Denyse O'Leary

Yes, Nancy, fishing for a reaction here: I hope your book does well, but feel continually frustrated by the shallowness of current Christian culture. I didn’t think it was possible to be shallower than secular pop psychology, but Christian bookstores prove me wrong, time and again. I kid you not, I can’t stand even going into a Christian bookstore, even on business. Rows of books on Christian weight loss … I mean, we used to have a discipline called fasting, which is why people didn’t bother with Christian weight loss. Yes, there are a few thoughtful books like yours, but I find it a trial foraging my way through the Christian bookstore to find them.

A more sinister aspect to all this is that “new atheist” books are bestsellers, while the Christian is reading … Armageddon fantasies? Why is that sinister? Because, so far as I can see, the new atheists are a highly illiberal movement, and they tend to regard tolerance as the Islamist does: not as a solution but a problem. Look at Dawkins’s simple inability to understand that astronomer Martin Gaskell had been, put plainly, wronged. Because new atheists hate Christians more than they hate anyone else, the Christian may wake up from his potboiler to discover an actual Armageddon, perpetrated through the political and justice systems. Indeed, in some places it’s starting to happen now: It’s one thing Islamists and new atheists can agree on.

But don’t we sort of have it coming, when we choose escape into shallowness? Will any remedy actually work? Over to you: Read More ›

(Schaeffer has been called “the last ” great modern theologian,” who “strongly argued for rationalism in apologetics.” – d.)

His response to scientific questions was summed up in one phrase: No final conflict. If Scripture is revelation from God, then it must be true. And therefore it will be consistent with the truths discovered by human reason and scientific investigation.

At various points in history, the two may be appear to be in conflict. But in that case, either our interpretation of Scripture is mistaken or our interpretation of the facts is mistaken. There can be no final conflict.

The reason this is important is that, as we noted above, many evangelicals are now following the path taken by theological liberals. The fact/value split helps us understand what’s at stake. Liberals agree with secular critics that Scripture is historically and scientifically false and full of errors. In others words, they are willing to give up the realm of facts. Then they hope to maintain Christianity as spiritually meaningful in the realm of values.

For example, in USA Today a rabbi writing about evolution writes, Read More ›

(It’s like saying “You can have a life-saving treatment anda 100 kg pile of hardened cement chained to your neck too!”

Way back when, Nancy, you wrote a piece for Christianity Today on design, one of several that set me thinking about all these issues.

But I got the feeling that Christianity Today has now backed off somewhat in favour of “Jesus n’ Darwin n’ us more evolved ones.” Is this fair on my part? If so, what happened?)

Theistic evolution has been around long before Darwin. Once again, the key thinker was Hegel. He taught a kind of progressive pantheism, in which God was the soul of the world, evolving along with it. As a result, many Romantics embraced a spiritualized form of evolution.

This explains, says historian John Herman Randall, why Darwin’s biological evolution was welcomed so quickly when it first appeared in 1859—not so much by scientists but by thinkers in fields like history, philosophy, theology, and the social sciences.

It also explains, Randall adds, “why they pretty uniformly misunderstood him . . . and why they failed to see the real significance of his thought.” That is, they thought they could use Darwin to support their own spiritualized version of evolution, failing to see that what he was proposing was a completely materialist version.

Perhaps they did not want to see it. Read More ›

What do we mean by the phrase: the fact/value split? It does not simply mean there is a difference between factual knowledge and moral knowledge. People have always known that. Rather, it is the claim that there is no such thing as moral knowledge at all—that morality and theology are reducible to non-cognitive feelings and personal preferences. Literally, whatever you happen to value.

This affects ID because any view that can be linked to religion is put in the “value” category—where it is reduced to private preferences and prejudices.

The way it works is a bit like the good cop/bad cop strategy. The New Atheists are a good example of the bad cop stance. They assert that science has disproved Christianity, and that those who are mature and courageous will discard the false comforts of religion. Christopher Hitchens has said, “I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt.”

But when the public protests being treated with ridicule and contempt, then the good cops step forward. They assure everyone that there really is no conflict between science and religion, and that they respect everyone’s “cherished values” or “deeply held beliefs.”

But emotive language like that should be a red flag: It means theological views are being reduced to private feelings instead of objective truths.

Consider an example. Paul Kurtz, the founder of the Council for Secular Humanism, wrote an article in the Skeptical Inquirer denouncing religion as “fantasy and fiction.” Yet at the same time, he urged his fellow skeptics to soften the blow when talking to the public by assuring them that “religion and science are compatible.”

Depending, of course, on how you define religion. Read More ›

Postmodern thinkers reject the ideal of objectivity not only in art but also in science. The roots, once again, are in the philosophy of Hegel. If history was the progressive unfolding of the Absolute Mind, that implied that ideas themselves evolve—law, ethics, philosophy, theology.

Hegel taught that no idea is true in an absolute or timeless sense. What is regarded as true in one stage of history will give way to a “higher” truth at the next stage of the evolution of consciousness. This radical relativism is called historicism because it says there is nothing that stands outside the ever-changing historical process.

In order to make his claims, ironically, Hegel had to presume that he alone had the power to stand above history and see it objectively as it really is. In other words, he had to exempt his own views from the historicist categories that he applied to everyone else’s views—which renders his position self-contradictory.

Nevertheless, Hegel’s concept of cultural evolution—that each culture produces its own “truth”—had enormous influence. It is the origin of postmodernism. Postmodern thinkers decided that not even science uncovers timeless, universal truths. It is just another social construction.

As a result, to sustain the scientific enterprise today, we need to reach back in history ask how science arose in the first place. Most historians agree that the scientific outlook actually rests on fundamental concepts derived from a biblical view of nature.

Consider, for example, the idea of “laws” in nature. Read More ›

“I want Muslims to question creationism, says the physicist and imam who has had death threats for supporting evolution“

Here , New Scientist interviews physicist imam Usama Hasan, who says that belief in evolution is compatible with belief in the Koran (Michael Bond, 19 April 2011):

Recently you retracted your views because of the outrage they caused. Could you explain?My retraction was saying that I misjudged how to go about explaining these things. Sooner or later someone will have to address the issue of evolution – it’s a no-go area, especially with the clerics – but I’m abandoning my attempt to reconcile it with the Koran until things settle down. I am not willing to risk my life over this issue.

A belief supported only by death threats against unbelievers is poorly supported indeed. It amounts to saying: We can’t convince; we just scare.

Christians like to say: “Test everything. Hold onto what is good.”

And precisely therein lies the problem: What are Muslims signing on to when they are told, “believe evolution”? Three things to know – and understand their implications clearly: Read More ›

O’Leary: What, specifically, do you recommend that people do, to recover art from the fact/value split? We all know about it, but in my experience, one of the effects of such a split is to render such subjects undiscussable. There was a time when, for example, poetry was public to the point that technical or science ideas were advanced therein (cf Hesiod’s Works and Days or Dante’s Paradiso ). Today, it is a purely private affair and almost all evaluation of works of art, literature, or music is experienced as an exercise in prejudice. It must be experienced that way, of course, when all norms are rejected in principle.

For the arts, is there actually a way out of this mess?

Pearcey: The way out is to recognize where those ideas come from. The subjective view you describe so well arose from Romanticism. The key thinker was Hegel, who taught a kind of pantheism—an Absolute Spirit or Mind unfolding dialectically over history. What was important was not the outer realm of physical nature, but the inner realm of the spirit or consciousness. Art was redefined as the expression of the artist’s inner experience.

This was a historical novelty. Read More ›

Apparently, the Beckwith/Synthese controversy has snowballed:

A friend writes to say, “Now one of the most distinguished philosophers of science (of the past 40 years), Larry Laudan, has weighed in … ” (Against a guy who trashed him (Robert Pennock), and is otherwise best known for his “dark side” stories about the intelligent design folk.)

Laudan has now weighed in about the “anti-ID issue” of Synthese (in which supposed ID expert Barbara Forrest wrongly broomsticked Baylor’s Frank Beckwith as if he were an ID supporter -when everyone else knows he isn’t. But now her supporters are whining up a storm and hinting at “dark”  ID forces).  Laudan says:

I know nothing directly about such pressure, if any, as the ID forces brought to bear on the editors of Synthese. I have, however, read portions of several papers in the Synthese issue in question and, in my judgment, the statement from the editors dissociating themselves from some of the injudicious and scandalous statements made by some of the authors in the pertinent issue of the journal was not only in order but essential as a matter of professional ethics. Read More ›

O’Leary: Okay, you wrote a book, Saving Leonardo, about that Renaissance arts/engineering/Mona Lisa dude. Why? Isn’t it too late for books?

Look at this: “Neuroscience mugs abstract art”:  Squawking gull chicks “explain” art, according to some:

“We are going to go forward into the unknown in the quest to make art fully knowable and we’ll deal with the consequences when we’ve arrived, joyful in our accomplishments and sad, too, at the inevitable loss of all that has been left behind.

Left behind? I suppose he means Leonardo, not the pop novel apocalypse.

Surely, the irreversible loss has already occurred. By the time one finds the “gull chick” story above terribly informative about the complex experience of art, one has already dipped below the horizon of understanding art. One is then in the position of a person armed with tools from the BestDeal – who can take a computer apart, but could never design or build one.

Comment?

Pearcey: Saving Leonardo is about how the arts reflect ideas. It’s not about art theory, but about how secular worldviews are communicated through art and literature. After all, this is how most people’s worldview is shaped. Ideas do not typically come neatly packaged with a warning label attached. Instead there is a kind of “stealth” secularism that permeates society through books, music, movies, and television.

Saving Leonardo shows how the arts “channel” secular worldviews deeply into people’s minds and emotions. As a result, people are often co-opted by secular worldviews without even knowing it. Read More ›

Here, commenter bornagain77 notes, in response to a discussion of a one- or two-dimensional universe (the latter recently proposed by a  physicist  for our own early universe),

Though I have severe reservations about this ‘theory’, I think the ‘flatlander’ example you alluded to is excellent for illustrating the ‘higher dimensional’ nature of the spiritual realm …

Indeed. Consider Giberson and Collins’ comment on Dembski’s work:

It is abundantly clear that death and suffering had been present for literally billions of years before the appearance of humans. So how could  human sin be responsible for this? This claim collapses and can only be rescued by desperate moves, like the claim that later events can  cause earlier ones. Surprisingly, there are those so eager to make human sin the explanation for all the evils of natural history that they make  this paradoxical claim. William Dembski, for example, make this argument, in The End of Christianity. – Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins, The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions (InterVarsity Press, 2011), pp. 131-32.

A lot comes down to how one thinks about God. Read More ›

(Contest now closed for judging. Results here. ) Yes, a prominent Canadian cosmologist has written to a number of science notables to ask this simple question: Does Richard Dawkins or Francis Collins convert more people to Darwinism? For a free copy of The Nature of Nature , which do you pick and why? The cosmologist wants a pollster to do a study to find out which method works best. What questions would you recommend asking? (Note:This contest would normally run Saturday, but it’s a busy time of year for a lot of people, so you are getting a head start. Judging is Saturday, April 30.)

Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (Broadview Press, 2009), has this to say about design theory as a legitimate approach to science:

I’ll start with Ken Miller’s 2008 book Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. In additon to giving straightforward biology-based criticisms of Behe’s irreducible complexity argument … Miller also has a more fundamental critique of intelligent design (the “Battle for America’s Soul” part).

Miller makes the claim that the intelligent design movement doesn’t just want to “win the battle against Darwin”; the intelligent design movement wants to “win the greater war against science itself.”
This claim that the intelligent design movement is anti-science is quite a strong claim. The way intelligent design proponents typically portray their activity is that they are looking for scientific evidence for the existence of a designer. This may be confused science, but it’s not anti-science. Moreover, some Read More ›

(

Apologies, Reb.)

In “The Language of Science and Faith,” Giberson (soon to be in an online dialogue with Bill Dembski) and Collins argue that God has given nature “freedom”: This is their proposed solution to the problem of evil in nature:

When God, as a loving Creator, withdraws from complete sovereign control over his creatures and grants them freedom, this means – in ways often difficult to understand – that those creatures can now act independently of God. They are free to not be robotic automatons, puppets or trained attack dogs. In the case of the Holocaust – the classic example of human evil – we always do exactly what Dembski says we never do: we shift the responsibility for that evil from God to the Nazis. Such reflections have long characterized Christian thinking about the problem of evi. All we need to do now is enlarge this general concept to include the sorts of things that nature is doing on its own.Not all Christians are comfortable with the idea that nature has freedom, of course. …

Actually, not all Christians can even make rational sense of the these assertions. Read More ›

At CNN, we are informed by Biologos vice prez Karl Giberson that a busted Vit C gene in humans, chimps, orangutans, etc., is

… but one of many, many evidences that support the truth of evolution – that make it a “sacred fact” that Christians must embrace in the name of truth. And they should embrace this truth with enthusiasm, for this is the world that God created.

Here’s my problem (Toronto-based Canuck hack): I dunno.

First, the amount of sheer nonsense talked in the name of evolution is appalling, and even a founder of the discipline of evolutionary psychology has just abandoned his big theory (none too soon, I would say).

Second, practically no one who is not on autopilot believes Darwinism any more, and that is the principal theory of evolution. It is the only theory of evolution our culture recognizes, the one courts enforce, for which taxes are collected, on behalf of which inquisitors snoop, sneak, snipe, and snitch.

If all this is “sacred”, everyone who could benefit civilization must prefer the profane. And, historically, everyone who has benefited civilization has, under these circumstances, preferred the profane. That’s why we keep running into non-Darwinian atheists.

For a traditional believer in any type of ethical monotheism, the logic is simple: Read More ›

Recently, I observed a thread at a Christian apologetics site, CARM, “Francis *******g Beckwith”/”most snaky Christian theologian,” which really did not reflect well on the site’s goals.

jpark320, a thoughtful CARM volunteer, wrote to point out that

First the link to the “trolled’ CARM site is on their forums, not an official article that was posted from the staff.Second there is not enough manpower to keep watch over every single forum people can make. It is the double of sword of allowing people to freely express their thoughts (the side of the sword that hurts…)

So it should be easy to monitor “flame wars” and “trolling” here given the limited number of post and that only official UD people can make those posts.

I replied at 5:

jpark320, thanks for clarification. However, I am not sure that the service CARM is providing in hosting “FB/snaky” needs doing.

Anyone can start a blog at Blogger for free in five minutes and start trashing just about anyone from there, and get all their friends to do it too.

So why facilitate – and in some measure, take responsibility for – what happens anyway with no intervention?

Incidentally, one needn’t be “official UD people” to post here, just Read More ›