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When the question is asked "why do we trust ancient texts as accurate", the next question could be what is meant by "trust" and "accurate"? The word "trust" implies some method to determine veracity. What would that be? Accuracy could mean that the text somehow gets the ontology and/or...

No, I have not changed my argument. I have never argued that because something is popular or meaningful, that is an argument for its truth. Sure, it's my subjective opinion. If all the implications of a position are brought to light, others can make their own evaluation.

Just because something is meaningful may not be a good reason to cling to it, but it can give one pause if the alternative offers no real meaning at all. It can prompt a more thorough examination of the arguments and lead to a more considered decision. I think all the implications of a...

Right, there is some of that and it needs to be opposed as well. However, in my experience the vast majority of religious people are just ordinary people with all their foibles who find some some meaning in their religious views and have no desire to impose their beliefs on others or push an...

No, I'm not arguing from popularity that there is veracity to religious thinking. In fact, I think a lot of it is not reasonable. However, if there is an agenda to dissuade people from something that provides them with meaning and solace then I think it is fair to examine what worldview would...

Right. But lately there has been an onslaught of prominent people painting with a broad brush against religion, per se. This is way too simplistic, both theologically and practically. There are billions of religious adherents who find great meaning and solace in their religious beliefs. I...

Right, they are different fields but there are presuppositions in play in both that can be explored to determine how well they correlated with one and other. In science often the presupposition is that reality is constituted solely by means of necessity (law) and chance (as in quantum...

Just an idea I thought about, perhaps with no merit. What fascinates me, however, is that so few scientists try to come up with any idea that would maintain any sense of their own humanity (i.e. meaning, morality, and in some sense free). Most seem perfectly willing to be cast as automatons with...

Yes. There is one idea that I find interesting but have no idea how much merit there is to it. Some scientists think it is possible that there is quantum coherence in the ion channels of the brain. If this is true then perhaps there could be some intentional biasing of probabilities in a...

Yes, this correlates with my notion of how teleology works. There are constraints and they are life giving. If there is teleology it must operate within those constraints.

You must have misread that sentence. As I said according to the putative scientific method the claim of ID is not science. Personally I don't care what you call investigations into teleology in evolution. What I'm interested in is whether it is reasonable to think that there is teleology in...

The concept of evidence in the ID debate is an interesting one. Now according to the falsifiable rule of the scientific method, neither an ID claim or a not-ID claim can be considered science. So for a person who is interested in the issue, where does that leave them? For me the test I employ...

OK, but one wouldn't think that from all the debates and acrimony over the years. So from what you said, the debate is not a scientific one. So what is it? Is it merely a philosophical and/or ideological debate with a lot of data thrown in to support subjective inferences? Now clearly...

I hadn't thought about this before but there could be a issue in the use of methodological naturalism itself. Now as a method I don't see a problem (i.e. not considering intentional causes). But scientists would have to be careful about scientific claims. They would have to ban the use of the...

I've heard this before but something just dawned on me. Folks like Dawkins claim that there is no intention (i.e. design) involved in evolution. Now I don't know if he (or others) specifically makes this as a scientific claim, but if they do then it would need to be falsifiable to be...

Terms like dualism and monism need to be unpacked to be understandable. This gets pretty convoluted fast. This is why I prefer to think about distinctions. To me its seems clear that there are pretty strong ontic like distinctions in process thought. One way to approach this is to talk about...

This is similar to Berkeley's "to be is to be perceived". Whereas Berkeley started out with a subjective idealism, I think he shifted more to an objective idealism like this when he ran into the problem of the contiguous whole. What's interesting about the "eternal memory" you mentioned is...

It's not my thread but I'd love to hear what you have to say. I find process thought interesting but it's ontology is too dualistic for my taste. Also it has a real problem with prayer.

Panpsychism (everything has a mind) is sometimes offered as an explanatory avenue in various fields to address some scientific problems. Most notably the "hard problem" of consciousness (i.e. conscious experience). Leading consciousness philosopher David Chalmers is open to this because...

One issue that might be relevant to how one approaches the truth value of the ancient metaphysical texts or, for that matter, any metaphysical system is the level of tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. Over the centuries up to the current day there have been many strains of thought...