***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
And now for an abrupt change of subject and tone, as I try to get serious again about my writing in preparation for the dawning of a new year \u2014 my first as retired geezer:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is atheism or naturalism essential for the practice of science?\u00a0 Thomas Nagel is a prominent philosopher based at New York University and a a very committed atheist.\u00a0 As he has written, \u201cI lack the sensus divinitatis<\/i> that enables\u2014indeed compels\u2014so many people to see in the world the expression of divine purpose as naturally as they see in a smiling face the expression of human feeling.\u201d\u00a0 <\/sup>In\u00a0The Last Word<\/i>, he wrote, \u201cI want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn\u2019t just that I don\u2019t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I\u2019m right in my belief. It\u2019s that I hope there is no God! I don\u2019t want there to be a God; I don\u2019t want the universe to be like that.\u201d<\/sup><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
And yet, to the question of whether or not naturalistic atheism is fundamental to the practice of science, Nagel firmly responds that No, it isn\u2019t:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Such a world view is not a necessary condition of the practice of any of those sciences, and its acceptance or nonacceptance would have no effect on most scientific research.\u00a0 For all I know, most practicing scientists may have no opinion about the overarching cosmological questions to which this materialist reductionism provides an answer.\u00a0 Their detailed research and substantive findings do not in general depend on or imply either that or any other answer to such questions.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nThomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 Here\u2019s a New Year\u2019s article that I wrote for Meridian Magazine: \u00a0 \u201cA Lesson from Two Great Leaders on Beginning Again When It Feels Like You\u2019ve Failed\u201d \u00a0 Here, perhaps relevant to my article above, are recent stories about a pair of Latter-day Saints that you might enjoy: \u00a0 \u201cBYU\u2019s Mikayla […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[216,222,9622,683,27536,27530,255,14931,16574,16577,2791,243,27533],"class_list":["post-93755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-consciousness","tag-materialism","tag-materialist","tag-mind","tag-mind-and-cosmos","tag-nagel","tag-naturalism","tag-naturalistic","tag-neo-darwinian","tag-neo-darwinism","tag-problem-of-consciousness","tag-science","tag-thomas-nagel"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Capra's](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/08\/Dunkerque_retreat.png\")
<\/a>