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In "The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions" Rodney Brooks argues that we ought to push back against mistaken predictions about artificial intelligence. Optimism about A.I. has simultaneously led to utopian visions of a workless future and fears of an AI that might destroy us. His main point is that we ought to stop falling for AI hype . First, if we don't know what something will be able to do, we will have a hard time knowing what it won't be able to do: If something is magic, it is hard to know its limitations...This is a problem we all have with imagined future technology. If it is far enough away from the technology we have and understand today, then we do not know its limitations. And if it becomes indistinguishable from magic, anything one says about it is no longer falsifiable... [But] nothing in the universe is without limit. Watch out for arguments about future technology that is magical. Such an argument can never be refuted. It is a faith-based a...

Physicists puzzle over how the universe got going. The most plausible answer that does not rely on the existence of God is that the universe emerged from a 'big bang'. However, it is not clear that the theory stands up to scrutiny. Apparently, the theory seems to entail that there would be no universe. The New York Post reports the following : Our existence is one giant, unexplainable head scratch. The universe shouldn’t technically exist, according to top scientists who have spent their careers trying to figure out how the beginning of everything didn’t immediately destroy itself. Apparently, the big bang theory of the origin of the universe entails that there is a difference between matter and antimatter sufficient to explain the present dominance of matter. Apart from electric charge, no one has been able to find one. The trouble is that if there is no such difference (and no explanation), then there is no explanation for the existence of the universe, at least not an e...

I recently got into a debate over young earth creationism. One objection to the view went as follows: "A scientific theory is a concise set of statements which has broad explanatory and predictive power within its purview. In order to be considered scientific, a hypothesis must predict what must or must not be observed if it is true. If such things are not observed/observed, then the hypothesis is considered falsified. [Scientific Creationism] does not espouse any idea which makes exclusive predictions about what must or must not be observed. Every biological observation falls under "God made it that way" or borrows from evolutionary theory and says "it adapted that way." Every piece of challenging evidence (i.e. all of it) is explained as "God could have..." In other words, no matter what is observed, it's considered acceptable under [a creation] "theory," while nothing could apparently falsify it. Thus, it does not meet the neces...

In clear-cut cases of crime, terror, and other instances of wicked human behavior, you'd think we'd all be on the same page. But we're not. We argue over it, especially if we talk politics. It seems we can all call something bad, but when we talk about what we or the government should do about it, we can't agree. Why not? The answer is fairly simple and comes down to our views of human nature. In other words, the argument is not primarily political but a question of worldview.  Consider any event in which a person has done some immoral action. Now, consider why the action was taken. What is the explanation for the action? You will probably pursue one of two lines of thought. Either you will find no further explanation necessary - a person commits a crime because the nature of human beings includes the property of being highly prone to evil actions or you will seek an explanation outside the agent in question, some feature of their social fabric or other enviro...

In honor of earth day, here are three fallacious earth day arguments: The first one suggests that scientific research strongly entails some particular government policy. It is used to suggest that any disagreement over government policy is directly related to one's attitude toward science. Here is a formal version: If you accept science, then you accept policy P. You reject policy P Therefore, you reject science A good example of this sort of fallacy is provided by Bill Nye (a good source of silly fallacies , by the way). "All science is political" he said. And then he proceeded to bash the highly qualified scientist who disagreed with Nye's position on the role of government in reducing emissions. The problem with the argument is that even if one accepts the most 'alarmist' conclusions about human damage of the environment, this does not entail any particular government policy. The second sort of argument links a worldview with science such tha...

There is a clock in DNA. Does it show how old the species is or not? We have less than 5% of DNA's function. This is small fruit and does not conclusively tell us that ancestry is common or not. So, what do the number of DNA differences show? DNA resides in the nucleus and mitochondrial DNA resides in a separate part of the cell. The mitochondria is passed on through the maternal line (the sperm unites only with the nucleus). DNA has its own language comprising of four letters, ATCG. We can compare two DNA strands. When there is similarity and difference we can see it. DNA strands might be 80% similar and 20% different. We have a huge database of DNA and we can make some conclusions. Evolution says that all differences are the result of mutation and the product of change over time. So, a chimpanzee and a human. Differences = mutations x time x 2. So, what would happen given 6 million years. If this is so, then there would be something like 25,000 mutations. But there a...

Dennis Venema I am sitting waiting for part 2. Some comments on what I've heard so far: So far the talks have not focused on Adam. Instead, we have heard arguments for the thesis that the similarities of traits across species do not show common ancestry and that they do. Neither argument is conclusive since both arguments conclude from that the data does not disconfirm the respective theories. Conclusions are thin. Design was a feature of Dr Jeanson's talk - all the data is compatible with design. But this is true even if evolution is true. The data would not be radically different given either evolution or young earth. This might be a fairly predictable conclusion given the data presented by Dr Jeanson, but interestingly, the data presented by Dr Venema is similar - none of if shows evolution over young earth. So, nothing of what we have heard so far is conclusive for either side of the debate. Okay, Dr Venema is on. Here are my notes: In the transition from geocent...

Dr Venema from BioLogos is professor of Biology at Trinity Western University in BC, Canada. Dr Venema is a theistic evolutionist (or evolutionary creationist, as he calls it). Here are my notes: Three assumptions: If every square inch of creation is under the Lordship of Christ, then science is an act of worship.  If God is the author of both books--the Bible and nature--then there cannot be a contradiction.  If there is apparent conflict between our study of the Bible and nature, it is only apparent.  A theory is an explanatory framework that has survived testing and makes accurate predictions.  Evolution is this kind of theory. It makes accurate predictions, holds up to testing and has not yet suffered from disconfirming evidence. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (Dobzhansky). Speciation is much like the development of languages over time. Populations become separated and language changes a develops through incre...

[DISCLAIMER: I'm 'live-blogging' so there will be errors, maybe many] I'm at the Evolution, Genetics, and the Historical Adam Conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The question for the conference is: Did Adam exist? The debate has achieved critical mass and now has its own Four Views book, an accomplishment reserved for only the most debated of topics. The speakers today represent two sides of the debate - Dr Nathaniel Jeanson argues that the Genesis account should be taken literally - six days, less than 10,000 years ago, and a guy, formed from the dust and the breath of God, called Adam, the first man. Dr Venema argues that Adam... well I don't yet know but will let you know when he speaks... presumably that Adam, at least as Genesis describes him, did not exist. Both represent leading Christian organizations devoted to their respective positions. Answers In Genesis, an organization known for a massive Noah's Ark in Indiana and fr...

A Christian worldview maintains that in a sense the world has no bottom. The doctrine of creation out of nothing denies the eternal existence of any ‘prime matter’. There is no matter that is just ‘there,’ before God starts to work. Rather, God created everything, not just structure on top of previously existing prime matter. And God created everything by his word. The word introduces the structure and the meaning. The law of God is the continued structure for the world. The world has no ultimate independence from this word or law of God, but is utterly dependent. Understanding the world does not mean understanding the prime matter, because there is no such thing. It means understanding the world as governed by the word of God. And that can only mean understanding the word of God, for that word simply is the wisdom that gives rationality to everything we see. [1] If science is in need of redemption, then there must be something wrong with it. But what? Vern Poythress argues that...

Bill Nye  Bill Nye argues that an abortion is analogous to an egg that does not attach to a woman's uterine wall ( here ). So... If a fertilized egg is a human, then the woman is responsible for the death of any human that does not attach to a uterine wall.  The woman is not responsible for the death of the human.  Therefore the fertilized egg is not a human and abortion is justifiable.  This is a bad analogy. An abortion is not analogous to an egg that does not attach to a woman's uterine wall. No one is blaming anyone for miscarriages or for fertilized eggs not attaching to the uterine wall because no one has done anything obviously blameworthy. The issue is the intentional abortion of a pregnancy. Consequently, (1) is false and the argument is unsound. If, on the other hand, intentionally aborting a pregnancy is morally blameworthy, then we have a duty to prevent it.

"Science merely reports the facts and innocently develops theories to explain phenomena. Theology, on the other hand, is only a matter of interpretation. You can read the Bible how you want and interpret it according to your presuppositions. Science can get to the "facts" but theology only gets to someone's opinion." A stereotypical statement perhaps, and not one many actual scientists make, but a common enough accusation made in conversations about theology's relationship with the natural sciences.

Ian Barbour has died. He was 90. Barbour's life was spent attempting to solve one important problem - how science and religion relate to one another. He wrote: If science and religion were totally independent, the possibility of conflict would be avoided, but the possibility of constructive dialogue and mutual enrichment would also be ruled out. We do not experience life as neatly divided into separate compartments; we experience it in wholeness and interconnectedness before we develop particular disciplines to study different aspects of it. There are also biblical grounds for the conviction that God is Lord of our total lives and of nature, rather than of a separate 'religious' sphere.

Just how do we relate science and faith, specifically, the Christian faith? Christians who take their Bible seriously will also take reason seriously. God is eminently reasonable; one could even say God is reason. But all too often there is a feeling that Christians are caught between irrational, reason and science denying positions and compromise with their faith. Plantinga outlines three approaches to the problem. First, the two-truth  approach. According to this view one might affirm a proposition in science and deny it in theology. Second, the truth-from-a-standpoint approach suggests that we can hold to apparently contradictory propositions since we can be sure of both being true according to the discipline in which they are held. What we don't know is how the two propositions fit together. Not knowing how   the propositions fit together shouldn't diminish our belief in either. The  territorial  approach suggests "science... properly deals with matters ...