vjtorley

In two comments attached to his latest post over at Sandwalk, Professor Larry Moran argues that even a very unlikely naturalistic scenario would be a better explanation of irreducible complexity than a vague Intelligent Design hypothesis. Taken to its logical conclusion, Moran’s argument implies a paradoxical result (which I’ll refer to as Torley’s paradox): that for any specified pattern which we find in Nature, no matter how complex it may turn out to be, any naturalistic explanation of that pattern which appeals to specific processes – even astronomically unlikely ones – will always be superior to an explanation which invokes Intelligent Design in purely general terms (“Some intelligent being produced this pattern”). As we’ll see, the reason why Moran’s argument Read More ›

Over at Why Evolution Is True, New Atheist Professor Jerry Coyne has posted a letter he received from one of his regular readers, Ben Goren, regarding a major theological flaw which (he claims) undermines not only Christianity, but any religion that worships a God (or gods) who is both omniscient and good: why doesn’t such a being (or beings) assist the police, firefighters and ambulance workers by calling 911 whenever someone is in danger? Goren writes: Imagine you find yourself in one of any number of calamitous situations — somebody you’re with clutches her chest in pain and falls to the floor; you hear, coming from the far end of a dark alley, the voice of a frightened old man Read More ›

In December 2013, I wrote a post on the subject of miracles in response to Professor Robert Greg Cavin and Dr. Carlos A. Colombetti, titled, Cavin and Colombetti, miracle-debunkers, or: Can a Transcendent Designer manipulate the cosmos? Today, I received an email from Professor Cavin, who claimed I had totally misconstrued his (and Colombetti’s) argument. In today’s post, I’d like to take the opportunity to respond. Professor Cavin’s email was courteously worded, so I shall attempt to maintain the same standard of civility in my reply. Cavin’s main complaint is that I presented a straw man caricature of his (and Colombetti’s) argument in my original post. Specifically, he writes that I appear to think that he (and Colombetti) maintain that Read More ›

New Scientist magazine reports on a paper by Hippke, Domainko and Learned, suggesting that fast radio bursts, which were first discovered in 2001, may be artificial signals produced by alien – or human – technology. Ten fast bursts of radio waves have been detected within the past 15 years, and the delay between the arrival of the first and last waves is always very close to a multiple of 187.5. The authors claim there is a 5 in 10,000 probability that the line-up is coincidence, and they argue that no known natural process can explain this curious fact. They conclude that if the signals are not due to “a [natural] galactic source producing quantized chirped signals” (which would be “most Read More ›

Jeffrey Tayler, a contributing editor of The Atlantic and a writer for Salon magazine who has lived in Russia since 1993, knows quite a lot about foreign languages, a little about science, very little about history, and nothing at all about religion – a subject with which he appears to be obsessed, judging from the 40-odd articles he has written on the subject for Salon magazine, during the past two years. Strangely enough, Tayler wrote much more sympathetically about religion during the late 1990s, at a time when his articles for Salon were actually entertaining to read, and as late as 2006, he declared in his book, River of No Reprieve (Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2006, p. 121) that “the Read More ›

Dr. Karl Giberson, a scholar of science and religion, a former co-president of the Biologos Foundation, and the best-selling author of ten books, including Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, has written a blurb for atheist John Loftus’ new book, How to Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist (Pitchstone Publishing, November 2015), in which he openly admits that it undercuts his own evolutionary theodicy. Dr. Giberson’s blurb reads as follows: For years I have despaired about the sorry state of Christian apologetics, and even sorrier state of Christian apologists. If there be Christian truth, it lies beyond the reach of rational inquiry, and perhaps that is OK. In How to Defend the Christian Read More ›

Professor Paul Davies is no friend of Intelligent Design. Nevertheless, he puts forward a formidable argument against its best scientific alternative, the multiverse, in an interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator and host of “Closer To Truth,” and author of a recent article titled, Is our universe a fake? (Space.com, July 31, 2015). Kuhn summarizes Davies’ argument as follows: “If you take seriously the theory of all possible universes, including all possible variations,” Davies said, “at least some of them must have intelligent civilizations with enough computing power to simulate entire fake worlds. Simulated universes are much cheaper to make than the real thing, and so the number of fake universes would proliferate and vastly outnumber the real ones. And Read More ›

Over at Pharyngula, Professor P.Z. Myers has been ridiculing Senator Marco Rubio for declaring, “The science is settled, it’s not even a consensus, it is a unanimity, that human life beings at conception” – a claim he repeated at the GOP debate on August 6. Unfortunately for Myers, Senator Rubio is dead right: embryologists agree that an individual human life begins at conception. Here’s how Professor Myers attempted to dispose of Senator Rubio’s claim in a 2014 post: Let’s take that phrase “human life begins at conception” apart. What do you mean by “life begins”? Was there some step between your parents and you where there was a dead cell? Life is continuous — there hasn’t been a transition from Read More ›

Over at NPR, psychology professor Tania Lombrozo of the University of California, Berkeley, is highly incensed at the fact that even in this modern day and age, 40 percent of Americans say that they would not vote for a presidential candidate who was an atheist. Professor Lombrozo puts this down to the widespread popular belief that immoral behavior is only averted by religious belief – an assumption she stoutly rejects, citing an article titled, Good Minus God (New York Times, December 18, 2011) by philosophy professor Louise Antony, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who argues that moral norms are true regardless of whether or not God exists, and who concludes: “If ‘good’ is to have normative force, it must Read More ›

The first thing that needs to be said about Professor Jerry Coyne’s new book, Faith vs. Fact, is that it gets right to the heart of the matter, in addressing the central conflict between science (or as I would say, scientism) and religion. Coyne views the conflict as an epistemic one: as he recently put it, “It’s a conflict between how you justify, or how you have confidence in, what you believe – or what you know.” Scientists accept hypotheses as true only after a rigorous process of testing, while most ordinary people (especially religious believers) would maintain that there are at least some beliefs which are warranted without any need for further testing on our part – for example, Read More ›

In the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, Professor Jerry Coyne has authored a post in which he offers his thoughts on the ruling. In a telling passage which is remarkable for its myopia, he writes: To those who oppose gay marriage, I say this: Is it really hurting you? What does an opponent have to lose if two homosexuals get married? I suppose they could say it could lead to the dissolution of society, but that’s clearly not the case. Is it really hurting us? Yes, and for a very simple reason: from now on, those who oppose the Supreme Court’s decision will be branded as hateful bigots who are morally on a par with Read More ›

Scientists now know a lot more about the genetic changes that helped give rise to mammoths, thanks to a recent study led by Vincent Lynch, PhD, assistant professor of human genetics at Penn State University, and published in Cell Reports on July 2. The study raises a fascinating question for Intelligent Design proponents who are interested in pinning down the “edge of evolution”: were woolly mammoths designed? University of Chicago science reporter Kevin Jiang summarizes the methods used by Lynch and his team, in a Science Life article titled, The genes that make a woolly mammoth a woolly mammoth (July 2, 2015): To thoroughly characterize mammoth-specific genes and their functions, Lynch and his colleagues deep sequenced the genomes of two Read More ›

I was intrigued to read Professor Larry Moran’s latest post, UK bans teaching of creationism – which, it turns out, is a rehash of old news, which I covered over a year ago. However, I was deeply heartened to read that Professor Moran regards the British government’s decision to ban the teaching of “any doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth and therefore rejects the scientific theory of evolution” as a scientifically valid theory at schools receiving public funding (including academies and free schools) as morally indefensible. In his own words: This is ridiculous. I’m opposed to American politicians who meddle in science teaching and I’m Read More ›

In my initial post about the Pope’s environmental encyclical, Laudato si’, I highlighted its positive aspects: its affirmation of human uniqueness, its rejection of biocentrism and its firm insistence that each species of living creature was designed by God to play its own special part in the order of Nature. The Pope also rejects population control, but what he fails to realize is that population growth cannot be sustained simply by living in harmony with Nature. If we are to continue growing, we need to redefine our whole relationship with Nature. While we can never be totally independent of Nature, we must use our human intelligence to reduce our dependence on Nature, in order to prevent our ecological footprint from Read More ›

In my initial post about the Pope’s environmental encyclical, Laudato si’, I highlighted its positive aspects: its affirmation of human uniqueness, its rejection of biocentrism and its firm insistence that each species of living creature was designed by God to play its own special part in the order of Nature. In today’s post, I’d like to focus on the issue of human dominion over Nature. The question I want to examine is: do we have the right to kill off an entire species of living creatures? The Pope says we don’t; I would argue that we do. To some of my readers, it may seem pretty impertinent that a mere layman like myself should publicly oppose Pope Francis. The only Read More ›