Post 57  11/15/18

The Human
Dilemma     

In his recent book, Heavens on Earth, Michael Shermer said, "the Second Law of Thermo-dynamics leads to the First Law of Life, which is to get your life in order". For that purpose, he proposed the philosophy of Extropianism1, which is a key concept from the ideology of Transhumanism. . . . .

Post 64  1/11/19

The G*D
of Science

The Big Bang (BB) theory is accepted by most accredited scientists today, even though it implies an ex nihilo creation event. However, in order to dispell any notions of an ante-bang anthro-morphic magician speaking the world into existence, many materialists speculate on the possibility . . .

Post 61  12/25/18

God’s Inscrutable
Plan   

The popular notion that the world is unfolding according to God’s Plan is a sad solution to the Problem of Evil, advising us to just close our eyes, accept the bad with the good, while hoping for a better deal in the next life. Ironically, The Plan theory implies that what’s good or bad for me is irrelevant . . . .

Post 58  11/23/18

Another Crisis
of Meaning     

In a continuation of Skeptic magazine's investigation of the "Jordan Peterson Phenomenon", Stephen Beckner discusses why Peterson's post-postmodern pep-talks have struck a nerve among young people, who are not so much politically right-wing as philosophically disenchanted with PostModernism's . . . .

Post 62  1/04/19

Clockmaker Deity
Updated   

The classical Deist notion of an eternal spiritual creator who — for no apparent reason — trans-formed into a material world, was probably grounded on the common 17th century assump-tion that the universe itself was eternal. But in the 21st century we need to update that theory to conform to the current . . . .

Post 56  11/08/18

Creation vs
Big Bang     

In a creationist YouTube video, an Evolution Theory proponent ridiculed "Creation Science Evangelist" Kent Hovind for his belief in divine creation based on an ancient myth rather than on objective facts. In his re-buttal, Hovind accused the scientist of basing his material-istic worldview on faith in a god-less miracle . . . .

Post 55  10/22/18

Let There Be
Information!     

While reading an introduction to John Milton's Paradise Lost, I found some poetic notions that seem to be analogous to my own theory of Enformationism. That’s an alternative to the main-stream materialist inter-pretation of how the world began in a burst of everything from nothing, . . . .

Post 59  12/07/18

The Ghost in
The Organism   

This book is a 2017 sequel to Terrence Deacon's Incomplete Nature, How Mind Emerged From Matter (2012). Sherman and Deacon have worked together for over 20 years to develop the counter-intuitive and "paradigm challenging" concept of "Absence" as a causal influence in the natural world. . . . .

Post 60  12/19/18

The EnFormAction
Hypothesis   

Unsatisfied with religious myths and scientific paradigms, I have begun to develop my own personal philosophical world-view, based on the hypothesis that immaterial logico-mathe-matical "Information" (in both noun & verb forms) is more fundamental to our reality than the elements of classical . . . .

Post 63  1/08/19

Cosmic
Progression
Graph   

The graph below represents how I envision the creative process of EnFormAction as both the driving force and the program for natural selection. EFA is my term for the natural combination of power & laws that result in the production of a succession of new forms & functions over time. . . . .

Post 65  1/12/19

Intolerant
Minority
Rule

In the third book of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Incerto trilogy, Skin In the Game, he discusses a statistical and sociological topic that is relevant to the BothAnd concept. "It suffices for an intransigent minority . . . to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, . . . .

Post 66  1/14/19

What’s it like

to be G*D?

Hindu Priest Rami Sivan, in a Quora forum response to a question referring to the “soul”, made a distinction that is pertinent to the Enformationism notion of a “person”. He bristled, “Firstly in Vedanta we do not have a concept of a “soul” as per the Abrahamic concept. . . .

Post 67  1/16/19

The Dialectic

Spirit of
History

The 18th century philosopher G. W. F Hegel produced a series of lectures on The Philosophy of World History. Like most rational historians, and unlike many rational scientists, he assumed that the world was progressing in a particular direction, and for some good reason. . . .

Post 68  1/20/19

What is the

Power of
Absence?

Terrence Deacon's 2011 book, goes into great detail to create a plausible hypothesis for solving the mystery of how living organisms suddenly emerged on Earth, after billions of years of spatial expansion & material aggregation had managed to build only simple inorganic chemical systems . . . .

Post 69  1/27/19

Taleb’s Scars
versus
Pinker’s Curves

Nassim Nicholas Taleb suddenly surprised us with his best seller The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable. That insightful work established his credentials as an expert on "fat tails" where fortuitous Dark Swans lurk behind the familiar normalcy of the Bell Curve. . . .