vjtorley

Professor Jerry Coyne has written a post titled, Ken Ham vs. Dawkins: On the nature of science and physical law, in which he criticizes Ken Ham’s claim that evolution is a “historical” science, dealing with events that can’t be observed, and hence can’t be verified. Coyne contends that “there is no distinction between historical science and real-time experimental science: both are based on observation, prediction, and testability.” First, evolution can make predictions about the past which scientists can subsequently verify (e.g. the prediction that “birds evolved from dinosaurs and whales from land-dwelling animals”). It can also make “retrodictions,” by making sense of previously puzzling data: for instance, it can explain “biogeographic patterns like the absence of endemic mammals on oceanic Read More ›

While I disagree with almost everything Professor Larry Moran wrote in reply to my post, Is Larry Moran a conspiracy theorist?, he did at least ask a good question: what counts as evidence? In his latest post, he forthrightly declares: I don’t know how to define “valid evidence” and I doubt very much if there’s anyone else who can offer a rigorous definition. This post of mine is an attempt at such a definition. Let’s begin with “valid evidence,” and defer for the time being the question of what constitutes good evidence. The question of what counts as valid evidence for a hypothesis was answered nearly 300 years ago, by the English statistician and clergyman Thomas Bayes (pictured above, courtesy Read More ›

Adam Gopnik has written an impertinent piece for the New Yorker (February 19, 2015), arguing that political candidates should be put on the spot and required to affirm their acceptance of evolution before being allowed to take office. Evolution, he writes, is “an inarguable and obvious truth” which is “easy to understand,” and if you oppose “Darwinian biology,” you thereby “announce yourself against the discoveries of science, or so frightened of those who are that you can be swayed from answering honestly.” A politician who fails to publicly embrace evolution “shouldn’t be trusted with power.” As Gopnik puts it: It does seem slightly odd to ask a man running for President — or, for that matter, for dogcatcher — to Read More ›

That’s the only conclusion I can draw, after reading Professor Larry Moran’s latest reply to my post, No evidence for God’s existence, you say? A response to Larry Moran. More on that anon. I will, however, note for the record that Professor Moran has backed down from his original assertion that there is no evidence whatsoever for God’s existence. He now writes: When I say there’s no evidence for the existence of god(s) I mean that there is no “evidence” that stands up to close scrutiny… That brings up the question of what defines “valid evidence.” The short answer is “I don’t know” but I know it when I see it. “I know it when I see it.” Hmm. Where Read More ›

Despite my disagreements with Professor Larry Moran over the years, I respect him as a fair-minded, intelligent and generally sensible person. Recently, however, he said something which can only be described as rather silly. In a post titled, Evidence for the existence of god(s), he wrote: I am always on the lookout for evidence that some sort of god actually exists. The reason I’m an atheist is because I’ve never seen any evidence that’s the least bit convincing. I keep asking for evidence but nobody ever supplies any. Now, had Professor Moran merely remarked that he found the evidence for God’s existence less than compelling, or unsatisfactory, he would have had a leg to stand on. But he went much Read More ›

In a recent post, I incorrectly identified Richard Norman, Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kent and a Vice-President of the British Humanist Association, as the author of an article on body fluid salinity, written by a Professor R. Norman. I have since been informed that Richard Norman was not the author of the article in question, and that he had nothing to do with it. I would therefore like to offer my sincere apologies to Professor Richard Norman. I should have checked my sources more carefully, and I will be more vigilant in future.

Professor Larry Moran has written a post in which he skilfully debunks the hoary old myth that the ionic composition of blood plasma matches that of seawater, which is supposed to “prove” that our ancestors came from the sea. In a post titled, John F. Kennedy, Carnival cruises, blood plasma, sea water, and evolution (February 6. 2015), Professor Moran traces the history of this myth and the curious story of the man who first debunked it, only to propagate another scientific myth of his own making. For the benefit of readers, I should point out that the myth that blood plasma has the same concentration of minerals as sea water has also been debunked by creation scientist Dr. John D. Read More ›

English comedian, writer and ardent atheist Stephen Fry recently appeared on the Irish TV show The Meaning of Life with host Gay Byrne, who asked him what he’d say if he were “confronted by God” at the pearly gates, after his death. Fry chuckled, and then proceeded to shock his host by answering: “I’d say: ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you! How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I’d say.” Fry’s answer impressed many atheists, but one Read More ›

Professor Krauss, author of “A Universe from Nothing,” has responded to Eric Metaxas’s Wall Street Journal article, Science Increasingly makes the case for God with a rebuttal titled, No, Astrobiology has not made the case for God (New Yorker, January 24, 2015). Having read Krauss’s rebuttal, I found it to be utterly devoid of quantitative reasoning, scientific predictions or novel arguments. That should tell you something: it’s a polemic masquerading as science. A question of bias Let me note for the record that Krauss is not merely an atheist, but a self-described antitheist. On the subject of God, he does not pretend to write as a disinterested scholar: he openly admits that he has an ideological axe to grind. As Read More ›

Sociology professor Phil Zuckerman has written an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times arguing that children raised in non-religious families are just as moral as their religious counterparts – and perhaps more so. Now, I would certainly agree that many parents without religious beliefs do an excellent job of raising their children. But I have to say that Professor Zuckerman’s attempt to prove that a religious upbringing doesn’t make children any more moral than a secular upbringing is riddled with flawed statistical reasoning. Zuckerman cites the work of Vern Bengston, a USC sociology professor who for the past 45 years has supervised the Longitudinal Study of Generations, the largest multi-generational study of religion and family life ever conducted in the Read More ›

I’ve written about H. L. Mencken’s mendacity at the Scopes trial in two previous posts (here and here). In today’s post, I’m going to drop one more bombshell, which will, I hope, drive the final nail in the coffin of Mencken’s credibility as an accurate reporter on the trial. My bombshell is actually a letter written by a reporter named Nunnally Johnson, who covered the Scopes trial for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and later became a successful Hollywood screenwriter. Thirty years after the trial, he passed on his recollections in a letter to theater publicist Arthur Cantor, dated March 8, 1955 (courtesy of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection): Dear Mr. Cantor, I covered a lot of different stories, from murders Read More ›

By now, I expect that readers will have formed their own opinions about the tragic massacre of twelve people at the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo. And I expect, too, that people will have read and digested the remarks subsequently made by His Holiness Pope Francis on the inappropriateness of ridiculing other people’s faith. In an interview aboard the papal plane, while flying from Sri Lanka to the Philippines, the Pope gestured towards Alberto Gasparri, a Vatican official who was standing next to him on board the plane, and said: “If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch in the nose. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the Read More ›

Over at Why Evolution Is True, Professor Jerry Coyne has responded to neurosurgeon Michael Egnor’s recent article arguing that materialism cannot account for our ability to form abstract concepts, such as the concept of “good” (Free Will is Real and Materialism is Wrong, Evolution News and Views, January 15, 2015). As Professor Egnor puts it: Intellect and will are immaterial powers, and obviously so. Here’s why. Let us imagine, as a counterfactual, that the intellect is a material power of the mind. As such, the judgment that a course of action is good, which is the basis on which an act of the will would be done, would entail “Good” having a material representation in the brain. But how exactly Read More ›

In this short essay, I’d like to address a profound philosophical question: what is the most appropriate metaphor for expressing the relationship between the cosmos and its Designer (whom I shall assume, for the purposes of this essay, to be God the Creator)? From an Intelligent Design standpoint, a suitable metaphor would have to encompass the following facts, at the very least: (a) the objects within our cosmos are not parts of God, but are really distinct from their Creator; (b) the objects within our cosmos are not abstract forms but concrete entities, with their own characteristic causal powers; (c) any object existing within Nature – especially a living thing – possesses immanent finality: that is, its parts have an Read More ›

In a recent article titled, God is not a scientific hypothesis, philosopher and author Francis Beckwith critiques Eric Metaxas’ stimulating essay, Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God, in the Wall Street Journal. Professor Beckwith views scientific arguments for God as philosophically problematic, for several reasons: But is this the right way to think about God as Creator? Is the rational basis for believing in His existence really dependent on the deliverances of modern science? Should one calibrate the depth of one’s faith on the basis of what researchers tell us about the plausibility of the “God hypothesis” in recent issues of the leading peer-reviewed science journals? The answer to all three question is no, since God is not a Read More ›