The World According to Genesis: Moral Knowledge 6 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 Like any middle eastern deity, YHWHW Elohim is a fairly petty individual. He doesn’t want competition from his creations, so he blocks access to the “Tree of Life”, which is a magical tree whose fruit can make you live forever. We have two magical trees, a corporeal deity of limited knowledge and good will, a snake that talks and has intentions like any trickster god to thwart the designs of the deity, and a justification for wearing clothes, which is not a matter just of shame, but of intended purpose. Continue Reading
Philosophy is to science, as ornithologists are to birds: 2. Two topics of philosophy of science 5 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 Philosophy of science deals largely with two general topics: Metaphysics and Epistemology. These are general topics of philosophy, and in the philosophy of science they deal only with the metaphysics and epistemology of science. So there are no overarching debates about how you can tell if you’re dreaming, or whether… Continue Reading
Genesis 2 rewritten 5 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 It is also likely that if God re-issued Genesis 2, he’d do it as a comic strip like this. Oops I forgot to link it… fixed now. Continue Reading
Philosophy is to science, as ornithologists are to birds: 1. Introduction 4 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 This three-part series is a talk I gave a while back to some ecologists and molecular biologists. It is a brief overview of the aims and relationship between science and philosophy of science, with a special reference to the classification wars in systematics, and the interface of science and the… Continue Reading
Reed Elsevier accepts criticism, drops arms support 2 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 Well blow me down and call me a dishmop. Reed Elsevier, who I recently criticised for running arms exhibitions while publishing medical and other intellectual journals, and who were boycotted by medical authors, has folded. They are, according to this story, getting out of the arms exhibition business. And so… Continue Reading
Now this is a proper wedding ceremony 2 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 I only recently discovered 9 Chickwood Lane, which is a really odd cartoon strip with ballet dancers, veterinarians and a visiting space alien named Thorax. Before I found this (and Pibgorn, which is in the same universe), Thorax officated at the marriage of two of the characters. Being an alien,… Continue Reading
The World According to Genesis: Humanity 2 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 So in chapter 2, we shift stories. Now we have a story that is far older than the first chapter, and is regarded by scholars as the “Yahwist” creation story, and it focuses primarily on humans. The story is far more familiar than the first chapter is (the first few… Continue Reading
The World according to Genesis: Stuff that grows 1 Jun 200724 Nov 2022 We’re in the third day, and Elohim has made dry land, but no sun or stars or moon. Still, he’s keen to see something growing, so he tells the land to produce, by spontaneous generation as it was later known, “seed bearing plants and plants bearing fruit with their proper… Continue Reading