Science is a trial-and-error process that seeks truth by testing hypotheses and discarding those that fail. Since I’m a philosopher rather than a scientist, the articles in this section tend to focus more on the big picture than on experimental details. Most of the articles here are on evolution, which is a very simple idea with a wealth of explanatory power.
I think every post of mine on evolution gets around to explaining why it is not a fully random process. But since the idea that evolution operates by mere chance is such a common misunderstanding, I wanted to write a post that focuses directly on that idea.
With some more scientific details added, this video from Stated Clearly expresses the same basic idea as I did in Abiogenesis by Natural Selection, which is that life evolved from non-living replicators that were RNA or something similar.
We are robots, literally. Life emerged when non-living self-replicators built autonomous machines to house, sustain, and reproduce them. We are robots, built by DNA, programmed by genes and memes.
Paley’s teleological argument for the existence of God argues that the universe is designed, but it has a hard time explaining flaws in the design, such as death, suffering, disease, and conflict.
Evolution by natural selection didn’t start with life. Anything that can replicate itself can evolve. Life came about from the evolution of non-living replicators.
Although alien life may come in a wide variety of forms, aliens who can build spacecraft and get off-world may have more in common with us.
R. Webster Kehr thinks that math and genetics disprove evolution. In each one of his objections, though, he shows that he doesn’t understand natural selection. This in-depth response explains where he makes his errors, and in doing so sheds greater light on how natural selection and evolution work.
Creationists make a distinction between microevolution and macroevolution, maintaining that only the former ever happens. As this article explains, their expectations that macroevolution should happen suddenly are misguided, and enough microevolution is all it takes for macroevolution to happen.
In a podcast I listened to, a Christian maintained that God is required for scientific laws, and an atheist maintained that scientific laws are not as real as the Christian understood them to be. I disagree with them both, and here I explain why God is not required for the existence of scientific laws.
The Atheist Nightmare asks, “If you want to claim that your brain was not intelligently designed, then shouldn’t your entire belief system come into question? It would seem to me that you would have no reason to trust your own thoughts.” So this is not just about creationism vs evolution. Here is my response.