Denyse O'Leary

At Evolution News & Views (May 31, 2011) science historian Michael Flannery reviews James Hannam’s The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, which mostly tells us what Christians should be ashamed of not knowing:

The standard rendering that the medieval Church stood in the way of scientific advance and spent its time persecuting the leading intellects of the day like Galileo until free and open inquiry was rescued by the Renaissance humanists is shown to be utterly false.

Flannery and Hannam (who ends up falling in later, unfortunately) are quite right to say what they do. But one gets the sense that something is missing from these scholarly discussions. How about the role of, for example, Christian Darwinists in fronting the idea that any Christian who does not believe in the ape Adam and Eve depicted recently in Christianity Today is actually causing the hostility of materialist atheists? That, of course, may be true. But if so, what about it? Why is Karl Giberson allowed to feel humiliated about the Christians he feels superior to, because he is prepared to believe in such disgusting follies? Why are the BioLogians willing to alter any timeless Scriptural teaching in order to cater to them? But more, why tolerate their arrogance?

As a hack, I first smelled a rat a decade ago Read More ›

Yesterday, I received a note from a high-ranking editor at Christianity Today who was pretty annoyed at what I wrote about the magazine’s June cover story on BioLogos. He hasn’t replied to my suggestion that I publish his note and my reply. So I will publish my reply here, with a couple of comments, and link to the pieces posted here at UD. Read More ›

An individual who shall most certainly remain nameless insists on foisting on my notice the claim that 60% of up-and-coming new atheist leaders hail from Girth Central and thus demonstrate what happens when you diss the Bread of Life and grab the bread on the side. … Read More ›

Genome mapper Francis Collins, who founded BioLogos, is hailed in the June 2011 article as “one of the most eminent scientists ever to identify as an evangelical Christian.”

An unexpected paean – and one that furrowed my brow (p. 23).   Read More ›

This had to happen, of course: John R. Schneider at Calvin College, according to “The Search for the Historical Adam” (Christianity Today, June 2011 ) Vices we associate with consequences of the Fall and original sin, such as self-serving behavior, exist in lower primates ad would have been passed on via evolution to humans. Thus Eden “cannot be a literal description of how things really were in the primal human past.” (p. 26)0 So does the Evolutionary Agony Aunt chair the psychology department at Calvin? Yes, the Aunt’s  real, just as real as the Christian profs getting in on the act.

From my notes on Christianity Today’s June 2011 “Darwin ‘n Jesus ‘n me” article. The article offers a look at Christian Darwinist think tank BioLogos: Biblical exegete Daniel C. Harlow, along with theologian John R. Schneider, are being investigated for violating doctrinal standards at Calvin College, for their work in ASA’s Perspectives. BioLogos (Christian Darwinist think tank) has as its biblical expert Peter Enns, whose Old Testament theorizing led to his suspension from Westminster Theological Seminary (p. 26). Similarly, Tremper Longman III found that he was no longer an adjunct faculty member at Reformed Theological Seminary, due to an article he published at BioLogos, saying that nothing insists on a literal understanding of Adam. So, if this is the new Read More ›

Dennis Venema, Biologos’s senior fellow for science, and biology chair at Canada’s evangelical Trinity Western University, would have us know (p. 25) that the chimp genome(total genetic heredity encoded in DNA), which was fully mapped by 2005,displays “near identity”with the human genome as detailed by Collins’s team, with a 95 to 99 percent match depending on what factors are included. As Reasons to Believe biochemist Fuz Rana has pointed out (and he’s quoted), that would merely suggest that genes don’t count for much in determining what an entity will be like. As a result, the figure is widely disputed. Here’s geneticist Richard Buggs to start. More notes on Christianity Today’s “Darwin ‘n Jesus ‘n me” article here. The article here.

Or so some paint it. I’ve now had a chance to read Christianity Today’s “The Search for the Historical Adam” by Richard N. Ostling (June 2011). Recommended to all. I’m not sure re crisis. I think it comes down to a simple choice. Linked here. Some notes follow: Read More ›

Wintery Knight asks why intelligent, educated Christians won’t speak up for their views.

Why is this not being addressed by churches?

Do you have an experience where a Christian group stifled apologetics? Tell me about that, and why do you think they would do that, in view of the situation I outlined above? My experience is that atheists (as much as I tease them) are FAR more interested in apologetics than church Christians – they are the ones who borrow books and debates, and try to get their atheist wives to go to church after they becomes interested in going to church. Why is that?

A couple of thoughts: Read More ›

Forrest, a prof at Eastern Louisiana University, is considered a big expert on the intelligent design community and the dangers it poses. I put off explaining why she isn’t a  big expert, but can’t decently do so any longer. Read More ›

(This contest is now closed for judging. (The first award, for “Why do they do it?”, is announced here. The second award, for “What do you call a guy who reviews/trashes a book without reading it?”, is announced here.) ) I’ve suggested it’s a strategy on the part of people who trash ID-friendly books unread: The reviewer who fails to read the book is not, in a Darwin-obsessed community, held responsible for spreading misinformation. Indeed, the community wants him to do it, to avoid conflict between with their worldview and reality. The problem is, that only explains why he isn’t censured for his action. A more critical question is why would a scientist or scholar actually volunteer to do it? Read More ›

That’s a decision beleaguered governments must increasingly make.

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., issued today’s 73-page report, “The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope,” after months of signals from GOP leaders that the agency’s programs would be targeted. – Alan Boyle, “Funny science sparks serious spat” (MSNBC, May 26, 2011)

One hardly expects MSNBC’s Cosmic Log to defend research cuts, and – let’s face it – the silly “space aliens/multiverse/origin of life/Darwin explains tiddlywinks tournaments” projects make the easiest pop science news stories. Boyle knows that as well as anyone. Yethis protest that some silly-sounding projects are not in fact silly has a grain of truth:

The towel-folding robot, for example, is part of a project to see what it would take for robots to handle relatively unstructured tasks ranging from cooking to surgery.

It matters because aged seniors, for example, need inventions that enable them to live safely and comfortably in their homes.

That said, uncritical acceptance of the science lobby’s claim that – of all things, peer review – is the answer is pretty naive. That’s letting the dog decide how many cans of food he needs per day: “An answer,” surely not “the best answer.” So what is? Read More ›

Here’s the intro to the contest, riffing off the bewildering soap opera of claims about the relationship between modern humans and Neanderthals, followed by the question, for a free copy of The Nature of Nature , tell us: Do you think we understand the human-Neanderthal relationship better than we did twenty-five years ago? In what ways?

The responses here went down a range of paths, only some being on topic, perhaps due to the specificity of the question.

Two book prizes are awarded, Read More ›

… of this paper by Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist at University of British Columbia, Canada “Explaining Human Behavioral Diversity,” in Science (27 May 2011) People have been captivated and puzzled by human diversity since ancient times. In today’s globalized world, many of the key challenges facing humanity, such as reversing climate change, coordinating economic policies, and averting war, entail unprecedented cooperation between cultural groups on a global scale. Success depends on bridging cultural divides over social norms, habits of thinking, deeply held beliefs, and values deemed sacred. If we ignore, underestimate, or misunderstand behavioral differences, we do so at everyone’s peril. What is this paper doing in a science journal? How does one “co-operate” with people who honestly do not Read More ›

“Child-sized depictions of Charles Darwin to grow on” (May 23, 2011) are discussed by Katherine Pandora, who researches & teaches about science, the public & popular culture at the University of Oklahoma:

I was most amused to find that, despite the fact that the voyage figured extravagantly both in content and in the illustrations of the pile of children’s Darwin books that I had brought home to study, the picture my daughter chose to draw owed nothing to the rainforest theme which would supposedly transfix childish imaginations, but instead depicted a much more sedate locale, fitting comfortably within the domestic backyard setting of a local neighborhood in the northern hemisphere. And here the influence I think of the second unusual Darwin book, The Humblebee Hunter by Deborah Hopkinson kicks in, for in this author’s story the science literally does take place at home, as Darwin’s daughter Henrietta and other family members join her father to investigate how many times a bee will visit a flower in a minute.Once again, this story has fictional elements (while Darwin investigated creatures in his home environment, and the children sometimes assisted, we have no record of the observational study Hopkinson sketches), and the fictionalization allows for a girl “naturalist” to take center stage.

Yes, fiction. Read More ›