Pope Francis, Evolution, and the Curia

Associated Press, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Christianity, Curia, elites, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Evangelical Catholicism, Evolution, Faith & Science, George Weigel, Intelligent Design, materialism, media, National Review, newspapers, Pontifical Council on Culture, Pope Francis, religion, Roman Catholicism, Secularism, sexual misbehavior, Templeton Foundation, Vatican City, young people
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is “just another office down the street,” as one Vatican insider told me. Source
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Defense of the Immaterial Soul

Apologetics, bellatorchristi.com, Brian Chilton, Christianity, Gospel, materialism, personhood, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of mind, soul, spirit, theological anthropology, Theology and Christian Apologetics
The human body is a marvelous and complex system. Of special interest is the cellular mechanism of the body. Every 7-10 years, the cells of the body replace themselves, to the point that the body is essentially new every decade.[i] While the DNA remains the same over the course of a person’s life, the cells change at varying rates. A person’s stomach lining replaces itself every few days. The skin’s epidermis replaces itself every 2 to 4 weeks. The body’s hair changes every 6 years for women and 3 years for men. Liver cells rejuvenate every 150 to 500 days. Bones take around 10 years to change. Philosophically speaking, the materialist has a problem if he decides to claim that the body is all of human existence. If humans are…
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Biologist Michael Levin: A Farewell to Physicalism

Andreas Wagner, biology, Daniel Dennett, David Deutsch, Discovery Institute, DNA, emergence, Engineering, environment, Evolution, flatworms, frogs, George F. R. Ellis, Günter Bechly, Harvard University, Life Sciences, material world, materialism, mathematics, Max Tegmark, Michael Levin, morphogenesis, mysterian, mysticism, naturalism, numerosity, philosophies, physical world, planarian flatworms, Platonism, Platonists, preprint, Richard Sternberg, Roger Penrose, spooky, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, teleology, Tufts University, University of Zurich, Werner Heisenberg
Levin proposes a “radical Platonist view in which some of the causal input into mind and life originates outside the physical world.” Source
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Darwin’s Zombies Are Still Shambling Along

Aleksandr Oparin, Antonia Monteiro, Antonion Lazcano, bacteria, butterflies, Evolution, fitness, genetic mutations, Heliconius, Icons of Evolution, inheritance, Intelligent Design, Jonathan Wells, Lepidopterans, mainstream media, materialism, MicroRNAs, moths, peppered moths, RNAs, Science (journal), selection, Stanley L. Miller, University of Singapore, Zombie Science
When will scientists and reporters learn not to trot out these falsified stories? Source
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Putting AI to the “Tolkien Test”: Could It Pass?

3 Quarks Daily, algorithms, art, Books, cathedrals, ChatGPT, Creativity, Culture & Ethics, human beings, intelligence, large language models, materialism, Middle-earth, music, music theory, nature, Neuroscience & Mind, On Fairy Stories, Oxford University, sentience, soul, sub-creators, The Lord of the Rings, theists, Tolkien test, Turing test, War and Peace
Could ChatGPT ever hope to get close to the creative depth found in Tolkien’s Middle-earth? Source
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What 1,000+ Brain Surgeries Taught About the Mind

brain, Christof Koch, consciousness circuit, David Chalmers, epilepsy, materialism, mathematics, Medicine, Michael Egnor, mind, music, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, neurosurgery, Pat Flynn, philosophy, promissory materialism, seizures, Stony Brook University, Wilder Penfield
Michael Egnor continues his discussion with Pat Flynn, noting that neither seizures nor Penfield’s brain stimulation provoked abstract thought. Source
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