Tag Archives: reductionism

A God Delusion: Josh Timonen v. Richard Dawkins

Posted on October 28, 2010 by

One sad aspect of the lawsuit recently filed against Josh Timonen by Richard Dawkins is the way that it has inadvertently played out the atheist script generally: reduce an ontological mystery (a mystery of being) to a mere problem or function for rational … Continue reading →

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Stuart Kauffman on Poetry vs. Science and the Possibilities for Atheist Spirituality

Posted on February 18, 2010 by

Atheist spirituality? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Below is biologist and complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman speaking to the Centre for Inquiry in Ontario. In the talk, Kauffman is laying out some of the arguments that he makes in his book Reinventing the Sacred … Continue reading →

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Freud’s Oceanic Feeling Associated with Brain Damage!

Posted on February 11, 2010 by

During meditation or prayer, have you ever had what Freud called (picking up the term from Romain Rolland) an “oceanic feeling“? In other words, have you felt your “little self” (the shrew of your ego) submerging harmoniously into the “Big Self”—the Atman—or the universe? Well, … Continue reading →

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Santi Tafarella’s Poem, “The Appearance of the Real”

Posted on January 10, 2010 by

. . . . . . .                                                                                                                                                                 . Beneath a dormant tree in brown eggshell crisp leaves a child found a white branch with a red blossom.                                                                                                                                                        . The branch bent at its middle and the child, to hold … Continue reading →

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Reductionism Not? Mathematical Biologist Stuart Kauffman on “breaking the Galilean spell”

Posted on December 20, 2009 by

My favorite line in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas goes like this: If matter emerged from mind, it is a wonder. But if mind emerged from matter, it is a greater wonder. In the recent dead tree edition of Free Inquiry (Dec. 2009/Jan. 2010) is a … Continue reading →

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Slipping Off the Atheist Dude Ranch?: Strict Naturalism and Atheist Philosopher Thomas Nagel

Posted on December 1, 2009 by

Before philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote this in the most current edition of the Times Literary Supplement about Stephen Meyer’s new book (ticking off a lot of atheists), he wrote this, in the New Republic, in late 2006, concerning philosophical naturalism’s reductionist project: I … Continue reading →

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Ah, Gray Sunflower, Forget Me Not! The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Moscow UFO Mothership/Cloud

Posted on October 12, 2009 by

When looking at the above video today, I thought of Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra” (in which Ginsberg eulogizes a soot covered dead sunflower). And it made me think: what makes this UFO-like cloud (seen last Wednesday over Moscow) beguiling? And … Continue reading →

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Reductionism, the Ontological Mystery, and Joni Mitchell

Posted on October 5, 2009 by

What do we really know about clouds and rainbows, let alone love and free will? To speak of them, scientifically or otherwise (including poetically), is like using chopsticks to drink the ocean. Our instruments seem inadequate to the scale of our task, and somehow … Continue reading →

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John Searle Wants Us to Reject Both Materialism and Dualism with Regard to the Mind

Posted on September 6, 2009 by

John Searle splits the difference by saying that consciousness is, in relation to matter, “ontologically irreducible but causally reducible.” Here’s parts 1 and 2 of a longer talk. If you don’t want to hear the biographical introduction to Searle, you … Continue reading →

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Just Asking

Posted on September 3, 2009 by

If you are an atheist, and you think that free will, ultimately, does not exist, but you nevertheless act in your day-to-day life as if free will does in fact exist, aren’t you like someone who doesn’t believe in God, but under … Continue reading →

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I Am Not Determinate Matter, and I Too Sing the Universe!

Posted on August 14, 2009 by

This is the confident theist position, which as an agnostic I am not committed to, but I nevertheless think it might well be right. Here’s why: Science is a tool for the study of matter, and it must study matter in … Continue reading →

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Notes from Underground

Posted on July 2, 2009 by

Who will speak from the insistent vantage of the ontological mystery? Against the best efforts of our contemporary advocates of scientism, positivism, and reductionism, below is a succinct explanation for why religion, poetry, Dostoevsky’s “underground man,” and Camus’s “Sisyphian hero” cannot just cede the … Continue reading →

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Richard Dawkins v. John Keats: Does Science “Conquer all mysteries by rule and line” and “Unweave a rainbow”?

Posted on February 8, 2009 by

In John Keats’s “Lamia” are these lines (231-238), cautioning against a too-eager reductionism, and recalls Wordsworth’s assertion that “we murder to dissect”: There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull … Continue reading →

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