Long before the universal Turing machine

"...for while reason is a universal instrument that is alike available on every occasion, these organs, on the contrary, need a particular arrangement for each particular action; whence it must be morally impossible that there should exist in any machine a diversity of organs sufficient to enable it to act in all the occurrences of life, in the way which our reason enables us to act." (Descartes, DMM, p. 43)

Why Descartes values truth

"...I have always had a most earnest desire to know how to distinguish the true from the false, in order that I might be able clearly to discriminate the right path in life, and proceed in it with confidence." - DMM, p. 9

Seeking God

"It's a waste of time to ask about God's existence if we lack understanding of the kind of God in question.  If we leave the notion of God amorphous, our question about God's existence will be similarly obscure and resistant to worthwhile reflection.  We would then not know what kind of evidence for God to expect if God does in fact exist.  Many philosophers of religion are in exactly this disadvantaged position.  They do expect a certain kind of evidence for God, as we shall see, but their expectation lacks a cogent basis in the notion or character of God, at least is the Hebraic God is our concern.  The notion of God and God's purposes suggests what kind of evidence for God one should expect.  It is odd, therefore, that philosophers of religion rarely attend adequately to that notion."

- Paul Moser in M. Peterson and R. VanArragon (eds.), Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Religion (2004)

Poythress on Gen 1

I conclude then, that Genesis 1 harmonizes with fiat creation.  Yes, God could have created each kind of animal instantly, by his word.  But it also harmonizes with theistic evolution, because it does not teach that God used no means.  Rather, it is silent about means in order to concentrate on the main point.

- Poythress, Vern.  Redeeming Science (Crossway, 2006) .  p. 255

Nagel on Intelligent Design and Public Education

An atheist has weakened my stance on intelligent design...towards permitting it in the classroom.  Nagel seems to have a compelling argument , but I suppose most scientists won't buy it.  I am definitely going to revisit this article in the future, but here are some excerpts from "Public Education and Intelligent Design":

"The real issue over the scientific status of ID is over what determines the antecedent belief in the possibility that a nonphysical being should intervene in the natural order...If these prior probabilities have a large effect on the interpretation of the empirical evidence, and if neither of them is empirically based, it is hard to imagine that one of them should render the resulting reasoning unscientific whereas the other does not."

"If one scientist is a theist and another an atheist, this is either a scientific or nonscientific disagreement between them.  If it is scientific (supposing this is possible), then their disagreement is scientific all the way down.  If it is not a scientific disagreement, and if this difference in their nonscientific beliefs about the antecedent probabilities affects their rational interpretation of the same empirical evidence, I do not see how we can say that one is engaged in science and the other is not.  Either both conclusions are rendered nonscientific by the influence of their nonscientific assumptions, or both are scientific in spite of those assumptions." (emphasis mine)

"Public schools in the United States may not teach atheism or deism any more than they may teach Christianity, so how can it be all right to teach scientific theories whose empirical confirmation depends on the assumption of one range of these views while it is impermissible to discuss the implications of alternative views  on the same question?"

Helm on impassibility

"There is a second reason having to do with language why impassibility is suffering an eclipse. 'Impassibility' is a negative term. Even when properly understood, and then applied to God, it tells us what God is not, or what God cannot do, rather that what he is like and can do. Such a negative approach to thinking about God is nowadays regarded as being too vague and insubstantial for the modern Christian church. For the modern church is impatient with learning what God is not like, she wants to know what God is like, and in particular she desperately seeks reassurance that God is like us—that he is accessible to our imagination, and especially in need of reassurance that he is our emotional peer. This is one reason for the current stress on biblical narrative, on the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language of Scripture, and on Christology 'from below,' as is evidenced (in different ways) by the prevalent social trinitarianism, and by the appeal of 'open theism.' Put in conventional theological terms, in the modern Christian mind the language of divine immanence swamps the language of divine transcendence. And impassibility is part of the language—part of the 'grammar'—of divine transcendence."

-Paul Helm, "Divine Impassibility: Why Is It Suffering?" (link)
See also, "Aquinas on Divine Impassibility." (link)

In search of Olympus

"What the sciences tell us is that it is very difficult to be rational. What I deny is that there is some position of 'skepticism' that is some intellectual Mount Olympus from which we can escape our tendency toward bias. Leaving the fold doesn't cure it. Getting an Outsider Test diploma doesn't cure it. What we have to do is make a lifelong effort to think well, and that remains difficult whether you are a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or an atheist."

-Victor Reppert (link)

Plantinga on the sufficiency of natural theology

"I don't think philosophy can show you one way or the other that there is such person as God. I think there are some pretty good arguments for God's existence (philosophical arguments), but I don't think they are sufficiently strong to support the kind of belief that most Christians actually have." (emphasis mine)

"Alvin Plantinga - American Masters of Apologetics Pt.3."Unbelievable?. Premier Christian Radio: 7/26/2008. Web. 14 Nov 2010.(streamed audio).

Nagel on Cosmology

"...the existence of our universe might be explained by scientific cosmology, but such an explanation would still have to refer to features of some larger reality that contained or gave rise to it. A scientific explanation of the Big Bang would not be an explanation of why there was something rather than nothing, because it would have to refer to something from which that event arose. This something, or anything else cited in a further scientific explanation of it, would then have to be included in the universe whose existence we are looking for an explanation of when we ask why there is anything at all. This is a question that remains after all possible scientific questions have been answered."

- Thomas Nagel, "Why is there anything?" in Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperment (Oxford University Press: 2009), p. 28.

Wittgenstein on thoughtlessness

"Speaking thoughtlessly and speaking not thoughtlessly are to be compared to playing a piece of music thoughtlessly and, again, not thoughtlessly."

-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958), para. 341.

The essence of curmudgeon

"To say it still another way: Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all discourse on television.  No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure.  That is why even on news shows which provide us daily with fragments of tragedy and barbarism, we are urged by the newscasters to "join them tomorrow."  What for?  One would think that several minutes of murder and mayhem would suffice as material for a month of sleepless nights."

- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

Plantinga on Science and Religion

"The point is that a mutation accruing to an organism is random, just as neither the organism nor its environment contains the mechanism or process or organ that causes adaptive mutations to occur.  But clearly a mutation could be both random in that sense, and also intended (and indeed caused) by God.  Hence, the randomness involved in Darwinism does not imply that the process is not divinely guided.  The fact (if it is a fact) that human beings have come to be by way of natural selection operating on random genetic mutation is not at all incompatible with their having been designed by God and created in his image.  Therefore Darwinism is entirely compatible with God's guiding, orchestrating, and overseeing the whole process.  Indeed it's perfectly compatible with the idea that God causes the random genetic mutations that are winnowed by natural selection.  Maybe all of them.  Maybe just some.  Those who claim that evolution shows that humankind or other living things have not been designed apparently confuse the naturalistic gloss on the scientific theory with the theory itself.  The claim that evolution demonstrates that human beings and other living creatures have not—contrary to appearances—been designed, is not a part of or a consequence of the scientific theory as such, but a metaphysical or theological add-on.  Naturalism implies of course that we human beings have not been designed and created in God's image, because it implies that there is no such person as God.  But evolutionary science by itself does not carry this implication.  Naturalism and evolutionary theory together imply the denial of divine design.  But evolutionary theory by itself doesn't have that implication.  It is only evolutionary science combined with naturalism that implies this denial.  Since naturalism all by itself has this implication, it’s no surprise that when you conjoin it with science—or as far as that goes anything else: the complete works of William E. McGonagall, poet and tragedian for example, or the Farmer's Almanac, or the Apostle's Creed—the conjunction will also have this implication [audience laughter]."

Plantinga, Alvin. "Science and Religion, Where the Conflict Really Lies." American Philosophical Association Central Division Conference. 2009. Debate.  (Online Transcript)