Jeff Shallit talks about Discovery Institute Fellow David Berlinski, notable as one of the few advocates of intelligent design who is not an evangelical Christian. He’s also not a scientist or a mathematician; he has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton. Although that’s a top school for philosophy in the U.S., Berlinski hasn’t been working as a professional philosopher, either. Of course, he was touted as an expert in “Expelled.”
I thought I’d try to come up with an argument for Nisbet’s general position (though I don’t support the claims that all publicity is good publicity or that particular people should shut up), and came up with this (posted as a comment on Nisbet’s blog): Suppose U.S. demographics on belief and nonbelief were reversed, so that atheists made up 80%+ and those who explicitly believed in God were about 4-5% of the population (with the difference filled by agnostics, closeted believers, etc.). Suppose further that demographics of believers in science were reversed–with most physicists and biologists being religious believers, who commonly said things like “the Big Bang shows evidence of a beginning of time, started by a creator God,” and “the intricate design of biology shows the hand of God." ...
Via Chris Hallquist, an interesting paper by the atheist philosopher Simon Blackburn, titled “Religion and Respect” (24pp. PDF). Worth noting as an abbreviated summary of the paper is the H.L. Mencken quote referenced by a commenter on Hallquist’s post: “We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.” Geoff (2008-03-25): Hey Jim, you need to catch up on your stack of books! I'm sure that somewhere in there is Louise Antony's "Philosophers Without Gods", from which the Blackburn piece is taken. I blogged about it here last August. I really think that it belongs in the canon of "New Atheist" books, along with the works of Dennett, Dawkins, Grayling, Hitchens, Harris, Carrier et al. ...
A few articles of interest from the last couple of issues of The Economist: February 23, 2008: “Moral thinking," a summary of recent research that sheds light on human moral reasoning processes. Video here. (A related, more in-depth story is Steven Pinker’s “The Moral Instinct” which appeared in The New York Times Magazine on January 13.) March 1, 2008: “Winds of change," a summary of research to use breathalyzer technology to diagnose medical conditions. “Telltale hairs," about new methods of forensics to use hair analysis to identify a person’s location at a given time (based on water consumption–could drinking imported bottled water be used to thwart this?).
Warren Allen Smith’s massive Who’s Who in Hell (2000, Barricade Books) is now online as a wiki, provided by the organization Philosopedia (not yet a 501(c)(3)), which manages a wiki of the same name. Unfortunately, they’re not allowing the public to edit the content. I hope they will at least open it up to registered users in some way. It’s also somewhat disappointing that the organization of Who’s Who in Hell puts all the entries into 26 wiki pages, one per letter of the alphabet, rather than having a separate entry for each person. My entry on the L page is woefully out of date. UPDATE: But they’re quite responsive… I have a new entry already. ...
John Allen Paulos, the mathematician and author of such excellent books as Innumeracy, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (all three of which I recommend), has a new book coming out on January 3, 2008 titled Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up. Here’s the review from Publishers Weekly: Few of the recent books on atheism have been worth reading just for wit and style, but this is one of them: Paulos is truly funny. Despite the title, the Temple University math professor doesn’t actually discuss mathematics much, which will be a relief to any numerically challenged readers who felt intimidated by his previous book Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. In this short primer (“just the gist with an occasional jest”) Paulos tackles 12 of the most common arguments for God, including the argument from design, the idea that a “moral universality” points to a creator God, the notion of first causes and the argument from coincidence, among others. Along the way, he intersperses irreverent and entertaining little chapterlets that contain his musings on various subjects, including a hilarious imagined IM exchange with God that slyly parodies Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God. “Why does solemnity tend to infect almost all discussions of religion?” Paulos asks, clearly bemoaning the dearth of humor. This little book goes a long way toward correcting the problem, and provides both atheists and religious apologists some digestible food for thought along the way. (Jan. 3) I hope the IM exchange described is as witty and funny as Raymond Smullyan’s dialogue with God, “Is God a Taoist?" (also found in his excellent book The Tao is Silent and in Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter’s anthology, The Mind’s I). UPDATE (January 14, 2008): Jim Holt reviews Paulos’ book for the New York Times. ...
At Salon, Steve Paulson interviews Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein about their relationship, their work, and their atheism. (Hat tip to Wade Smith on the SKEPTIC list.) Historical Comments Einzige (2007-10-16): Jim,I find much to disagree with in your assessment of Pinker in this post.:-) olvlzl (2007-10-16): I used Steven Pinker's voice for Professor Lockheart when I read my niece the second Harry Potter book. Other than that he's pretty useless. There, does that satisfy you, Einzige? ...
Part two of the Internet Infidels’ “Great Debate” project has been posted at the Secular Web, on “Evil and Evolution.” Draper makes an argument for atheism on the basis of a version of the problem of evil informed by evolution, and Plantinga gives a version of his argument that evolution undermines naturalism. Each offers an objection to the other, followed by a reply. Reader questions are being solicited for the next couple of months, which the authors will respond to on the site.
There’s an interesting and entertaining article at Esquire about Brad Blanton’s Radical Honesty movement, which seems to me to take a good idea–being honest–too far into inappropriate sharing or “too much information.” I think even little white lies (and especially “bullshit”) can be extremely insidious, and should be avoided, but that doesn’t mean removing all filters between thought and speech. James Morrow wrote a 1992 novel called City of Truth in which he described a world where everyone always speaks the truth in a way quite similar to the radical honesty movement, but the main character finds a need to lie in order to save his son’s life. Plato and Machiavelli would agree with each other that no political leader could survive by adopting the radical honesty approach. I think that’s disappointingly true. (Via The Agitator.) ...
The latest issue of Skeptic magazine (vol. 13, no. 2, 2007, pp. 28-39) has an article by Robert Lawrence Kuhn which supplies a nice list of possible explanations for the answer to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The article, titled “Why This Universe? Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations” (PDF), briefly sets out descriptions of each explanation, but the meat of the article is found in the footnotes, which provide extensive references for each offered explanation. Here’s the list, minus the footnotes and descriptions: 1. One Universe Models 1.1 Meaningless Question 1.2 Brute Fact 1.3 Necessary/Only Way 1.4 Almost Necessary/Limited Ways 1.5 Temporal Selection 1.6 Self Explaining 2. Multiple Universes 2.1 Multiverse by Disconnected Regions (Spatial) 2.2 Multiverse by Cycles (Temporal) 2.3 Multiverse by Sequential Selection (Temporal) 2.4 Multiverse by String Theory (with Minuscule Extra Dimensions) 2.5 Multiverse by Large Extra Dimensions 2.6 Multiverse by Quantum Branching or Selection 2.7 Multiverse by Mathematics 2.8 Multiverse by All Possibilities 3. Nonphysical Causes 3.1 Theistic Person 3.2 Ultimate Mind 3.3 Deistic First Cause 3.4 Pantheistic Substance 3.5 Spirit Realms 3.6 Consciousness as Cause 3.7 Being and Non-Being as Cause 3.8 Abstract Objects / Platonic Forms as Cause 3.9 Principle or Feature of Sufficient Power 4. Illusions 4.1 Idealism 4.2 Simulation in Actual Reality 4.3 Simulation in Virtual Reality 4.4 Solipsism One of the most entertaining philosophical books I’ve ever read was David Lewis’ On the plurality of worlds (pretty much everything Lewis wrote was entertaining as well as brilliant), which falls in category 2.8 (Multiverse by All Possibilities), cited by Kahn in note 43. The same category includes another very entertaining philosophy book, Robert Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations, which is cited in note 44. This taxonomy shows that there are a lot more possibilities than “God did it." UPDATE: Thanks to John Lynch at stranger fruit, who pointed out that the article is available online. ...