Category Archives: Epistemology
Analytic thinking, religion and science – the rhetoric and the psychology
Over the past few decades there has been an increasingly large literature on styles of thinking and cognitive biases (to which I am grateful to Jocelyn Stoller, a reader of this blog, for introducing me) in psychology, culminating in the marvellous … Continue reading
Filed under Cognition, Epistemology, Evolution, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Social evolution
Evolution Quotes: Twain on inference about the past
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and “let on” to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur … Continue reading
Filed under Epistemology, History, Philosophy, Quotes, Science
Bayes, evolutionary clocks, and biogeography
I just received a review by Gareth Nelson of Michael Heads’ book Molecular Panbiogeography of the Tropics (publishers’ site). I should have blogged this before, since I got a copy, being on the editorial board for this series (the same one … Continue reading
What warrant is there for belief in God?
Every morning on the way to the campus of the University of Melbourne I pass by the United Faculty of Theology, and I often wish that someone would come out and engage me in a debate. Partly because I am … Continue reading
Filed under Epistemology, Evolution, Philosophy, Religion
Are humans, apes, monkeys, primates, or hominoids?
I suspect the correct literary answer is that we are Yahoos, but here I want to do what I would ordinarily never dare do: disagree with John Hawks. John takes Jerry Coyne to task for calling humans “apes”: Humans are hominoids. … Continue reading
Plantinga’s EAAN revisited
Blogs are places where one tosses out a hastily constructed piece of argument, or commentary, and not where one slowly and thoughtfully writes something that one will eventually earn an income from (unless you are PZ Myers). So when I … Continue reading
Filed under Epistemology, Evolution, Logic and philosophy, Philosophy, Religion, Science
Doxastic biases and arguments for religion (and other things)
Helen De Cruz has the results of a fascinating survey on how various arguments for and against the existence of God are treated by philosophers… according to their general stance – atheist, agnostic, or theist. Basically it considers not whether … Continue reading
Filed under Epistemology, Logic and philosophy, Philosophy, Religion
