The Argument From Design
June 25, 2008 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under biology, philosophical lectures, philosophy, religion, science
In this lecture, I’m going to talk about the argument from design. This is the last of the traditional Big Three arguments for the existence of God, identified by Kant and others. It claims that by examining the universe and the things it contains, we can see it must be the work of a supremely [...]
Continue Reading »Bart Ehrman and the validity of reasoning
June 24, 2008 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under epistemology, philosophy, religion
Awhile ago I read Bart Ehrman’s book /God’s Problem/, on the problem of evil. Or rather, I should say I picked it up, since I don’t think I quite finished it. Too much emphasis on summarizing the Bible as opposed to anaylsis; I suspect Ehrman was out of his depth having to talk a lot [...]
Continue Reading »Emergence
June 23, 2008 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under mind, philosophy, science, stupidity
One of the more frustrating aspects of discussions about the mind, sadly including and indeed especially in the professional philosophy of mind literature, is confusion about the term “emergence.” Sometimes, it’s explicitly identified with David Chalmers-style dualism. Sometimes, it’s identified with sophisticated non-reductive physicalists and their multiple realizability thesis. Most often, though, it seems to [...]
Continue Reading »Godless humanists on parade
June 22, 2008 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under carnivalia
The latest Carnival of the Godless and Humanist Symposium are both up. I like that Greta Christina, host of the Symposium, notes that our beloved carnival has turned 21 (which I also did, recently) and did a maturity-themed edition. I think I may have (without realizing it) played to her theme better than anyone else [...]
Continue Reading »Caffeine
June 22, 2008 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under Science Sunday, biology, mind, science
Reading up on caffeine in preparing to write this post, I found that scientists who have caffeine as their drug of choice (as a subject of study) like pointing out that it is the most widely used psychoactive drug in the world. This surprised me at first. Had you asked me to guess what that [...]
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