That’s some memory hole

For those of you looking for audio of that debate with Simmons, you can download an MP3 now. I’m actually a little bit impressed that the radio station has enough integrity to retain the file and make it available to their listeners.

I can’t say as much about Uncommon Descent. They briefly put up a thread to discuss the debate as it was happening, the comments accumulated, and many conceded the debate to me (while, of course, disagreeing with me). It wasn’t a troll thread, no vituperation was going on, it was just a fairly ordinary set of comments with nothing objectionable, I though…but then, poof, today it is gone. It is preserved at After the Bar Closes.

I don’t like to do this; even when discussing the work of the anti-scientists in the creationist movement, we should link to their work. But I’m not going to link to Uncommon Descent ever again. It’s not that they’re wrong or that I disagree with them, but that the site is profoundly dishonest and unreliable, and can’t be trusted. I’m not going to link to a site which will freely shift and modify their content to polish their image, since who knows where any link will end up.

Are you ready for another debate?

I’m engaged in battle again this next week, on 7 February, on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. This one is going to be very different than that last one, though; the other side isn’t some ignorant wacko, but will be Loyal Rue, a Templeton award winner, and someone who has a rather more nuanced (I’m tempted to say “fluffy”) vision of religion. I suspect that it will be much, much less antagonistic, and more of an open discussion.

The questions we’ll be debating discussing are:

  • Are the religious and scientific worldviews (or epistemologies) antithetical to one another?

  • Are the processes of scientific thought antithetical to the processes of religious thought?

  • Are religion and science both useful in the search for truth and meaning?

  • Do you think that science can inform/confirm/suggest religious “truths” or vice versa?

  • Is philosophy more like a science or more like religion?

My answers will be yes, yes, no, no, neither (Hey! I’m done! Boy, that’s going to be a short debate.), but I think I’ll probably have to spend more time defining what I mean by those answers and how I interpret religion and science, and that’s where Dr Rue and I will probably slide right past each other. We’ve been corresponding a bit and we may also get into the issue of teleology and Kauffman’s recent work (about which I have very mixed feelings).

It should be fun as long as you don’t come expecting beat-downs and knife fights — come to think and argue, instead.

Hooray! I failed a test!

My God Delusion index is 0.

Perhaps your score is a little higher, and you’re concerned about it. You, too, wish to achieve the perfection of a nice, uncluttered zero, with god delusions completely absent from your life. Here’s help. Watch the video below multiple times; with each viewing your GDI should drop. Stop when it hits zero.

Now…does anyone have a similar way to reduce a cholesterol index?