Skyhooks and Cranes
It is not that there is no “watchmaker”; there is no “watch.” Looking for one frames the problem the wrong way.
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Is Evolution a Secular Religion?
Does God have a sense of humour? It is in fact an interesting theological point. We usually think that a person with a sense of humour is better than one without – indeed, to say of Jaques in As You Like that “he is pretty humourless” is to say that Jaques lacks something which makes…
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Halacha, Kabbalah, and Filosofia
I have enjoyed reading the correspondence in response to my essay about Judaism and science. I learned from all of the responses, most of which need no further comment from me. However, two of the pieces raised questions on which I should add some remarks. Nelson Rivera (Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia) correctly pointed out…
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Genes and the Adapted Mind
The system of inheritance of ideas is independent of the system of inheritance of genes. All this is pointing steadily to a difference in being human, to a complex mind indeed adapted for culture, that is, to a distinctive human genius.
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The Good Samaritan and His Genes
The fundamental claim is that selfish people out reproduce unselfish ones, but superimposed on that is the claim that (really) selfish people who are self-deceived into thinking they are unselfish out reproduce selfish people who know their own selfishness.
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Not the Baker, but the Bake-off – part of the Genes, Genesis, and Gods discussion
“Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.” That has got to be one of my all-time favorite Zen zingers. When I first heard it, my response was an emphatic “yes.” Over time, that quote began to burn like a troubling Koan. So did another all-time favorite I first met with unbridled enthusiasm. The Third Patriarch…
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Distributed and Shared Genetic Value
Since genes are not moral agents, they cannot be selfish, and, equally, they cannot be altruistic. But genes can transmit information.
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Genes, Genesis, and God
Below are two messages, which continue the thread with Holmes Rolston on “Genes, Genesis, and God.” The first message is from Paul Arveson, a frequent contributor to Meta from Rockville, MD. Arveson agrees with Rolston’s rebuttal to Michael Ruse and curiously calls on the French atheist biologist Jacques Monod, with his concept of “gratuity,” to…
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On Scientific and Religious Truths
Attitudes of practitioners By and large, in the writings of theologians and scholars on science and religion, the following elements may be detected: (a) One tries to establish the concordances between science and the religion of one’s own affiliation/upbringing. (b) One tries to defend, justify, and/or interpret the religions tenets and doctrines. (c)…
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Selfish Genes and Inclusive Values
Each organism is in pursuit of—that is, values—its own proper life, which is all that the (nonhuman) individual organism either can or ought to pursue. It turns out, however, that values can be held intrinsically only as they are inclusively distributed.