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Theoretical Philosophy » Is there a Thomist argument for Biblical truth? » 2/25/2020 4:25 pm

 While the Thomist argument for God is strong, I do wonder if it is possible  to make an argument that shows the God encountered in the bible is the same as the God that Thomism demonstrates. 

So far, I do not think that the historical argument for Resurrection is strong. I want to see if there is some other way of connecting the divine being shown by Aquinas is definitely revealed in the Bible.  

 

Theoretical Philosophy » Mind, Computationalism, and Physicalism » 9/12/2015 3:12 pm

Most of the people that I have seen using the computational theory of mind do think that it is purely physicalist.
In fact most of them use it as a kind of proof of physicalism.

They say that your desktop computer is purely physical and so are you.

They say that the brain is the hardware and the mind is the software. But they mean that the software is really just the set of functions that the material brain carries out. 

Notice that Edward Feser doesn't try to refute the theory by saying that physical stuff can't think. Instead he argues that the states of our computers are indeterminate. They have their meaning imposed upon them from the outside, from their users and programmers. Our own minds are not indeterminate in this way. We don't require some ourside agency to interpret my thoughts in order for me to think.

 

Theoretical Philosophy » What is the demographic profile of the atheists? Who are they exactly » 9/12/2015 2:04 pm

I have heard that most atheists are middle to upper class white men. Apparently you are more likely to be an atheist if you make more than $100,000 per year. Only certain parts of the world have significant numbers of atheists.

If this is true, then atheism isn't really a universal movement that includes all ethnicities and cultures. It is a very ethnically/culturally particular fringe movenment. It would be accurate to call it elitest.

What professions tend to attract the most atheists? Most people would think it is scientists, but I just heard of research that shows students of the arts are more likely to become atheists than those in other fields. This isn't surprising to me. 

There were a huge number of prominent artists in the twentieth century who were atheists: painters, poets, playwrights, film-makers. Some of them were also communists because socialism was such a major force in Europe. I remember my first year literature class. The professor started off by talking about the Death of God as a major theme in Modernism. We read essays like those of Albert Camus who told us that life was pointless labour, and Virginia Woolf who stated that there was "certainly and emphatically no God." I actually heard a professor say that nobody believes in God anymore. I read the writings of many modern artists who were quite sure that we could no longer believe in anything transcendent. The painter Francis Bacon said "man is a useless animal" and he portrayed people that way in his paintings.

The profession that really seems to attract large numbers of atheists is journalism. I don't think I've ever heard the news media ever say anything positive about religion. Many times I have heard interviewers say "but isn't religion a matter of faith?"

So academia, the upper classes, the art world, and the news media seem to be the areas where atheism thrives. 


 

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