I’ve been rethinking this post, where I suggested part of the reason the arguments of people like Thomas Aquinas and Samuel Clarke don’t sound convincing today is that they use assumptions which used to be widely accepted, but aren’t anymore. I offered up some caveats about that suggestion at the time, but now I have [...]
My book & the Catholic Church (re: Leah Libresco)
September 13, 2012 By 8 Comments
Leah Libresco was kind enough to link my blog after I made the move to Patheos, and gave a shout out to my “beta testing a book” project:
Apparently, PZ didn’t read Sandberg and Bostrom very carefully
July 15, 2012 By 30 Comments
So… when I first read PZ’s recent post on uploading, it wasn’t quite clear what his objections were, but I thought maybe he had some good points. But reading his responses in the comments thread, it quickly becomes clear that while PZ claims to have read Sandberg and Bostrom’s paper, he must not have read [...]
“The Singularity” and why the world will change more than (almost?) anyone can imagine in the next century or two
July 13, 2012 By 19 Comments
This post is apropos of nothing, aside from being something I wish were more widely understood. It has to do with AI and uploading and “the Singularity” (a confusing term that can actually mean several different things). I’m going to focus on uploading because in some ways it’s the most straightforward thing.
An aside on religious freedom and arguments for the existence of God
July 12, 2012 By 6 Comments
After what I said about Aquinas and Clarke in my previous post, you might be thinking something like this about them, “While their arguments aren’t very convincing to us today, they were at least good arguments in the context they were given, at a time when more people shared the assumptions behind the arguments.”
Aquinas’ five ways and other classical arguments for the existence of God
July 11, 2012 By 33 Comments
If you want arguments for the existence of God that are totally free of the sort of problems I talked about last week in criticizing Bill O’Reilly, Peter van Inwagen, and design arguments in general, your best bet may be to go back in time two centuries or more. To arguments like those of Thomas [...]
One more point about Feser
July 9, 2012 By 36 Comments
I left this out of my previous post on Feser, but it’s worth emphasizing: a central part of Feser’s shtick is talking about how horrible atheists are for not paying more attention to his beloved Aquinas. When Keith Parsons fails to pay enough attention to Aquinas, that’s part of “The brutal facts about Keith Parsons” [...]
Ed Feser’s temper tantrums
July 9, 2012 By 37 Comments
This post ties in with the post series I’m writing on arguments for the existence of God, but I don’t consider it a part of the post series proper. Rather, I want to pre-empt a problem I suspect I may have to deal with with the next post. The problem is this: Catholic philosopher Ed [...]
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