Religion

And Christianity too, says our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon. He explains: Proposition: Miracles are violations of natural law. 1. What is natural law; Who invented it? Who enforces it? Who interprets it? a) One argument is that natural law is merely inductive. The sun has risen daily for the past 5000 years of written history, therefore it is a law. But if it did not rise tomorrow, that would only be a 1/1,800,000 event. Are we saying that probabilities < 1:1,800,000 are always certain? Then certain rare forms of cancer should certainly never happen. b) Another argument is that “Nature” operates by laws that we discover. But what is “Nature”? How do we meet “Nature”? If it is inductive, Read More ›

And he is serious. Even bout the predictive power. At the Guardian Michael Dixon, director of London’s Natural History Museum is upset about the downplaying the teaching of evolution which he perceives to be happening in the United State and Israel (not many details offered). Sarah Chaffee reminds us: If you remember, this is the museum founded by structuralist Richard Owen. The leadership there demonstrated its respect for Owen, a great scientist ahead of his time, by replacing a prominently placed 2,000-pound statue of him with one of Charles Darwin. Removing evolution from biology classes is a bad idea. But Dixon’s attitude is strangely dogmatic. He notes: “Darwin’s theory of evolution not only underpins all biological science, it has an Read More ›

At her blog, Oscillations, Suzan Mazur reflects on what we have learned to date (it is only 5% excavated). One of the issues is whether there was any religion at Çatalhöyük: Suzan Mazur: I’m asking this because Templeton has come under fire for putting its fingers all over science from the investigation of the origin and evolution of life to space science. It’s perceived that the foundation is compromising the work of scientists and retarding science. Maurice Bloch, one of your own Çatal book authors has said pursuing a religion angle at Çatal is “a misleading wild goose chase” because humans only thought up religion 5,000 years ago at the earliest. Bloch says humans largely live in their reflective imagination, Read More ›

Also known as the “warfare thesis.” Sometimes real manuscripts are torn up to manufacture this kind of dreck for gullible tourists and museums: As I prepared to teach my class ‘Science and Islam’ last spring, I noticed something peculiar about the book I was about to assign to my students. It wasn’t the text – a wonderful translation of a medieval Arabic encyclopaedia – but the cover. Its illustration showed scholars in turbans and medieval Middle Eastern dress, examining the starry sky through telescopes. The miniature purported to be from the premodern Middle East, but something was off. Besides the colours being a bit too vivid, and the brushstrokes a little too clean, what perturbed me were the telescopes. The Read More ›

The most recent thing we had heard that Darwinian biologist Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne was unhappy about was David Qualen’s book on Carl Woese. The Tangled Tree:A Radical New History of Life has far too much about horizontal gene transfer for a Darwinist’s liking. Before that, we heard that skeptical mathematician David Berlinski had vexed him. Hey, say what you want about Jerry; he allows his complaints about life to be heard! This time, it is about Templeton, for funding a study of atheism. Lois Lee, a religious scholar whom I’ve written about before, is the lead investigator on a big Templeton grant, or, as The Conversation describes her in erroneous spelling, “Principle [sic] Investigator on the Understanding Unbelief Read More ›

If the measure is blind belief, maybe so: Darwin, for instance, is part of the House of Progress, which is why so many people will accuse you of being a creationist if you offer any criticism of his theory of Natural Selection (amusingly, this happens even to atheists). He was “right,” you see, so any opposition to him or any doubts as to his theory must be mere unthinking reactions. Likewise, look at the treatment of scientists who question the extent, cause, or proper response to climate change: they are simply labeled “deniers” and dismissed, rather than engaged. You see? In the Middle Ages, educated men disputed each other by putting their opponent’s case in the strongest possible light before Read More ›

For a hospital in the National Health Service: Lindsay van Dijk will lead three Christian chaplains and a team of 24 volunteers, including a Catholic nun, a Buddhist and a Bahá’í, at the Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS trust. The world-renowned spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville hospital is part of the trust. … Humanists do not believe in an afterlife. “Many people approaching the end of their lives want to reflect on a life well lived,” said van Dijk. Carolyn Morrice, the trust’s chief nurse, said: “Lindsay’s appointment confirms our commitment to provide a chaplaincy service with individual choice at its heart, catering to all our patients, visitors and staff regardless of faith, denomination or religion, including those who have no Read More ›

Could it be that people just don’t care anymore? This month, the two major online sites for reporting UFOs – the National UFO Reporting Center and the Mutual UFO Network – both documented steep drops in worldwide sightings. The declines started around 2014, when reports were at a peak. They have since reduced drastically to 55% of that year’s combined total, many UFO interest groups have folded, and numerous previously classified government documents have been disclosed. Do people just not care any more? Have they lost their faith? Perhaps though, the declines in reported sightings may signify only an end to current trends in ufology. After all, from the 1940s aliens were originally characterised as saviours who could help humans Read More ›

That’s being suggested in Britain: Humanists UK welcomed the recommendation that humanist beliefs and values be taught. In general, the commission’s conclusions were a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to save the academically serious teaching of religious and non-religious worldviews in our schools”, said Andrew Copson. But the Catholic Education Service said the report was “not so much an attempt to improve RE as to fundamentally change its character … The quality of religious education is not improved by teaching less religion.”Harriet Sherwood, “Call for atheism to be included in religious education” at The Guardian Surely the Catholic Education Service is missing the point. Atheism is a religious stance and an important one, given that many prominent people are atheists. Teaching beliefs other than Read More ›

Yes, everything is going high tech now, it seems. Intro of topic For around half a century, the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis has provided a unique way of understanding how life has persisted on Earth. It champions the idea that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings evolved together as a single, self-regulating system that has kept the planet habitable for life – despite threats such as a brightening Sun, volcanoes and meteorite strikes. However, Professor Tim Lenton from the University of Exeter and famed French sociologist of science Professor Bruno Latour are now arguing that humans have the potential to ‘upgrade’ this planetary operating system to create “Gaia 2.0”. They believe that the evolution of both humans and their technology could add Read More ›

Here at UD, we often find food for thought in the comment box. The following by ScuzzaMan, is worth pondering as a particular, from the horse’s mouth philosophical-theological perspective within the Christian frame (and yes, it is Creationist-Biblical in focus rather than empirical-inferential on reliable signs of design). Here is a Christian voice, in his own words: ___________   Design Law Theory. Design Law Theory is the notion that the book of nature, being written by the same author who inspired scripture, and being properly understood, is an unerring guide to the nature and character of that author. As such it is necessarily an equally unerring guide to the nature of his moral or spiritual laws, as demonstrated to physical Read More ›

We’ve often noticed that people who are bound and determined to find intelligent aliens treat it as a sort of religious quest. But now, as National Geographic reports from Brazil, it is taking an institutional form: According to Sunrise Valley followers, extraterrestrial beings landed on Earth 32,000 years ago to advance human civilizations. The beings then returned to Earth through successive incarnations across various cultures and eras. Valley members, known as mediums, believe themselves to be the beings’ latest incarnation, the Jaguars.Vale do Amanhecer, “Meet the Worshipers Who Believe They’re Aliens in Human Form” at National Geographic There is also a religion growing up around artificial intelligence. And the of course, there was Carl Sagan and the dolphins. It’s not Read More ›

Peter Atkins, author of Atkins’ Physical Chemistry (11th edition, 2017) and Conjuring the Universe (2018), divides the Big Questions into two classes: One class consists of invented questions that are often based on unwarranted extrapolations of human experience. They typically include questions of purpose and worries about the annihilation of the self, such as Why are we here? and What are the attributes of the soul? They are not real questions, because they are not based on evidence. Thus, as there is no evidence for the Universe having a purpose, there is no point in trying to establish its purpose or to explore the consequences of that purported purpose. As there is no evidence for the existence of a soul (except in a metaphorical Read More ›

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor  gets mail: Andrew Berry, the Harvard biologist who conducts a Darwin pilgrimage each year for undergraduates to Darwin-related sites in England, responds to my recent post about the cult-like reverence in which many Darwinists hold all things Darwin. Berry: I agree with [Egnor] it is indeed fetishization of All Things Darwin/Wallace (And More) that those of us interested in the history of science indulge in (and my program promotes). This is the reason first editions of The Origin sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. We admire Darwin and his colleagues, and enjoy the opportunity to feel in some way closer to the events and the people that we’re interested in by visiting sites etc associated with them, just Read More ›

Making nonsense meaningful: In such a large and diverse city, it is no surprise that the Craft is fairly accessible, if you know where to look. Nearly 80 covens and pagan organizations operate in the New York Metropolitan area, according to the pagan networking site The Witches’ Voice. Exact numbers of witches in the city are hard to come by, as there are many solitary practitioners, but coven and community leaders estimate that as many as 10,000 witches live and practice in New York. Nationally, about 734,000 Americans identify as pagan or Wiccan, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey. Nancy Guzman, a board member of New York City Pagan Pride, which stages an annual Pagan Pride Day festival Read More ›