Specter of Reason

The following paragraph is from a new article I just published: Allowing Religion in Public School. "Any thorough discussion of evolutionary theory will touch on what makes it of such scientific and historical importance: namely, that it explains how the appearance of design was created in the absence of a designer. This naturally involves our ideas about design, designers, and how the complexity of life can be misleading. Indeed, the tendency for people to think of life as the result of a designer is so widespread, I cannot imagine how discussing it in a biology classroom would be out of place or a waste of time." Edited on July 12th: Here are a couple more articles I recently wrote on the topic: "Is Intelligent Design a Science?" "The Best Case for Intelligent Design"

As reported in a new New York Times editorial , " Louisiana's Latest Assault on Darwin ," Louisiana's State Legislature has passed a new bill ( full text here ) relating to how evolutionary theory is taught in public schools. The idea of the bill is to encourage critical thinking about not only evolutionary theory, but also other politically-charged scientific topics, including global warming and human cloning. The bill explicitly opposes the inclusion of religious teachings in public education and allows teachers to supplement the approved textbooks with their own materials to promote objective analysis. Like many scientsits and atheists, the author of the editorial is afraid that the new bill will create the false impression that evolutionary theory is not a well-established scientific fact, writing, "it would have the pernicious effect of implying that evolution is only weakly supported and that there are valid competing scientific theories when there are not...

Note to the reader: You do not need to read any of my previous posts to understand this one, assuming you are at least somewhat familiar with Frank Jackson's knowledge argument. That said, this post is a sort of appendix to my last post, " Testability, Omniscience and The Knowledge Argument " (essentially a long email I sent to Professor Torin Alter), which was a follow up to my first entry on the knowledge argument . So, if you're not familiar with the knowledge argument, you may want to start there. Professor Alter has promised to respond to my lengthy email when he has a little more time. I must again comment on the extraordinary generosity he has shown me, since he has no professional or personal obligation to respond to my emails. While I am awaiting his response, I offer the following elucidation of my views through a brief discussion of the analytic-synthetic distinction. Traditionally, analytic statements are said to be those which are true by virtue of th...

I am extremely grateful to Professor Torin Alter, who specializes in the philosophy of mind. I emailed him my previous post on the knowledge argument , and he was kind enough to reply with some guidance and feedback. He informed me that other philosophers (including himself) have questioned P2. He also directed me towards avenues for further research, including his entry for The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: " The Knowledge Argument Against Physicalism ." Then he showed even more generosity by engaging my ideas. Specifically, he corrected my error in regarding P2 as a stipulation, as opposed to an assumption (I have since corrected the mistake); and he expressed strong doubts about my claim regarding the inconceivability of omniscience. He suggested that the notion of omniscience might in fact be a valuable guiding principle for science. What follows is my response to Professor Alter. It is a defense of my views on omniscience and a more elaborate criticism of th...