Category: Culture & Ethics
Prehistoric “Man” as a Case of Epistemological Regress: Some Historical Lessons From Lukacs and Koestler
Consider this from John Lukacs At the End of An Age (2002): In Chapter 1 of this book I suggested another fundamental limitation of Darwinism, which is the application of Evolution ever further and further backward, claiming that humans may have existed as early as one million years ago. That is a prime example of how unreason lies buried at the bottom of any and every materialist interpretation of mankind, because of its thesis of matter preceding human mind, with mind gradually appearing: when? perhaps in dribs and drabs, much later. (I happen to believe that there is no such thing as ‘pre-historic’ man, historicity being the fourth dimension of human existence from the beginning.) But perhaps the essential fault Read More ›
NCSE’s Program Director Josh Rosenau: Human Dependency Obviates the Right to Life
National Center for Selling Evolution Science Education’ s Program and Policy Director Josh Rosenau has made disturbing arguments in favor of abortion. On his personal blog Thoughts from Kansas, Rosenau, who has been a doctoral candidate in evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, asserted that children in the womb were nearly indistinguishable from… cancer. Later in his post, Rosenau defends abortion by asserting: Is an embryo a discrete human being? I think not. An embryo is dependent on its living host… An old-fashioned term for the “living host” of an embryo is… mother. Rosneau frames the mother-child relationship charmingly: he compares the relationship between a mother and her unborn child to the relationship between a host and a parasite. Read More ›
Why Doesn’t the NCSE Have an Atheism Project?
Jerry Coyne has an amusing post on the National Center for Science Education’s outreach effort to Christians. Coyne, in a post titled “NSCE Becomes BioLogos,” laments the rigorous efforts of the NCSE’s Faith Project, which is a major outreach program to Christians and other people of faith. Coyne quotes the NCSE: The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit, membership organization providing information and resources for schools, parents and concerned citizens working to keep evolution in public school science education. We educate the press and public about the scientific, educational, and legal aspects of the creation and evolution controversy, and supply needed information and advice to defend good science education at local, state, and national levels….The National Center Read More ›
Another Reason to Doubt the Relevance of Jeffrey Shallit
Materialist mathematician Jeffrey Shallit has a post on an article in the Globe and Mail about philosophy and the immateriality of the mind. Shallit’s post is titled “Another Reason to Doubt the Relevance of Philosophy”. Shallit doesn’t think much of philosophy: If philosophers think the view that “The brain is not an organ of consciousness. … The brain has no cognitive powers at all” deserves anything more than a good horselaugh, this simply shows how irrelevant philosophy has become…Our future understanding of cognition will come from neuroscience, not from Wittgenstein. Philosophy is plainly irrelevant to Shallit, which is the problem. Wittgenstein may not inform Dr. Shallit’s understanding of cognition, but Descartes, Kant, Hume, James, Skinner, Block, the Churchlands, Ryle, Rorty, Read More ›
My Question for P.Z. Myers: What Endows a Human Being With the Right to Life?
P.Z. Myers has responded to my post about his views on abortion and personhood. In reply, Myers posted pictures of a zygote, an embryo, and a group of young women. He asserted that differences in appearance between these human beings was an ethical basis for denial of the right to life to humans in utero. I take it for granted that Myers, being a competent biologist, agrees with me on this point: a living human embryo/fetus is a member of the species Homo sapiens (it is no other species). That is, a distinct human life begins at conception and ends at natural death. That is not to to say that Myers and I agree on rights, personhood, etc., but merely Read More ›