Teleologues

Although this guy is en no route to Heaven, there are some avowed Christians who might fare better. Tree Of Woe last Sunday summarised some post-Enlightenment thinkers he'd recommend.

This post shall restrict itself to the actual philosophers he calls out; e.g. Pinker's The Blank Slate is decidedly Enlightening, so we're not touching that further here. We are also not getting into whether T.o.W. is right that we need a wholly new religion. This looks a lot like Jim's Blog or (more coyly) V.D.: both arguing we should go back to one of our older ones, which both imply would be Byzantine in practice. We shall leave that question, as they say, to the philosophers.

Henry Stapp, following up on Quantum Theory and Free Will, suggests the Stoic logos for a universal Mind. Whether this incarnated itself upon our Earth is another question.

Also up is Roger Penrose for The Emperor’s New Mind, which (says T.o.W.) dovetails that. Penrose seems aligned with Eric Weinstein, both of whom Peter Woit endorsed back when he thought Weinstein was honest. (Whether you think Woit is honest is, again, another question.) In mathematics, Woit follows Penrose mainly for his twistor theory although Penrose has got awarded part of a Nobel for Physics. Branching out to a third direction, Penrose thinks the soul is quantum and not mechanical; T.o.W. would summarise it that mind is just a computer is false.

I had to look up Stephen Meyer and Thomas Nagel. Meyer back in 2013 tried to revive Behe and Dembski with Darwin's Doubt, but that book wasn't good. As of The Return of the God Hypothesis, though; Stephen Meyer has earned Shermer's respect. Nagel might have done better with Mind and Cosmos, arguing for teleology.

Teleology has been argued at least since the Greeks, who first stumbled onto the Anthropic Principle and came up with some creative notions around it, of which the Divine was one. The Multiverse was another which, of course, Woit and Penrose cannot stomach.

I stand by that we cannot have any of this in standard biology classes, but... I've also long promoted teaching creationism as history-of-philosophy, since finding out about David Sedley in 2006ish.