Atheism

I received this email today from Rupert Sheldrake: You might be interested to know about an excellent new web site about atheism that is hosted on the Cambridge University server and is factual, informative and non-polemical, and puts the “new atheism” into a broad historical and philosophical context. It would be good if you help draw people’s attention to it: www.investigatingatheism.info

Last evening I had the joy of meeting David Berlinski at Biola University during his tour of the U.S. to promote his new book, The Devil’s Delusion — Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions.

I was hanging out on the front steps of the lecture hall when David appeared, and we chatted in both French and English. (As bizarre as it might seem, although I earn my living as a software engineer in aerospace R&D, my three college degrees are in French language and literature, and classical piano.) I was wearing my Harley Davidson windbreaker, and David asked if I was a Harley rider, to which I replied yes. He asked about what model Harley I rode, and expressed his passion for motorcycles.

David is one of the most eloquent, insightful, clever, iconoclastic, and irreverently humorous speakers I have ever had the pleasure to encounter. During his lecture he talked about the great successes of the scientific enterprise — especially in the 20th century with the discoveries of modern mathematics and physics — but how the dreams of this enterprise to explain everything have dissolved into fantastic and unsupported speculation (e.g., multiverses), in the name of the rational and objective science on which it is supposed to be based.

If the dreams of 20th century mathematics and physics have dissolved into fantastic and unsupported speculation concerning the big questions, then surely naive 19th century Darwinian speculation about the origins and diversification of living systems must be in even deeper trouble. But Darwinian “theory” seems to enjoy an extraordinary resistance to being falsified or even challenged. All evidence, however contradictory, supports it.
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Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence?
Not even close.

Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here?
Not even close.

Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life?
Not even close.

Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought?
Close enough.
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Last week was spring break at Southwestern Seminary where I teach. The seminary is located in Ft. Worth, about 200 miles north of Austin. As it is, in the middle of the break (last Wednesday), Richard Dawkins was going to be speaking in Austin. I therefore challenged my class to go listen to him and provide proof that they had actually been there (the preferred proof was to have him sign a copy of THE GOD DELUSION). The incentive to go was extra credit for the course. Six of my students went. I told them that they should greet Richard from me should they speak to him. One student got Dawkins’s signature, shook hands, and then greeted him from me. Read More ›

Militant atheism is on the rise. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have dominated best seller lists with books denigrating religious belief as dangerous foolishness. And these authors are merely the leading edge of a far larger movement – one that now includes much of the scientific community. “If science stands opposed to religion, it is not because of anything contained in either the premises or the conclusions of the great scientific theories,” Berlinski writes in The Devil’s Delusion. “Confident assertions by scientists that… they have demonstrated that God does not exist have nothing to do with science, and even less to do with God’s existence.” A secular Jew and agnostic, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense Read More ›

In my neighborhood in Southern California, a high school student has filed suit against a history professor who openly and consistently disparages Christianity in the classroom. Note that this teacher is “faculty adviser to the Free Thinking Atheist and Agnostic Kinship student club.” Question #1: Why is no discussion of scientific challenges to Darwinism permitted in high schools, when open hostility to Christianity is? Where is the ACLU when you really need them? Question #2: Why are atheists and materialists the only ones who qualify as “skeptics” and “free thinkers”? I used to be an atheist and materialist, but when confronted with the evidence, I became skeptical of atheism and materialism. I became a free thinker.

Paul Kurtz’s Center for Inquiry is partnering with SUNY-Buffalo (the State University of New York) to offer an Ed.M. in “scientific literacy” (which will include a whopping dose of Darwinism and an assault on ID). For a description of the degree, go to their website. Below is a description of the program from an email I just received. In reading it, ask youself what would happen if Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which is far less sectarian than the Center for Inquiry, were to partner with a state university to offer a program in “scientific literacy.” It’s okay for the Center for Inquiry to promote atheism in the name of science but anything that even gets close to Read More ›