[Updated] Cheating the Millennium:

The Mounting Explanatory Debts of Scientific Naturalism (2003)

Introduction: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis

In agreeing to write this essay, I have promised to explain why I find Darwinism unconvincing. In order to keep this promise, I will be compelled to acknowledge the apparently paradoxical fact that I find it convincing as well. I find it convincing because it is in certain respects correct, and in fact tautologically so in the logical sense; I find it unconvincing because it is based on a weak and superficial understanding of causality and is therefore incomplete. Explaining why this is so will require a rather deep investigation of the nature of causality. It will also require not only that a direction of progress be indicated, but that a new synthesis embracing the seemingly antithetical notions of teleology and natural selection be outlined. But first, some essential background. […]