Biogenesis and the Laws of Evidence

Creationists aren’t just operating on a misunderstanding and ignorance of the science (often wilful); they are also operating on broken epistemologies. The case of biogenesis affords us an illustration. I’ve written many articles on this. For example, in...

Why A Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism Is Probably True

I have written a few times on my worldview as a whole—my “philosophy of life.” To be viable I believe any worldview must consist of a complete, consilient, coherent, evidence-based account of the six foundations of knowledge: epistemology (which...

UFOs Are Not That Remarkable

Sometime toward the end of this month the military will release a report on UFOs; unless an extension is granted, but even if one is—I’m sure it’s time-consuming work—I expect the report will be delivered before end of year. Some of it, I...

The Blondé-Jansen Argument from Consciousness

I’ve been asked to assess a bizarre argument for God published recently in Metaphysica (“Proving God without Dualism: Improving the Swinburne-Moreland Argument from Consciousness,” by Ward Blondé and Ludger Jansen, March 2021). I have already rather...

Oh No! Biogenesis Is Impossible?? A Case Study in Creationist Lies

I’ve written on biogenesis before (and before that). It’s even one of the subjects in philosophy in which I’ve had peer reviewed research published. And I have a whole section on it in Sense and Goodness without God, my survey of naturalism as a...

Crucifixion Quake! An Unusual Movie about an Unusual Passion

Years ago I sat for a day of interviews for a film by Marco Bazzi about a geologist obsessed with the alleged earthquake at the time of Christ’s death. The resulting movie is now available (you can find it in most of the usual places, including Amazon Prime or...

Ancient Theories of Gravity: What Was Lost?

Everyone rags on Aristotle for totally phoning in his theory of gravity. But in perspective, (a) Aristotle was a biologist, not a physicist, so his not being the best at physics should not be held to any more account than when a modern biologist goofs some esoteric...

Galileo’s Goofs: Lessons We Can Learn from Failure

I’ve written before about the importance and methodology of thought experiments, and how they are often screwed up even by professional philosophers (see On Hosing Thought Experiments). Today I’m going to pull a page out of the history of science to...

Actually, Fryer Proved Systemic Racism in American Policing

People denying racism is a systemic problem in American policing repeatedly cite as “proof” a study published by Roland Fryer, which they particularly love citing because Fryer is black. The thing is though, Fryer’s study proved systemic racism in...

Return of the Sex Police: A Renewed Abuse of Science to Outlaw Porn

A few years ago The Washington Post published a ridiculous propaganda piece by anti-porn activist (and feminist sociology professor) Gail Dines, “Is Porn Immoral? That Doesn’t Matter: It’s a Public Health Crisis,” tagline, “The science is now beyond...

The Latest Proposal for a Probability of Abiogenesis

A new, peer reviewed scientific paper has been published that attempts to calculate an actual rate of abiogenesis on cosmic scales, “Emergence of Life in an Inflationary Universe” by Tomonori Totani, in Scientific Reports 10 (2020). It is pretty good, but...

PragerU to The Internet: Science Proves God, You Pinko Commies!

PragerU claims in multiple conservative propaganda videos that science has proved God exists and atheists should just go stuff it already. I’ll tackle this nonsense today—just to be useful, since most of PragerU’s critiques online target its lies,...

Bayesian Statistics vs. Bayesian Epistemology

Bayesian statistics is now routine in almost all knowledge fields. But I often encounter people who confuse “Bayesian statistics” with “Bayesian epistemology” or even just “Bayesian reasoning.” I’ll get critics writing me who...