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Abstract: Popular cosmology often claims that quantum physics explains how the universe arose from “nothing.” This essay examines that claim in the work of Alexander Vilenkin and Lawrence Krauss, showing that the “nothing” invoked is not absolute nonbeing but a physically and mathematically specified state—governed by quantum laws, configuration spaces, and boundary conditions. The Borde–Guth–Vilenkin theorem further complicates matters by implying past-incompleteness for inflationary spacetimes. Physics can describe state transitions within a law-like framework; it cannot derive existence from genuine nothingness.
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This short and informal essay briefly traces my journey from agnosticism, back to Christian theism. Central to this reconsideration are four interconnected problems: the irreducibility of consciousness, the difficulty of grounding rationality within a purely evolutionary framework, the persistent appearance of objective moral facts, and the question of ultimate meaning.
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Abstract: Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar renders relativistic time dilation with rare fidelity, yet quietly takes sides in an ancient metaphysical dispute: whether time passes (the A-theory) or merely extends (the B-theory). This essay argues that the film’s celebrated dilation sequences are metaphysically neutral, since the Einsteinian, Minkowskian, and neo-Lorentzian interpretations of relativity are empirically equivalent, while the tesseract presupposes the tenseless block. Quantum entanglement and cosmic time, I contend, favour a neo-Lorentzian reading on which absolute simultaneity, and with it tensed time, survives Gargantua.
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Abstract: This paper argues that scientism—the view that science is the only source of factual knowledge—is both false and self-defeating. Drawing on counterexamples from literary theory, history, and the axioms of mathematics and logic, the paper demonstrates that non-scientific knowledge exists. A formal logical proof shows that scientism is inconsistent with this fact. Furthermore, scientism fails its own criterion: the thesis that all knowledge must be scientifically justified cannot itself be scientifically justified, rendering it self-referentially incoherent and rationally unacceptable.
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Abstract: In 1960, Eugene Wigner identified a puzzle that remains unresolved: why does mathematics—often developed for purely aesthetic or internal reasons—describe physical reality with such extraordinary precision? This essay examines the historical emergence of mathematical physics, surveys philosophical positions on mathematics’ nature, and presents richly detailed examples from classical mechanics through quantum field theory and the Standard Model. Proposed resolutions—anthropic selection, evolutionary epistemology, structural realism—are critically evaluated and found wanting. The effectiveness of mathematics in natural science remains a brute explanandum, pointing toward something fundamental about existence that we do not…
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Abstract: This paper clarifies the biological status of the human embryo and distinguishes that question from philosophical debates about personhood. It argues that, on standard biological taxonomy, a fertilised human egg is a whole, living Homo sapiens organism at the zygotic stage, and that denying this confuses biological classification with moral or theological claims. It then outlines Catholic teaching on contraception, grounding it in the structure and ends of the conjugal act (Casti connubii), and assesses the relevance of Genesis 38 (Onan) to that doctrine.
Theoria
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