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Over at Why Evolution Is True, Professor Jerry Coyne has written a rather silly post entitled, Muslim anti-vaxers slow eradication of polio, in which he chronicles what he refers to as “Muslim opposition” to oral polio vaccination in Asia and Africa. Coyne begins his provocative article with the claim that “There’s always been some religious opposition to vaccination.” He goes on to assert that Edward Jenner often faced opposition from churches which declared smallpox vaccination to be a “delusion of Satan” and a “violence to the law of nature.” In a perfunctory attempt to be fair, he notes in passing that “some religious people, like the pro-science New England preacher Cotton Mather, did promote smallpox vaccination.” [Note to Professor Coyne: Read More ›

Professor James M. Tour, who is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world, has been publicly criticized for forthrightly declaring in an online essay that while microevolution (or small changes within a species) is well-understood by scientists, there is no scientist alive today who understands how macroevolution is supposed to work, at a chemical level: “I do have scientific problems understanding macroevolution as it is usually presented. I simply can not accept it as unreservedly as many of my scientist colleagues do, although I sincerely respect them as scientists. Some of them seem to have little trouble embracing many of evolution’s proposals based upon (or in spite of) archeological, mathematical, biochemical and astrophysical suggestions and evidence, and Read More ›

Philosophy Professor John T. Roberts, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has recently put forward a new version of the fine-tuning argument, entitled, Fine-Tuning and the Infrared Bull’s-Eye (Philosophical Studies 160(2):287-303, 2012). What makes Roberts’ version of the argument particularly interesting is that it is not only much clearer in its formulation than other versions, but also invulnerable to the standard objections that are usually leveled against the fine-tuning argument. As Roberts puts it in the Abstract: I argue that the standard way of formalizing the fine-tuning argument for design is flawed, and I present an alternative formalization. On the alternative formalization, the existence of life is not treated as the evidence that confirms design; instead it is Read More ›

Most of my readers will not have heard of Joseph McCabe (1867-1955). The atheist Website The Secular Web describes him as follows: One of the giants of not only English atheism, but world atheism, Joseph McCabe left a legacy of aggressive atheist and antireligious literature that remains fresh and insightful today. His many works– he wrote nearly 250 books–could constitute a library of atheism by themselves. Joseph McCabe entered the Franciscan order at the age of 15, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1890, at the age of 22. He was quickly recognized as an outstanding student, and was sent to study at the Catholic University of Louvain for a year (1893-1894). He studied under, and befriended, Cardinal Mercier, Read More ›

In my last post, A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no scientist alive today who understands macroevolution, I wrote about Professor James Tour, who is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world – and a Darwin skeptic. Professor Tour is not an Intelligent Design proponent, but he is openly skeptical of macroevolution, which is generally defined as “evolution happening on a large scale, e.g. at or above the level of species, over geologic time, resulting in the formation of new taxonomic groups.” In 2001, Tour, along with over 700 other scientists, signed the Discovery Institute’s “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism”, which read: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection Read More ›

A fierce argument has been raging over at Barry Arrington’s post, A dog is a chien is a perro is a hund, over whether the genetic code is really a semiotic code, or whether “code” is merely a scientific term of convenience in this case. In this post, I hope to clarify the issues and sharpen the discussion between the two sides. Let’s begin with Barry Arrington’s argument: An arrangement of signs is arbitrary when the identical purpose could be accomplished through a different arrangement of signs if the rules of the semiotic code were different… Here’s an example of an arbitrary arrangement of signs: DOG. This is the arrangement of signs English speakers use when they intend to represent Read More ›

In my previous post, I wrote about the philosopher and Christian apologist, Professor William Lane Craig, who has been widely criticized for some remarks he made on animal suffering in a debate with the atheist philosopher Dr. Stephen Law, in October 2011. Although Craig made several scientific errors, his key claim that animals do not suffer in the same way that we do is a scientifically defensible one. Surprisingly, it turns out that science is not currently able to demonstrate with even a high degree of probability that animals suffer at all, and I cited various experts in the field of animal consciousness who admitted as much. Consequently any atheist claiming to know that animals suffer will have to appeal Read More ›

I’d like to invite my readers to take a look at the following three quotes on animal suffering: 1. “[A]nimals like horses, dogs, and cats … do not experience … the awareness that one is oneself in pain… Even though your dog or your cat may be in pain, it really isn’t aware of being in pain, and therefore it doesn’t suffer as you would when you are in pain.” (Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, in a debate held at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, 17 October 2011, in Westminster Central Hall, London, U.K., on the topic, “Does God Exist?”) 2. “[N]onhuman animals may indeed feel pain but cannot suffer in the way that we can.” (New Atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett, Read More ›

Over at his Debunking Christianity Website, secular philosopher John Loftus has put up a post entitled, There Isn’t a Bad Reason to Reject the Christian Faith. Now, I happen to believe that there are good and bad reasons to reject all sorts of intellectual positions, including theism, atheism and Intelligent Design. So as someone who cares about truth, I was shocked by the sheer effrontery of Loftus’ statement. If he can convince me of that, I thought to myself, he can convince me of anything. What does Loftus actually claim? It turns out that Loftus’ post didn’t quite live up to the claim made in its title. Loftus doesn’t really claim that there isn’t a bad reason to reject Christianity; Read More ›

It is not often that one’s opinion of a book improves after reading three negative reviews of it. I haven’t yet read Professor Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, but after reading what biologist H. Allen Orr, philosophers Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg, and philosopher and ID critic Elliott Sober had to say about the book, I came away convinced that neo-Darwinism is an intellectual edifice resting on a foundation of sand… and sheer intellectual stubbornness on the part of its adherents. I do not wish to question the sincerity and learning of the reviewers, but I was deeply shocked by their unshakable attachment to Darwinism. Reading through the reviews, Read More ›

In a recent post over at Why Evolution Is True, Professor Jerry Coyne repeats the tired old canard that science progresses but theology doesn’t: When lecturing on their incompatibility, I always mention that although science has progressed enormously in the past few hundred years, theology has not. That is, we know no more about the nature or existence of God than we did in, say, 800 C.E. Hell, theologians aren’t sure whether there’s one god or many gods (as Hindus believe), or a red-horned devil, not to mention more trivial issues like whether the wine and crackers at communion are wholly Jesus’s blood and body (“transubstantiation”) or only partly Jesus’s blood and body (“consubstantiation”). The only “progress” theology has made Read More ›

Here’s a question for skeptics. Is there any evidence that would convince you that the laws of Nature can be suspended, and that miracles do indeed occur? Interestingly, modern-day skeptics are divided on this issue. Professor P. Z. Myers and Dr. Michael Shermer say that nothing would convince them; while Professor Jerry Coyne and Professor Sean Carroll say that if the evidence were good enough, they would provisionally accept the reality of the supernatural. (See here and here for a round-up of their views.) So I was surprised when Professor Jerry Coyne, in a recent post on the works of the great agnostic Robert Ingersoll (pictured above left), approvingly quoted a passage from his 1872 essay, The Gods, in which Read More ›

In the past, Intelligent Design has been accused of being tied to a “watchmaker” model of the cosmos. In today’s post, I’m going to look at four different metaphors for the cosmos, all of which are highly relevant for Intelligent Design, and discuss their strengths and limitations. 1. Why Professor Dembski considers Paley’s watch to be a bad metaphor for the world, and why he thinks the lute is a better one Left: A Renaissance-era lute. Unlike a watch, a lute does not do anything unless a human being is playing it. For this reason, Professor William Dembski, a leading proponent of Intelligent Design, thinks that the lute is a much better metaphor for the world than a watch. Right: Read More ›

In a recent post, entitled, Was Paley a mechanist?, I argued that Paley’s argument from design in no way presupposes a mechanistic philosophy of life, and that Paley’s philosophy of Nature was much closer to that of Aristotle than is commonly supposed. In today’s post, which is a follow-up of my latest essay, Building a bridge between Scholastic philosophy and Intelligent Design, I shall attempt to lay to rest a long-standing myth: the myth that the Intelligent Design movement is tied to a mechanistic view of life. I propose to lay the evidence before my readers, and let them draw their own conclusions. 1. What is a mechanist, and why does Professor Feser think that Professor Dembski is one? Left: Read More ›

This post is written for two groups of people: first, those who don’t know much about the philosophy of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) or the Scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages (which was influenced by his thinking) and who would like a clear, jargon-free introduction; and second, those who would like to understand why some Thomist philosophers have a problem with Intelligent Design. As my principal aim is clarity of exposition, I have endeavored to keep this post as free from polemics as possible. It is my contention that the philosophy of the Intelligent Design movement fits squarely within the broad tradition of Scholastic philosophy. If you’d like to learn why, please read on. What prompted me to write this post Read More ›