Debates about religion and physics are annoying because usually, no one has any idea what they’re talking about. Actually, this is true of all “religion and [science X]” debates where X is not psychology or evolutionary biology, because these are the only sciences for which half-decent popularizations are available. And, while unlike most people I [...]
Monthly Archives: April 2009
Epistemology of disagreement and the Outsider Test
Posted by Chris Hallquist on April 6, 2009
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Fans of John Loftus will be familiar with the outsider test: “Test or examine your religious beliefs as if you were outsiders with the same presumption of skepticism you use to test or examine other religious beliefs.” That’s something that seems intuitively obvious to me. Bertrand Russell recommended a somewhat broarder version of this, using [...]
Philosophy, Science, and Scientism
Posted by Chris Hallquist on April 3, 2009
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Okay, so I keep promising a post on scientism, specifically on whether or not it’s self-refuting. Now I’m finally going to answer that question. As a quick warning, “scientism” isn’t a recognized philosophical position, it’s more of a cuss-word along the lines of “godlessness.” However, it does get used in association with certain ideas about [...]
Another bad cosmological argument
Posted by Chris Hallquist on April 1, 2009
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Stephen Law links to a pro-religion piece, which Stephen sums up as claiming “that the new atheists just assume science can answer every question.” There’s a more important point there, though: most people who pay any time listening to debates about religion realize that “Why is there something rather than nothing? Must be God” is [...]