Category Archives: Philosophy, Science & Religion
A Play Without A Script
Shakespeare once wrote: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; Sometimes I think that we humans behave like actors in a self-directed play that seemed to have lost track of its script, and that … Continue reading
Posted in People, Politics & Culture, Philosophy, Science & Religion
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Can Something Come From Nothing?
For some folks the question whether something can come from nothing might appear meaningful in discussions around the creation of the world. For instance, how did the world come into being, and what was there before it came into being: … Continue reading
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Mind Over Matter
In a recent Scientific American article dated April 19 titled “Should Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?” Bernardo Kastrup muses over the fact that inexplicable lab results may be telling us we’re on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm. … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged Bernardo Kastrup, Kant, mental realm, objective knowledge, Paradigm Shift, physical realm, Quantum Anomalies, Schopenhauer, scientific observation, Spinoza, subjective knowledge, Thomas Kuhn
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Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence has been in the news a lot lately, mainly because more and more people at all levels of society are starting to recognize its potential, in whatever area of human activity. From a briefing paper published by the … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged Artificial Intelligence, evolution, homo sapiens, what it means to be human
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Evolution in Transition
Neuroscientists have described the human brain as the most complex biological structure in the known universe, containing hundreds of billions of cells, and trillions of connections controlling every thought, feeling, movement and function of our bodies. If this proves anything, … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion, Uncategorized
Tagged evolution, evolutionary objectives, organizational complexity, teleological process, the human brain
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The World is Larger than the Sum of its Parts
As I stated up front – in so many words – I’m writing this primarily for myself in the attempt to figure out what the world is all about beyond the twists and turns that life can throw our way, … Continue reading
Posted in People, Politics & Culture, Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged evolution, religion, the future, the larger context, the meaning of life, the state of the world
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The Substance of the World
Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish extraction who lived from 1632-1677. Spinoza strongly rejected the notion of a providential God – the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, in complete control of all things; he claims that the … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged anthropomorphic God, Christian-Judaeo, cosmos, Einstein, God, religion, Spinoza, substance
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In Pursuit of a Greater Good
It is difficult not to get seriously depressed by the kind of news you get today, such as reports about the absolute savagery in the ongoing civil war in Syria by survivors of a deadly attack in Khan Sheikhoun describing chemical … Continue reading
Posted in People, Politics & Culture, Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged faith, Farvardin Yasht, primitive tribal laws, religion, sacrifice, Shariah Law, the good, worship, Zoroaster
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The World as Form and Function
Reality is created by observers in the universe – John Archibald Wheeler, Theoretical Physicist (1911-2008) Today I am revisiting the views held by Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Idea (1818), and his rejection of naïve realism, or what has been … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged cosmos, evolution, form, function, Kant, life, matter, Schopenhauer, thing-in-itself, universe, world
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The Limits of Our World
Given that there are limitations to what we can achieve with our bodies in a physical sense – e.g., how high we can jump, or how fast we can run – it seems reasonable to think there are also limits … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Science & Religion
Tagged human cortex, intellect, limits of the world, sentiency, the world
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