No Free Will?

 Here. 

Child labor

 Here. 

Can an evolutionary biologist believe in purpose?

 By Zachary Ardern.. 

Fallacy of composition?

 1. Every molecule of the planet Saturn occupies space.

2. Therefore , Saturn occupies space.

Fallacy of composition?

The rise of anti-semitism

 Antisemitism on the rise

A disturbing trend 

Burdens of proof

 Is there a burden of proof concerning the existence of burdens of proof?

Melnyk on naturalism

 Here's a quote by materialist Andrew Melnyk. 

“Naturalism claims that nothing has a fundamentally purposeful explanation…Naturalism says that whenever an occurrence has a purposeful explanation, it has that explanation in virtue of certain nonpurposeful (e.g. merely causal) facts.”

Do you concur with this statement, or not? Do you think a materialist can, or should, reject this?

God and modern miracles

 An interview with Craig Keener. 

Too smart to believe in God?

 

Miraculous Healing: The case of Henrique Mecking

 The great chess grandmaster from Brazil, Henrique Meckiing, was at death's door from a rare disease. He is alive and well at 71 todya, and attributes this to a divine healing when his disease was at its worst. A devout Roman Catholic in the charismatic movement, he had a rating of 2606 at the age of 60. 

Does Jesus still heal? Here. 

Virtue theory and humility

 Aristotle thought that it was good to think highly of yourself, so long as you don't take it too far. The Christian traditiion says that humility is a virtue and that pride is a sin. How does virtue theory deal with an issue like this? 

From Lewis's the Poison ol Subjectivism

 After studying his environment man has begun to study himself. Up to that point, he had assumed his own reason and through it seen all other things. Now, his own reason has become the object: it is as if we took out our eyes to look at them. Thus studied, his own reason appears to him as the epiphenomenona which accompanies chemical or electrical events in a cortex which is itself the by-product of a blind evolutionary process. His own logic, hitherto the king whom events in all possible worlds must obey, becomes merely subjective. There is no reason for supposing that it yields truth. As long as this dethronement refers only to the theoretical reason, it cannot be wholehearted. The scientist has to assume the validity of his own logic (in the stout old fashion of Plato or Spinoza) even in order to prove that it is merely subjective, and therefore he can only flirt with subjectivism. It is true that this flirtation sometimes goes pretty far. There are modern scientists, I am told, who have dropped the words truth and reality out of their vocabulary and who hold that the end of their work is not to know what is there but simply to get practical results. This is, no doubt, a bad symptom. But, in the main, subjectivism is such an uncomfortable yokefellow for research that the danger, in this quarter, is continually counteracted.

C. S. Lewis's De Futilitate

 Here. 

This includes different forms of the argument from reason than found in Miracles. Anscombe's rebuttals don't apply to some of what we find here. 

What was Anselm's argument for God?

 Here

Do you misgender your pet? Shame on you!

 

User Illusion

 Perhaps the idea of a mentalistic explanation requires some explanation. A moment ago I went out to get the mail. I believed that getting the mail would be a good thing, I know where the mailbox is, and so I fulfilled my intention to go out to the mailbox and get the mail. My actions had a purpose which I fulfilled. My feet moved, due to signals sent from my brain, but the ultimate reason why the atoms in my brain did what they did is that because they were directed by something possessing a purpose. Or, perhaps the atoms themselves had an inherent purpose. Something desired by some entity brought it about that the atoms moved the way they did.

            But these types of explanations are typically excluded from basic physics. In fact, not only purpose, but intentionality or about-ness, normativity, and first-person perspective are also excluded.  The four fundamental forces postulated by physics, gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, are blind forces, which do not act for reasons. If gravity operates on boulders falling in an avalanche, they will neither avoid my head to spare my life nor strike me to punish my wickedness.  No, the gravitational force has no mental life, and genuinely physical particles have no mental life either. But what happens at the mindless level of basic physics, according to materialism, determines what goes on at all levels. It is true that physical events sometimes produce results that an intentional agent would choose, indeed that is how natural selection works. But in the final analysis, if materialism is true, it looks as if the idea of intentions or purposes or desires or motives producing actions is bound to be an illusion. 

In honor of my Arizona Diamondbacks in the World Series--Sister Wynona Carr's The The Ball Game.

 

The rise and fall of the new atheism

Feser on eliminativism

 Here. 

Max Planck on consciousness

 I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

Max Planck