Philosophy & Ethics

Evolution of the God Gene

Nicholas Wade has a new article on the evolution of religion. Evolution of the God Gene http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/weekinreview/12wade.html?hpw He seems to be making the case for a conciliatory relationship between religion and science. Here is wha ...

Blog Post - Asha John - Nov 15 2009 - 2:52pm

Philosophy and Science at War? (A reaction to Massimo Pigliucci's post)

Massimo had an interesting post on his “Rationally Speaking” blog last week about the rift between science and philosophy. He feels that too many of the “new atheists” are being over enthusiastic in their support of science as the only means of understand ...

Blog Post - Asha John - Nov 18 2009 - 4:16pm

Prophets and Philosophers

(Essay 3 in the Evolution and Morality Series) Religious morality is by no means the only source of moral reasoning available to us. There is in fact a long history of secular philosophy dating all the way back to the 5 th century BC.   And not just the m ...

Blog Post - Asha John - Nov 18 2009 - 5:09pm

How an atheist sought the existence of God

In my younger years, the belief in a world populated by divine entities plagued my thoughts. To the eyes of an atheist, I was a religious adherent, albeit not as devoutly as some of my contemporary acquaintances. What underlay my faith in Buddhism was my f ...

Blog Post - Lam Nguyen - Nov 19 2009 - 3:55am

On The Difference Between Science And Philosophy

Attentive readers of this blog may have noticed that those who post comments to my entries often show two interesting and complementary attitudes: a fundamental distrust of (if not downright contempt for) philosophy, coupled with an overly enthusiastic en ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - Nov 19 2009 - 11:18am

The Incoherence Of Free Will

I recently re-read a classic piece by J.L. Mackie (April 1955), entitled “Evil and Omnipotence,” a stupendous philosophical essay about why theologians like Richard Swinburne are forced by their belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevelont and omnipowerful god ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - Nov 24 2009 - 5:45pm

Philosophy and Science

The question was just raised in a previous blog entry about what a research scientist could learn from philosophy.  Perhaps this article, " Mad Science? Growing Meat Without Animals " can provide some insight. Particularly telling was this quote: ...

Blog Post - Gerhard Adam - Nov 19 2009 - 7:03pm

Morality and the Scientific Method

Why science is a better way to explore morality. We think of science as a noun, in reality it is a verb, a process. The scientific method is a codification of a specific technique of handling and processing information. This method involves meticulous doc ...

Blog Post - Asha John - Nov 25 2009 - 11:20pm

Inverted Qualia

A couple of months ago I attended a lecture by  Saul Kripke  at CUNY’s Graduate Center. Kripke is one of the most influential philosophers of the late 20th century, someone who you simply have to go see give a talk if you have the chance, on the sole basi ...

Article - Massimo Pigliucci - Dec 7 2009 - 11:07pm

Podcast Teaser: Why Rationality?

Dear readers, Rationally Speaking is soon going to be (also) a podcast, produced by  New York City Skeptics, and co-hosted by Julia Galef and yours truly. Before each (initially biweekly, starting at the end of January) episode we will publish a “teaser” ...

Blog Post - Massimo Pigliucci - Dec 5 2009 - 6:47pm