Thought du jour - 7 October 2011

"I suppose the philosophically inclined can argue that science requires a sort of faith, but hardly the kind that governs religious thought. Personally, I've never understood the perceived need to wed science and religion. Politically expedient? Sure. But it's fundamentally dishonest, both to scientists and theologians." - Mac Tonnies

Dr. Francis Collins - The Language of God: Intellectual Reflections of a Christian Geneticist

A thought-provoking lecture by Dr. Francis Collins, the former head of the Human Genome Project and director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. He is currently the Director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Collins presents the case for harmony between faith in science and faith in God, and shares his personal intellectual and spiritual journey from agnosticism, to atheism, and to Christianity.

Collins had this to say in a debate with noted atheist Richard Dawkins: "Barring a theoretical resolution, which I think is unlikely, you either have to say there are zillions of parallel universes out there that we can't observe at present or you have to say there was a plan. I actually find the argument of the existence of a God who did the planning more compelling than the bubbling of all these multiverses. So Occam's razor - Occam says you should choose the explanation that is most simple and straightforward - leads me more to believe in God than in the multiverse, which seems quite a stretch of the imagination."

As an agnostic, I don't agree with Dr. Collins' conclusions, but then I don't agree with Dawkins' conclusions either (Collins rightly points out that agnosticism is only a principled position if an agnostic can state that neither side has made out their case beyond a reasonable doubt, which is indeed the position that I take). Nevertheless, I respect his thoughtful open-mindedness, his commitment to ethical research in science (and the need to consider the moral implications of that research), and his search for personal truth. In a society where we have an increasing number of zealots on both the believer and disbeliever sides of the debate about the existence of "God", who spend their time talking past each other as opposed to with each other, Collins offers a refreshing example of reasoned and rational discourse, where he is willing to engage in a meaningful and respectful way those he disagrees with.

Paul Kimball

"Dr." John Cleese on the "All-Knowingness" of Man

Sometimes, brilliant philosophers come in the most unexpected packages.

We should always be conscious of the fact that there are a great many things about our universe, and ourselves, that we haven’t even begun to understand yet.  This is the fundamental flaw in the thinking of atheists, who maintain that they "know" there isn't a God, a proposition that is as unsupportable as that of the true believers, who claim to "know" that there is a God. To close ourselves off to the possibility that there might be more to heaven and earth than our current science can explain would be foolish, and unscientific.

I think that deep down, we're all agnostics. As death approaches, I think the true believer will always have doubt, and I think the hard-core atheist will always have hope - and neither of them will be entirely certain, for different reasons, of their "knowledge".

Paul Kimball

Thought du jour - 20 July 2011

"One of my motives for writing Against Method was to free people from the tyranny of philosophical obfuscators and abstract concepts such as “truth”, “reality”, or “objectivity”, which narrow people's vision and ways of being in the world. Formulating what I thought were my own attitude and convictions, I unfortunately ended up by introducing concepts of similar rigidity, such as “democracy”, “tradition”, or “relative truth”. Now that I am aware of it, I wonder how it happened. The urge to explain one's own ideas, not simply, not in a story, but by means of a “systematic account”, is powerful indeed." - Paul Feyerabend

Defending Science

The always amusing Bill Maher offers an overly simplistic but still funny defence of science, and scientism.

Paul Kimball

Pop Matters: The Housemartins, "Think for a Minute"

Apropos of a back-and-forth I've been having with an anonymous commenter in the Saving Science from the Cult of Scientism post.

"This street used to be full, it used to make me smile,
And now it seems that everyone is walking single file"

You can find out more about The Housemartins here.

Paul Kimball

Hilary Putnam, Bryan Magee, and The Philosophy of Science

A fascinating conversation between Bryan Magee, one of the great popularizers of philosophy, and Hilary Putnam, one of the great philosophers of the last fifty years, about the philosophy of science.

Paul Kimball