Quote of the week

From James McGrath, on the Progressive Christian Channel at patheos:

At long last I got around to watching the movie Prometheus – aka Intelligent Design: The Motion Picture. It is a great film for those interested in the intersection of religion and science fiction.

cite: Prometheus

I thought that was an interesting way of putting things.

At least some people in the ID community do see the movie as having to do with the intersection of ID and science.  Here are some relevant posts at the Uncommon Descent blog:

• Prometheus: Maybe critics prefer stupid movies that people over 14 don’t care about?
• Memo to NYT reviewer re Prometheus: Creationism for geeks is still creationism
• God or Alien, who done it? A review of Prometheus

I’ll note that James McGrath is the author of a book titled “Religion and Science Fiction.”

 

Bad news for Chicago?

I am hearing local news reports of discussions that could lead to Rupert Murdoch purchasing the Chicago Tribune (and the LA Tribune).  I’m not a big Tribune fan anyway – it has always been politically right of center.  But Murdoch ownership could only make things worse.

Link: Murdoch’s News Corp In Talks To Buy Chicago Tribune: Report

On David Deutsch on AI

Physicist David Deutsch has an interesting article on AI in aeon magazine.  I thank Ant for bringing it to my attention in a comment on another blog.  My view of AI is rather different from that of Deutsch, though I agree with some of what he has to say.

I started this blog in order to discuss some of what I have learned about human intelligence, as a result of my own study of AI.  It turns out that I have not actually posted much that is directly on the topic of AI.  So I am using this post mainly as a vehicle to present my own views, though I will present them in the form of commentary on Deutsch’s article.  I’ll note that Deutsch uses the acronym AGI for Artificial General Intelligence, by which he means something like the intelligence of humans to be created artificially.

This might be a first

Amazing.  Cornelius Hunter has a post at his blog, that is not an argument against evolution.

• In a few Minutes Felix Baumgartner Will Jump

 

On science and scientism

Coel Hellier has a new post on his blog, on the subject of scientism:

• Scientism and questions science cannot answer.

The tagline of coelsblog is “Defending Scientism” so it is no surprise that Coel is a proponent of scientism.  However, his post also brings out some points on the nature of science, and that’s what I want to discuss here.

Agreed. And the rest of Western Europe needs to follow suit.

coelsblog

Here is a joke:

What’s the difference between Mark Bridger and Santa Claus?

You can work out the punchline from the fact that Santa comes in December.

Sick? Tasteless? Funny? Offensive? All of those? Or is it so bad that it is criminal — literally? (If you’re not aware of the context of the joke try here.)

The answer, according to magistrate Bill Hudson is that it is criminal, literally, and worthy of a 12-week jail sentence.

“The reason for the sentence is the seriousness of the offence, the public outrage that has been caused and we felt there was no other sentence this court could have passed which conveys to you the abhorrence that many in society feel this crime should receive.”

And the “crime”? It was someone posting the above joke (plus milder ones) on their own Facebook page, a page that “was available to a large…

View original post 2,063 more words

The primrose path

Wikipedia, in its definition of “primrose path” says:

Not to be confused with “led up the ‘garden path'”, which is an idiom suggesting that one is being deceived or led astray.

Strictly speaking, I am making that confusion.  For this is about a blog post by Cornelius Hunter, where he unwittingly shows that he has led himself up the garden path.  His blog post is, in part, about primroses and that is the basis for the title that I chose.

On the religion front

A few comments and links on families, atheism and abortion.