2013

Dear President Gora, As an intelligent design advocate (Web page here) who contributes regularly to the ID Website Uncommon Descent, I would like to thank you for your recent statement to the faculty and staff of Ball State University, which clarifies your university’s official position regarding the teaching of intelligent design theory. I hope you will not object if I ask you a few questions which your own faculty staff might want to pose to you, in future meetings. Question 1 You referred to “intelligent design” in your email to Ball State University faculty and staff, without saying what you meant by the term. So I’d like to ask: exactly how do you define “intelligent design”? Specifically: does it include Read More ›

Animal groups do not evolve greater and greater new designs as time goes by, but rather are at their maximum level of diversity early in their history. And species must be constrained in how much they can change. The ignorant babblings of creationists? Ridiculous criticisms of IDs? True they have been making such claims for years, but this time it comes from evolutionists at the University of Bath who performed a massive fossil study. As one of the evolutionists explained:  read more

Usually this is not a topic I deal with, but an UD commenter gently asked such interesting question in another thread. Theism states a transcendent Principle, which is One and Infinite. This Unity is the First cause of the universal existence, of all beings and all things (for this reason He is also the Great Designer of the universe). This Supreme Principle is the Self “who stays within the heart of any being; who is the principle, the mean and the end of all beings”. Besides, this Self is also absolute Truth and supreme Knowledge. Given this fundamental Unity, this Center, where “all beings are fused but not confused” – as M. Eckart said -, it is straightforward to derive Read More ›

As I see it, the current discussion about the relation between theism, atheism and morality is bedeviled by two false and often unexamined assumptions. First, it is assumed that if an act is self-evidently wrong, then that counts against a theistic account of morality. Second, it is assumed that if a theistic account of morality is correct, moral injunctions must be derived from the fact that God exists. In support of the first assumption, it is sometimes argued that if an action (such as torturing babies) is self-evidently wrong, then not only theists but also atheists can recognize it as wrong – in which case, we can know that the action is wrong without having to invoke God’s will in Read More ›