A template for philosophical debates 16 Jul 201216 Jul 2012 [Click through to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal] Mind, equally popular is this syllogism: If P is true, then my opponent will be sad. I wish my opponent to be sad. Therefore P is true. Humor Logic and philosophy Philosophy
Administrative I aten’t dead 21 Aug 200718 Sep 2017 … I’m teaching. First years. Cognitive science. It turns out that a lot of what I thought was common knowledge isn’t common at all. And what I count as a simple introduction leaves a lot of folk behind. Now I know I’m not that ordinary in many senses – the… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design Evolution and its rivals – special issue of Synthese 16 Dec 2010 A special issue of the philosophical journal Synthese covers the topic “Evolution and its rivals”. It is open access until the end of this month, so you can get the papers now. The major discussions centre around intelligent design, which is the nearest to intellectual adequacy that creationism gets. There… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity The ecological equivalent of Evolving Thoughts 29 Oct 201129 Oct 2011 I have been casting my beadies over this blog, Oikos Blog, which looks to take a critical and philosophical eye to ecology. It appears to have some careful and deep critics on it, and what is more, at least one of them likes Evolving Thoughts. What better recommendation? Read More
The theological version is, I believe “If P is false, baby Jesus will be sad. I do not want to burn in hell for eternity/I want to sing with angels for eternity (delete as appropriate for your denomination), therefore P is true.”
This is a philosophical question on the scientific understanding of life. DNA is sometimes referred to as “strands of life.” Within the nucleus of a cell, DNA “unzips” itself during the S phase, and each single strand (RNA) is a template for a new complete strand. RNA is said to have “chemical messengers” that carry the necessary information to make the proteins needed for reproduction, but how can a chemical “contain” and “use” information? When it comes to the cellular level, I can understand cell reproduction because a cell contains organelles. A cell doesn’t start with a nucleus. It starts with DNA (nuclear division). But with DNA, reproduction is supposedly all happening simply because of chemical reactions. What tells the cell to “unzip?” Please don’t just leave me a website link. `
If you won’t read the material that answers your question, why should I bother trying to explain it to you?