Intelligent Design

Professor Jerry Coyne has recently written a post titled, Atheism of the gaps, in which he urges skeptics to “make believers read about unbelief” before listening to their arguments, and “make atheism-of-the-gaps arguments.” In the first section of his post, Professor Coyne throws down the gauntlet: If people can fault us for not reading Aquinas, Augustine, Origen, Tertullian and (ugh) Alvin Plantinga and David Bentley Hart, well, then, we can do the same to them. If they haven’t read extensively in the honorable intellectual tradition of nonbelief, then they have no credibility as believers. Frankly, Salon should publish a piece that says this. And what does he suggest that believers read? Tell believers that we won’t pay any attention to Read More ›

From my Connecting blog Silicon Valley immortality: The resurrection of the head In general, legacy media explorations of culture today should be treated with considerable skepticism. Its mavens have a hard time imagining that traditional Christianity may thrive long after Terasem is a footnote in a learned dissertation on Silicon Valley culture. Would the media be safer if government regulated Photoshopping? If, for example, Jay Carney and Clare Shipman are comfortable with a Photoshopped library, impressive illusions are now socially accepted. Who then would be regulated? Noble words with insidious new meanings In practice, “accountability journalism” has often meant open instead of barely concealed partisanship. Increasingly, media refuse to cover both sides of an issue—say, climate change—or even to allow Read More ›