spiritual exercises (askesis) are practical activities for mental self-empowerment. They are intended to facilitate successful achievement by increasing the degree to which the self is mentally or emotionally prepared to perform. Spiritual exercises are not magic. Spiritual exercises are distinct from magic because they focus on causing changes in the self while magic focuses on [...]
Posted in Atheism, Evidence, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Psychology, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 11 Comments »The Soul is the Form of the Body
January 4th, 2012 Eric Steinhart According to the Wiccan theory of reincarnation, your soul leaves your body at death and enters a new body at conception. The Wiccan theory of reincarnation thus presupposes that human beings are soul-body composites. It is a type of soul-body dualism. Cunningham writes “The soul is ageless, sexless, nonphysical, possessed of the divine spark of [...]
Posted in Atheism, Biology, Featured, Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Wicca 
Tags: Aristotle, Aristotle on Soul, Aristotle vs. Descartes, Atheist views of the soul, Contemporary Hylomorphism, Hylomorphism, Reincarnation, Soul as program, What is the soul?, Wicca on Soul 17 Comments »The Atheist Wheel of the Year
January 3rd, 2012 Eric Steinhart The Wheel of the Year involves eight solar holidays (the sabbats). The sabbats include the solar quarter days (the solstices and the equinoxes) as well as the solar cross-quarter days intermediate between the quarters. For theistic Wiccans, these days symbolize events in the life-cycles of the god and goddess. These days are marked by sabbat [...]
Posted in Astronomy, Atheism, Cultural Secularism, Culture, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Wicca 68 Comments »Two Arguments for Evolution by Rational Selection
January 1st, 2012 Eric Steinhart Although there is some empirical justification for the Principles of Sufficient Reason and Plenitude, much of the discussion of the logic of creation and evolution by rational selection has been highly abstract. It has been a priori; a matter of pure reason. But it is reasonable to demand empirical justification for those metaphysical theories. To [...]
On Evolution by Rational Selection
January 1st, 2012 Eric Steinhart Almost all atheists are surely aware of Darwinian evolution, which is evolution by natural selection, and which explains the history of life on earth. Universal Darwinism is the thesis that evolutionary principles operate beyond earthly biology. Of course, not all things have genes or compete for survival in ecosystems. More general evolutionary theories need not [...]
The Logic of Creation
December 31st, 2011 Eric Steinhart At a very high level of abstraction, Sabin characterizes the god and goddess as symbols for two aspects of natural creative power (natura naturans, being-itself as the power to be). She says that “The God represents, among other things, power unmanifest; the spark of life. The Goddess gives this power form” (2011: 117). We experience [...]
Posted in Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Religion and Science, Wicca 15 Comments »Creation Stories
December 31st, 2011 Eric Steinhart Many religions have creation stories. The Judeo-Christian creation stories are found in the first chapters of Genesis, which is the first book of the Bible. There is no need to repeat the Genesis stories here. It can be agreed that there are some metaphorical or analogical correspondences between the Genesis stories and our best science. [...]
Criticizing Wicca: Rationality
December 26th, 2011 Eric Steinhart According to the Farrars, “Witches [that is, Wiccans] are neither fools, escapist nor superstitious. They are living in the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages” (1981: 105). The Farrars write that “Many witches are scientists and technicians . . . If modern witchcraft did not have a coherent rationale, such people could only keep going [...]
Atheism and Wicca: The Discussion So Far
December 24th, 2011 Eric Steinhart I’ve been doing a long series of posts on atheism and Wicca. I’m about mid-way through– after taking break for the weekend, I’ll be back on Monday with posts about the Wiccan god and goddess; then on to the Wheel of the Year, reincarnation, and magic. At this half-way point it’s a good idea to take [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Wicca 32 Comments »Atheism and Possibility
December 20th, 2011 Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
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 »No, Professor Plantinga, Non-theism IS A Scientific Implication of Evolution
December 13th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In a New York Times profile, Alvin Plantinga, a generation’s most prominent Christian philosopher, says a lot of highly disputable things about the supposed rationality of theism and the supposed irrationality of naturalism and atheism. He does this in the process of summarizing some of the theses of his new book on science and religion, [...]
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 »Thinking According To Scale
November 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke PZ and Crommunist offer nice denunciations of the significance of a graphic which has been going around the internet which concludes that the chance of any given individual alive today ever existing was 1 in 102,685,000. Below the fold is the graphic, key snippets of their remarks and the lesson to draw for how we should consider [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Ethics, Ethics, Evolution, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Naturalistic Fallacy, Naturalistic Fallacy, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Probability, Psychology, Psychology, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Science, Science, Sociobiology, Sociobiology Tags: Crommunist Manifesto, Grind the universe down to its finest powder, Hierarchical Reductionism, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Richard Dawkins on Reductionism, Terry Pratchett, The Blind Watchmaker 3 Comments »Finding And Combating Aging Genes
November 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Cynthia Kenyon at TED: via Colin Farrelly Your Thoughts?
Mimicking the Brain in Silicon
November 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke MIT researchers make progress towards a potentially amazing accomplishment: For decades, scientists have dreamed of building computer systems that could replicate the human brain’s talent for learning new tasks. MIT researchers have now taken a major step toward that goal by designing a computer chip that mimics how the brain’s neurons adapt in response to [...]
Is Oxytocin The “Morality Molecule”
November 7th, 2011 Daniel Fincke That is Paul Zak’s theory. The video is fascinating: Now I just need to find 8 people to hug me everyday. (via Philosopher’s Haze, who you can read for a summary if you cannot watch the video for some reason). Patricia Churchland’s book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality explores the role of Oxycotin in morality [...]
Posted in Biology, Biology, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophy, Psychology, Psychology Tags: Adam Smith, Empathy, Oxytocin, Paul Zak, Trustworthiness 9 Comments »PZ Bait
November 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Is this squid dead or alive? Michael at a Nadder! explains what is going on:
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 »“Not Everything In Life Is Logical”
October 24th, 2011 Daniel Fincke When we rationalists, naturalists, and other assorted atheists insist that no one should form beliefs that disregard logic and evidence, the defenders of faith often tell us that “Not everything in life is logical”, or use some variant of this phrase. What might they mean by this? Where is their confusion exactly and how best [...]
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, Astronomy, Astronomy, Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Biology, Biology, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Evidence, Evidence, Evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Rationalism, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science, Secularism, Technology, Technology Tags: "Not Everything In Life Is Logical", Logic, Naturalism 17 Comments »
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