Reading Time: 8 minutes Pity the poor bipedal ape. We’re a strange species, to have grown so much in shared knowledge, and still be so limited by the fragility of individual noggins. Though I have never been religious, and never believed in a god, still I share with theists the same neurological “meat” that can make personal conviction feel […]
rationalism
Posted inHistory
The unmaking of Enlightenment myth
Reading Time: 2 minutes In this week’s first column, “The Enlightenment didn’t change everything,” I explored how vaguely gesturing at histories of “The Enlightenment” does a disservice to the present. There was no magical transformation in human neurobiology in the 17th and 18th centuries. No sudden shift from a time of mystic thinking to an era without. Enlightenment myth […]
Posted inHistory
The Enlightenment didn’t change everything
Reading Time: 9 minutes My eldest nephew was three years old the first time I let him down. We were watching a video about deep-space exploration, and I had just finished explaining that “we” had launched Voyagers 1 and 2 in 1977, to study the outer solar system and interstellar space. “We? Did you do that?” “Well, no, I […]
Posted inGeneral
Carl Sagan: Brilliant Skeptic
Reading Time: 3 minutes By James A. Haught Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote a blunt attack on all forms of magical thinking. In The Demon-Haunted World, he assails: Astrology horoscopes, faith-healing, UFO “abductions,” religious miracles, New Age occultism, fundamentalist “creationism,” tarot card reading, prayer, prophecy, palmistry, transcendental meditation, satanism, weeping statues, “channeling” of voices from the dead, holy apparitions, extrasensory […]
Posted inGeneral
Other Minds and Problems with Idealism
Reading Time: 11 minutes Time to get back to some philosophy. Today we will be briefly looking at the position of idealism as developed by many German philosophers, but including the famous Bishop Berkeley and then taken on by Moravian philosopher Edmund Husserl and other Continental philosophers. Defining our terms Here are some pretty basic definitions of some useful […]
Posted inGeneral
Supernatural Beliefs: The Trillion-Dollar Fraud
Reading Time: 8 minutes Despite all the pious posturing, if you look carefully through the daily tumult, you can see supernaturalism dying.
Posted inGeneral
The Fountainhead: Don’t Ever Change
Reading Time: 6 minutes Rand’s protagonists can step twice in the same river.
Posted inGeneral
Why Are Big-Name Atheists So Bad at Taking Criticism?
Reading Time: 6 minutes For someone who makes reason and rationality an aspect of their identity, the idea that their reasoning is faulty can be deeply threatening.
Posted inEvolution, Philosophy, Science
Answering Questions about Empiricism as Foundational: Abiogenesis, Language and Incredulity
Reading Time: 6 minutes Goodness me. Here’s another comment from See that he demands is answered, dripping as it is with condescension, and full of naivety. This came in the middle of his points being soundly debunked. As ever, I write this not so much for him, but for all the other readers. Some of See’s comments are regular […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Empiricism Revisited: Intuition and Epistemic Priority
Reading Time: 4 minutes There was a really interesting comment on a thread on my original “Empiricism as Foundational” that would be good to stimulate more discussion. Here it is, from Joseph Graney. So, I would like to offer the following response (in an order unrelated to the above article): 1) Empiricism does not, in fact, reject the innate […]