I just put up a post over at Wheat and Tares called “Reason as a Guide to Reality.”
This will start a ‘series’ of sorts for me where I wend my way through several topics I find of interest and intermix science and religion in my own sort of way. I invite my M* friends to participate on these.
The “main” line of thought will be on Wheat and Tares for now. (And probably will be for at least the first 20 or so posts.) But I am planning to amp up my participation on M* by adding many additional related thoughts through posts here that give more examples of what I am talking about — or at least are interesting and thus worth posting.
These are topics that are very important to me. In many ways, I’m expessing my deepest most profound beliefs, albeit it won’t be obvious at first. But this is ‘core of me’ so to speak. I think many of you will find it interesting.
(I think Geoff will like it quite a bit. I thought of him a lot while writing some of these posts I have planned.)
Here are some topics I plan to eventually write about, just to wet your appetite (hopefully.)
- How to science and religion relate? (Hint: I doubtful of the ‘separate magisterium’ approach.)
- Is it ‘rational’ to believe in God?
- Is it ‘rational’ to disbelieve in God?
- What does it even mean when we say “rational”?
- Are we correct to pursue rationality?
- Are faith and rationality at odds with each other?
- Are human beings rational?
- How does science work?
- Why does it work?
- How do we progress in knowledge?
- Who was right, Kuhn, Bacon, or Popper?
- Does knowledge exist physically?
- What are religions?
- What is the relationship between Believing and ‘liberal’ religions?
- Why do ‘neutral’ discussions like Sunstone always turn mostly disbelieving?
- Do Mormons really disbelieve the Orthodox Trinity doctrine?
- What is consciousness?
- Are human beings computers?
- What are ‘intelligences’ mentioned in our scriptures? (Obviously any answer I could give would be purely speculative.)
- Will computers one day think? (I’m was computer science major and I recently picked up interests in AI and have been reading up on it. You might be suprised at my answers here.)
- Why is it that on paper I look like a NOM but in pratice I’m a “conservative” believer?
- Why is polygamy not immoral in some cases? (Not sure I have the courage to touch this one.)
- Is the Bible obviously not inspired because it legalizes slavery?
- Does beauty objectively exist?
- Does morality objectively exist?
- Should we trust our moral intuitions?
- What is the relationship between organic evolution and how we gain knowledge?
- Can we live without faith?
Well, you get the idea. A seeming hodge podge of many thoughts but ultimately, it seems to me, all profoundedly related. Participate there and here and see if I actually do end up addressing the list above.