What I have been doing lately, and why

It seems like only yesterday that we moved to these new digs, when in actual fact it’s a few days before yesterday. But I have been busy in real life, which is an uncommon occurence (having a real life, I mean), so I have not blogged as well or deeply as I might.Of course, being terminably lazy and an exponent of Procrastination Fu (third dan), I might not have blogged as well or as deeply as I might anyway. The world is full of possibilities, and the possible worlds are full of many outcomes.

Speaking of possible worlds, I have just returned from Brisbane, where among other fun things I delivered a half of a talk (the other half being done by Phil Dowe) in which we argued that even a constrained deity might have chosen a world that satisfies some arbitrary set of utility functions by simulating the worlds and making real (I believe the phrase I used was “pour metaphysical plaster into the logical mold”) the best of the ones simulated, so a proper (“Leibnizian”) deity could have chosen to make this world such that (i) everything that happens in it happens according to natural laws (or, as theologians call them, “secondary powers”), including Darwinian evolution, and (ii) still be responsible for the outcome of a Providential Plan (“primary powers”). Whether that god could have made me use better sentence construction just now is imponderable. But this implies

1. That a theist can happily be an evolutionist without the need for God to be a micromanager in their belief set (but that they still have a problem of evil), and

2. Darwin was wrong.

Last week, I was in Canberra (oy! what a motorcycle ride that was!) giving again my half of a talk (which was a whole talk, but delivered while madman of my acquaintance, Jason Grossman gave his talk, and several of his students did things like strum ukeleles, iron, and play a snare drum) on “how not to Feyerabend“. I really should have updated it to remove references to the Howard government of late unlamented memory.

So I’m back and reading things upon which I may asseverate. Or not.