The Human Question

I'm no fan of I.D., or at least not an ardent one. In fact, it seems to me that ID proves at most the following disjunctive: either some superhuman being, or a deistic-styled deity, or the God of monotheists is the source of the species that presently populate the earth. In spite of my not being a fan of ID, it seems to me that the "God of the Gaps" objection (i.e., the claim that ID resorts to God to fill the ever-narrowing gaps in our knowledge of nature) is not always a fair one. Isn't every scientific explanation an attempt to fill a gap?

A friend named Marc Flores, who is not a believer, and I once shared a blog in which we argued about the existence of God. I have been out of touch with this friend for the past three years and can no longer find the blog's exact address. But I did save the last post, which I think was worthwhile. Marc never replied to this post: Your last post was very provocative: I have all sorts of notes scribbled on a printout next to me... let's see if I can condense it all. I'll try my best: honest. We both recognize that humans possess the ability to wonder about the universe and our place in it. I venture that that this wonder animates many human activities. If you show me an enthusiastic scientist, I'll show show you someone who is motivated by this wonder. The same is likely for many philosophers, theologians and artists. I propose, furthermore, that this wonder has a lot to do with the human ability to discover universal and necessary truths, for only one who has wondered

When some hear talk of God, they suppose that the speaker is imagining (and believing) that God is some superhuman being, part grandfather and part Zeus. This critic of God talk is unaware of how philosophers understand God. To help this critic grasp the difference between the two conceptions of God, we might contrast an imaginary person who has learned a laundry-list of scientific facts (e.g., the atom consists of 3 particles, etc.) with someone else who has studied the history of scientific discovery. The former might be said to have a childish understanding of science. They might look at, say, an atom, as a cluster of marble-like neutrons and protons, encircled by smaller, speck-like electrons. Interestingly, it is just this sort of person who says that while the desk in front of me seem solid, it consists mainly of the void. Such a person is unaware of fields, unaware of the complex of analogies and disanalogies with our life world (the world as we experience it most directly

Here is a what-if question that may seem absurd: What if there is something (not sure of whether to call it matter or energy) that travels a million times faster than the speed of light? What if this reality were more basic than those forces that seem to travel at the speed of light? What then would become of relativity? Of simultaneity? Wouldn't something analogous to the relativistic paradoxes apply also to this hypothetical reality? These questions may sound ridiculous to a contemporary scientist, but no more than our present beliefs would sound to a "natural philosopher" from a couple of centuries ago. Are all of the more philosophical-sounding assertions made on the basis of relativity (or quantum theory for that matter) capable of being undermined by a yet unanticipated future scientific discovery such as the one I've just now suggested? If so, can we tell which scientifically inspired philosophical insights into nature will never be undermined?

Homeostasis is the sort of equilibrium found in organisms. This equilibrium consists precisely in the maintenance of a state that would be disequilibrium in a non-organism. For example, maintaining the difference in charge between inside and outside the neuronal cell wall.