‘Rationality is useless if it is not sound. This is what Martin Luther meant when he called reason a “whore”. Pick the wrong premises, and rationality is utterly screwed. Therefore, merely that someone is “rational” means absolutely nothing about whether that person is well-connected to reality.’
My last public talk which I gave, on free will, has now been made into a podcast which can be heard here. The talk, given to Portsmouth Skeptics in a Pub on 14th June 2012, was a nice informal gathering of about 50-odd people of varying skeptical persuasions. I have not listened to it yet, but the Q and A was an interesting and challenging time with some good questions which I think I dealt with pretty well.
So, on to Law’s opening statements. It’s probably better to get this from the horse’s mouth -http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/10/opening-speech-craig-debate.html. However, I will duly sum up. Law, much to his credit, claimed he was only interested in defending his position using only one argument, based on the Evidential Problem of Evil. That being, if God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, then he is able, knows how and is loving enough to want to do something about all the evil in the world. Law went on to talk about some of this evil by pointing out the sheer quantity:
1) all the animal deaths resulting from carnivorousness from the beginning of animal history
2) all the human death, particularly the frequency of child death before the age of five – somewhere between 40% and 60%, historically, of all children born.
Back in October 2011 I posted this review (and a couple of follow-ons) on my old-old site covering the debate between Stephen Law and William Lane Craig. Due to the fact that Stephen is now a co-SINner here with us, I would like to resurrect this review. It was a great debate, and Stephen, against a formidable opponent, did very well indeed, as you will see. There is now updated video of the debate.
Enjoy:
Last night, two friends and I went to the Stephen Law vs William Lane Craig debate at Westminster where the two philosophers were debating ‘Does God Exist?’ Craig’s Reasonable Faith tour has been hotly anticipated by Christians and non-Christians alike, and with the relative unknown of Stephen Law (in debating terms), there was a feeling of unpredictability thrown in to the usual wager that Craig would win.
As a determinist, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is of great interest. I have always intuitively believed there to be hidden…
The Huffington Post recently reported this:
Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said last week that evolution and the big bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of Hell.”
“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” said Broun, who is an MD. “It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
So Mitt Romney is in the news right now a little more than he should be. And it seems that people have very short memories with regards to his gaffes and ineptitude. And then he makes people laugh about climate change (that hilarious gag).
Here is high-brow rapper Baba Brinkman’s take on Romney and his climate humour:
So I went to see theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss last night in Portsmouth. This was great for two reasons. Firstly, Krauss is a great public speaker and a seemingly top bloke. Secondly, it shows that, occasionally, Portsmouth (UK) is not the cultural wasteland many think it is. Occasionally. Very occasionally.
The night started off well as a few of us Tippling Philosophers met in a pub and got talking to a playwright who had a vast and interesting array of knowledge in some areas close to our hearts – the making of Messiahs, philosophy and such like (so much so that he bought one of my books, The Nativity: A Critical Examination, there and then). After some fascinating discussions ranging from cognitive dissonance to Sabbatai Zavi and Appolonius of Tyana, we moved to the venue for the talk.
Krauss started off superbly by talking about the for of the question “why is there something rather than nothing” being problematic and question-begging. Funnily enough, we had just been talking about purpose in the pub, and this very problem. Krauss rightly pointed out that you cannot ask why questions without presupposing the notion of a purposer. ‘Why’ is seeking a purpose – ‘for what purpose did this happen?’. And an objective purpose requires there to be an ultimate being to give purpose. Intrinsic purposes are incoherent. For more on this, see my essay on the meaning of life.
So the election in the US looms. And voter apathy is a dangerous thing when the consequences are so high. What to do about it? Well obviously get Samuel L. Jackson to poetical swear at members of an apathetic family! It works. Hell, I’m voting Obama and I don’t even live there or have the right! Well, it may have to be in the poll booth in my head, but it all helps…
This really is a very cool video.
One of the most common defences of Libertarian Free Will (or contra-causal free will) is what I sometimes term the 80-20% approach. Most people, to some degree or another, accept that our lives are at least somewhat, and in most cases, a good deal influenced. This may be by genetic, biological or environmental factors. But it is hard to deny that, at the point of making a decision, we aren’t having our decision influenced by external or internal motivators. This is expressed often as a claim like ”Well, we are influenced quite a bit, but we still have some degree of free will” or “I think we are 80% determined, but 20% of our decision-making is freely willed”.
Happiness. What is it, and how do we get it? This is an age old question which I will hopefully discuss in the future. In the meantime, this research from the UN makes claims to the happiest countries in the world. There is also the Happy Planet Index which takes into account happiness, environmental impact and life expectancy.
The UK? no there. The US? Nada. Canada? Smug gits…:)
So why am I writing about this? Well because, statistically, it means that anywhere up to 75% of all pregnancies, of all fertilised eggs, die. This is a staggering number of pregnancy losses (for example, it is estimated that 3 out of 4 eggs that are fertilized do not fuse their DNA correctly, and therefore either do not attempt to implant or fail at implantation – see attached image taken from here). Of course, being exact on these numbers is rather academic. Whether it be 50 million a year in the US or 25 million is irrelevant since both numbers are ridiculously high!
The reason for talking about this is twofold. Firstly, for people who critique abortion on religious grounds, it makes somewhat of a mockery of their arguments. Secondly, again from a religious perspective, it does make God look a little callous. Nay, brutal and unloving.
Recently, in a post on evolution, reviewing the book “Your Inner Fish” by Neil Shubin, there was some talk about…
The genius who is Nonstampcollector hits home with another piece of insightful mastery.
So I thought I’d give you a selection of some amusing cartoons and quotes to help you get over the…
This is taken from an old post of mine. I still find it a real defeater for the concept of…
Katherine Stewart in The Guardian has detailed this scary phenomenon which has been a problem bubbling in the educational undercurrents…
So I came across this site on my internet travels (actually, through a naturalism group on facebook) and it provides…
As you’ve probably guessed, I am interested in all things free will. Recently, I was reading a chapter from “Are…
I have decided to compile a list of my favourite atheistic /agnostic / philosophical songs. There are many on other…
ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2012) — A new study suggests that a poor sense of smell may be a marker for psychopathic…