Can Formless Matter Exist? A Pitfall in Reading Biblical Texts

air, Ambrose, Aristotle, Basil of Caesarea, Bible, Biblical texts, cellulose, Christianity, Chrysostom, classical science, demiurge, duck, earth, elements, Ephrem the Syrian, Faith & Science, fire, form, Genesis, house, John Calvin, Justin Martyr, Martin Luther, matter, metal, metaphysics, nuclear reactions, Periodic Table, philosophy, physics, pipes, plastic, Plato, rabbit, radioactive decay, scientific ideas, Septuagint, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Tertullian, The Heavens the Waters and the Partridge, Timaeus, water, wires, Wisdom of Solomon, wood
The solution is to go back to the source and follow the text to see what it actually says. Source
Read More

Are the Heavens Immutable? An Ancient Scientific Question

aether, air, Aristotle, Bible, Center for Science and Culture, change, circular movement, cosmologists, Creation, dark energy, dark matter, destruction, earth, elements, ethers, fire, galaxies, heavens, heavy elements, history of science, immutability, light elements, linear movement, modern science, natural forces, night, outer space, pace, philosophy, physics, rotation, smoke, speed, stars, The Heavens the Waters and the Partridge, water, Winston Ewert
Modern theories postulate entities to account for differences between what we would expect from physics and our observations of distant space. Source
Read More

The Levin Teleology Revolution Is Here

academia, Aristotle, Biological Theory, biology, Brian Charlesworth, Brian Miller, careers, cognition, computer code, David B. Resnik, designer, Douglas Futuyma, Evolution, Gen Z, gender issues, goal-directedness, graduate school, intelligence, Intelligent Design, intentionality, Jerry Coyne, Michael Levin, neo-Darwinians, neuroscience, Plato, Plato's Revenge, purpose, reactionaries, Richard Dawkins, Richard Sternberg, Stuart Burgess, teleology, Tufts University
He has assembled a global community of like-minded investigators who openly advocate teleological arguments harking back to Aristotle and Plato. Source
Read More

In Biology, Replacing Chance with Purpose Is the New Paradigm

Abraham, Aristotle, biology, Chance and Necessity, Chemistry, Christianity, Darwinism, Evolution, God Hypothesis, Intelligent Design, Jaques Monod, Kansas, laws of nature, Mariusz Tabaczek, materialism, Modern Synthesis, molecular biology, natural processes, naturalism, Neo-Darwinism, Nobel laureates, paradigm, physics, purpose, René Descartes, science of purpose, scientific atheism, scientism, St. Thomas Aquinas, teleology, telos, theistic evolution, Thomistic Aristotelianism, Thomists
In my most recent post in this series on the science of purpose, I concluded that the proper means of understanding our world requires that we include both purpose and necessity as fundamental elements of any comprehensive framework. I noted that the flagship phrase of 20th-century scientific atheism, as articulated by Nobel laureate Jaques Monod in his book Chance and Necessity, acknowledged necessity but explicitly and intentionally eliminated purpose from scientific dialogue.  Now some fifty years later we see that Monod’s paradigm has failed. And that the only possible way of understanding life on earth is to replace chance with purpose. Doing so reverses an epistemological trend stretching back almost 150 years. As such, it is incumbent that we fortify and substantiate the basis for what many would see as a revolutionary new paradigm. That is the goal of this essay. In Read More › Source
Read More

Against Anti-LLM and Anti-AI Absolutism

1 Thessalonians, absolutism, Aristotle, Artificial Intelligence, Bible, Carl Rogers, ChatGPT, Christians, Computational Sciences, dopamine, Doug Smith, Education, Edward Thorndike, Eighteenth Amendment, ELIZA program, Frederick Buechner, geography, history, Jacques Ellul, Jaime Escalante, Joseph Weizenbaum, Judeo-Christian tradition, large language models, Laurent Siklossy, liquor, Marshall McLuhan, math, mathematicians, Neil Postman, Open AI, Phillips Exeter Academy, programmed learning, Prohibition, Rogerian therapists, Sam Altman, science education, software, St. Paul, Substack, Technology, Turing test, William Jennings Bryan, [Un]Intentional
Doug Smith has been a software developer for three decades. He writes extensively about the impact of technology on culture. Source
Read More

Jay Richards on an Icon of Intelligent Design and 20 Years of a Bifurcating Culture

Allan CP, Aristotle, astronomy, atheists, bifurcation, Children, Christian civilization, Christians, civilization, Emma Camp, Evangelicals, Faith & Science, gender ideology, Guillermo Gonzalez, Intelligent Design, materialists, New Atheism, Plato, Plato's Revenge, Reason (magazine), Richard Dawkins, Roman Catholicism, Socrates, surgical sexual mutilation, The Privileged Planet, The Science Dilemma, theism, theists, tradcath, wokeness
If wokeness leads to promoting surgical sexual mutilation of children, maybe we need to rethink the whole thing. Source
Read More

How Understanding Points Beyond Physicalism

algorithms, Aristotle, Artificial Intelligence, brain processes, Brown University, cognitive science, computational mechanics, computationalism, computer science, computers, Epistemology, humans, Intellect, James F. Ross, John McCarthy, John Searle, Life Sciences, mind, modus tollens, Neuroscience & Mind, Pat Flynn, philosophy, Roderick Chisholm, Selmer Bringsjord, Thomas Aquinas, triangularity
A computer science professor shows, using logic, how you must be more than mere matter. Source
Read More

How Can We Conceive of Perfection When We Never Experience it?

abstract thought, Aristotle, brain processes, brain state, circle, Concepts, Denyse O'Leary, human exceptionalism, immateriality, Intellect, Intelligent Design, line, logic, materialism, matter, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, Perfection, soul, The Immortal Mind, triangle, truth
There are two ways we can think of a triangle. One way is to form a mental image, likely based on a triangle we have seen on a piece of paper. Source
Read More

Eavesdropping in the Platonic Academy 

algorithms, Andreas Wagner, Aristotle, biology, C.H. Waddington, Casey Luskin, creationists, demiurge, Denis Noble, DNA, Erwin Schrödinger, Evolution, evolutionary biology, Günter Bechly, Hans Driesch, Harvard University, Intelligent Design, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lars Löfgren, Michael Levin, microbes, Philosophy of Science, Plato, Plato's Revenge, Platonism, René Descartes, René Thom, Richard Sternberg, Robert Rosen, sequoia trees, Summer Seminar on Intelligent Design, theoretical biology, Tufts University, University of Zurich, vitalism
I can relate to the paleontologist Günter Bechly, who, after hearing Sternberg lay out his thesis, lay awake unable to sleep as he considered the implications. Source
Read More