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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 [...]
Archive for the ‘Physics’ Category
Two Arguments for Evolution by Rational Selection
January 1st, 2012 
Eric Steinhart 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 [...]
“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 »Documentary with Stephen Hawking about Whether God Created the Universe
October 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Your Thoughts?
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, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Atheist Videos, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Physics, Physics, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science 2 Comments »Learn About Dark Matter In One Minute
August 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke More one minute physics lessons here. H/T: Greg Laden Your Thoughts?
Lawrence Krauss Replies To William Lane Craig's Crowing
April 5th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Physicist 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 [...]
Rachel Maddow Explains The Nuclear Threat In Japan
March 17th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This 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 [...]
Posted in News, News Discussion, News Discussion, Physics, Physics, Science, Science, Technology, Technology, World Affairs, World Affairs 1 Comment »Atheistic Design Arguments
March 7th, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart All 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 [...]
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 [...]
Can Atheists do Math?
March 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke by Eric Steinhart Leibniz’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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Cat Faber's "The Words Of God"
February 6th, 2011 Daniel Fincke This is another, meditative Sunday afternoon song, each of I’ve lifted from either this post or its comments section). This one though is not satirical and should be genuinely amenable to the more sophisticated theist (or pantheist or other believer in a philosopher’s god of some sort), who wants more God in her view of [...]
How To Get Something From Nothing!
February 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel explains! (And in an accessible way which includes lots of pictures and comic strips!) (via) Your Thoughts?
The (Jesuit) Father Of The Big Bang Theory
December 24th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Recently, on Facebook, I boiled down my philosophical and scientific objections to theistic evolution to pithy status update size and received a good deal of discussion as a result. I plan to edit, reprint, and possibly expand upon my remarks on theistic evolution on Camels With Hammers soon. But in the meantime, I wanted to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Cosmology, Cosmology, Featured, God, God, Physics, Physics, Religion, Religion, Religion and Science, Science, Science Tags: Albert Einstein, Big Bang Theory, Georges Lemaître No Comments »No, I’m Not An Atheist By Faith, Here Are My Arguments.
June 29th, 2010 Daniel Fincke Yesterday Ron Rosenbaum aggressively attacked atheism and defended agnosticism in Slate. He starts out with the familiar charge that atheists have “faith”. But faith in what? Atheists display a credulous and childlike faith, worship a certainty as yet unsupported by evidence—the certainty that they can or will be able to explain how and why the [...]
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, Cosmology, Cosmology, Disambiguating Faith, Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Epistemology, Ethics, Evidence, Evidence, Faith, Faith, Featured, God, God, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Physics, Physics, Religion, Religion 41 Comments »Rejecting The Question, “Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?”
June 28th, 2010 Daniel Fincke PZ Myers calls attention today to a post from Sean Carroll from a couple of years ago, which reminds me in part of some of my own thinking about the confusion in the question of “why there is something rather than nothing?”. I had a Thomist philosophy professor who impressed upon me that for Aquinas [...]
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, Metaphysics, Metaphysics, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Physics, Physics Tags: "Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?", Nothing, Sean Carroll No Comments »Stephen Hawking: Science Will Win Against Religion
June 8th, 2010 Daniel Fincke In writing: When asked by ABC News’ Diane Sawyer about the biggest mystery he’d like solved, he said, “I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.” “What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most [...]
Dawkins On The Anthropic Principle
October 30th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Interesting remarks on the possible implications of Darwinian thinking for thinking in physics. Is it possible that there is natural selection among many universes? Watch Dawkins’s entire talk from which this clips comes: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Astronomy, Atheism, Atheist Videos, Biology, Evolution, Physics, Science, Videos Tags: Anthropic Principle, Richard Dawkins No Comments »Confirming Galileo: Hammer Vs. Feather On The Moon
September 29th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Well, you know which one this website’s going to be pulling for: From the YouTube information listings: WEBSITE: http://www.teachertube.com On the surface of the Moon at Hadley Rille Apollo 15 Commander David Scott verifies Galileo’s discovery that all objects in gravity fields fall at the same speed. (via) Your Thoughts?
Posted in Astronomy, Physics, Videos Tags: Apollo 15, Commander David Scott, Galileo, Gravity, Hadley Rille, Moon No Comments »Debunking A Creationist Documentary Error By Error
September 19th, 2009 Daniel Fincke djarm67, a scientifically literate theist, presents the creationist A Questions of Origins while correcting each distortion, oversimplification, and error as it occurs: There are six parts, watch them all if you have the time. Your Thoughts?
Posted in Astronomy, Biology, Cosmology, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Physics, Religion and Science, Science Tags: Anthropic Principle, Big Bang No Comments »Physicist Steven Weinberg On The Question Of God
September 5th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Your Thoughts?
Is The Idea Of “Nothing” Illusory?
August 25th, 2009 Daniel Fincke I was thinking about the argument for the existence of God that hinges on the question of how something could come from nothing. And I wondered, is nothing even an intelligible concept? Everything we experience is something. We have a concept of zero since we can imagine there being zero of some particular thing either [...]
Anatomy Of A Black Hole
August 18th, 2009 Daniel Fincke A neat presentation of the nature and workings of black holes. Your Thoughts?
Richard Dawkins on “Thinking The Improbable”
August 3rd, 2009 Daniel Fincke A captivating lecture: Your Thoughts?
Posted in Biology, Cosmology, Evolution, Physics, Probability, Science Tags: Middle World, Richard Dawkins No Comments »
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