Religion

While we are talking about the Bible anyway… What would our ancestors have made of news of the dinosaurs? The dinosaurs made no impact on human life to which a religious teacher could point, then or now. The animals discussed in the Bible are known to the hearers; their habits are familiar and therefore useful as illustrations: Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. So far as we know to this day, ants don’t have a “ruler” in the human sense; the queen lays the eggs that keep the colony going. They seem to Read More ›

Further to a recent call for evolutionary psychologists to study atheism, from Caroline McCarthy, a Silicon Valley veteran, at Vox, writes about receiving an invite to a tech entrepreneur event: “We are bringing together the sacred plant medicine ayahuasca with leaders at the world’s most innovative startups,” the email said. “Together we will go on a journey to deeply explore our individual and collective purpose.” They were not kidding. Half of tech workers identified as atheist or agnostic, according to a survey by the Lincoln Network, an organization dedicated to advancing principles of economic conservatism in the tech industry. That’s compared to just 7 percent of the US population who identify as atheist or agnostic (although an additional 16 percent Read More ›

Or does he get a pass because he is pop culture squared? Or (hold your breath) does progressivism make people stupid as well as unpleasant? From Philip Ball at the Guardian: The row over racist remarks made by Einstein says more about the pedestals we put great scientists on than the man himself Was Albert Einstein racist? In pondering the disobliging remarks he made about Chinese and Japanese people in the private diaries he kept about his travels to east Asia in 1922-3, just published by Princeton University Press, it’s not a particularly helpful question. On the one hand, there’s the view that even this famously humane and broadminded scientist was inevitably a man of his time. Accordingly, we can’t Read More ›

From Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish: “Why do you hate science?” That’s the question leftists have taken to asking non-leftists. Leftists claim to love science, insofar as anyone can love a method for testing a hypothesis, and accuse their enemies of hating it. How can anyone love or hate an indifferent set of techniques? And how can an ideology that believes technological civilization is destroying the planet really claim to love the science behind it? But swap out “science” for “god” and the question, “Why do you hate science” makes perfect sense. So do the constant assertions of love for science. These aren’t scientific assertions, but religious ones. Actual science doesn’t care whether you love or hate it. That’s not Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: Belief in God is declining and belief in ghosts and witches is rising. … It is a robust, longstanding phenomenon that liberals/progressives (especially millennials), including the “sciencey” ones, show more interest in occult ideas than others do. Is that counterintuitive, as many imply, or are we missing something? Vyse offers an interesting take: … So here’s the religion angle: It’s clearly not science that holds superstition in check in Western society. It’s traditional Western religion, which insists on transparent truths (truths that all may know) and forbids attempts at occult, secret truths. Vyse notes that traditionally religious people would be much less likely to resort to the occult following an electoral disaster. In a universe Read More ›

In his final paper, with Hertog, scaling back the multiverse? From Philip Goff at the Guardian: But if all of the universes have exactly the same laws – as in Hawking and Hertog’s proposal – the problem returns, as we now need an explanation of why the single set of laws that govern the entire multiverse is fine-tuned. Hertog seems not to agree, arguing that the paper does make progress on fine-tuning: “This paper takes one step towards explaining that mysterious fine-tuning … It reduces the multiverse down to a more manageable set of universes which all look alike.” However, this merely puts off the explanation of fine-tuning, for the result is that the laws underlying the generation of the Read More ›

From Stuart Vyse at CSICOP: One of the most noteworthy aspects of belief in astrology is that it is more often embraced by liberals, which places it in the company of the anti-GMO and anti-vaccination movements (Vyse 2015). A 2009 Pew Research Center study found that people who described themselves as liberal were almost twice as likely to say they believe in astrology than self-described conservatives: 30 percent of liberals compared to 16 percent of conservatives (Liu 2009). Similarly, a 2015 study using data from the General Social Survey data of the National Opinion Research Survey at the University of Chicago found that conservatives were more likely to endorse the statement, “we trust too much in science and not enough Read More ›

From science writer Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience, addressing a point raised in astrophysicist Brian Keating’s Losing the Nobel Prize: … anti-religious sentiments provided underlying motivation to debunk Lemaître’s theory. Many atheist scientists were repulsed by the Big Bang’s creationist overtones. According to Hoyle, it was cosmic chutzpah of the worst kind: “The reason why scientists like the ‘big bang’ is because they are overshadowed by the Book of Genesis.” In contrast, the Steady State model was the rightful heir to the Copernican principle. It combined the banality of space with humanity’s mediocrity in time. Thanks to Hoyle, humanity had humility. Hoyle, however, did not. Over the decades, as more and more evidence lined up in favor of the Big Bang Read More ›

Frank Turek, apologetics expert and cultural commentator, best known for I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist: Morality: Reason: God of the Gaps: Hat tip: Kenneth Francis.

Recently, Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse spoke on this theme at the Oxford Brookes Philosophy Public Lectures: Christianity and Darwinism have very different understandings of the nature and causes of war. However, beneath the surfaces, there are some surprising similarities, not the least a debt to Saint Augustine’s claims about original sin. This talk uncovers these and other pertinent facts, arguing that we are not dealing with a religion versus science debate but more a religion versus religion debate. Michael Ruse is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. More. The lecture follows on his 2016 book, Darwinism as Religion. Ruse has always been honest about that. For example, in 2000, he wrote: “Evolution is promoted by its Read More ›

From Josephine Livingstone at New Republic, reviewing Michael E. Hobart’s The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide, In a new book called The Great Rift: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide, Michael E. Hobart offers a new twist on a huge old metanarrative: the death of God. Something or other happened in Renaissance Europe, the story goes, and it eventually distanced scientists from religion. Hobart locates this great shift in the field of mathematics. Other historians have given credit to experimenters who pioneered the scientific method, or astronomers like Galileo or Kepler, but Hobart claims that Renaissance mathematics is distinct from its medieval predecessor because it reconceived numeracy as a tool for describing the quantities of things into Read More ›

Wipf and Stock has generously agreed to let me post my 2016 book Christianity for Doubters on my website now, so you can download the entire book here. Although I tried to avoid theology as much as possible in my 2015 Discovery Institute Press book, In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design, second edition, in a section entitled “A Theological Supplement” I explained my motivation for wanting to write (later) the more theological “Christianity for Doubters”: It is widely believed that Darwinism is based on good science, and that those who oppose it simply do not like its philosophical and religious implications. The truth is exactly the opposite. In a June 15, 2012 post at www.evolutionnews.org, Max Planck Read More ›

From David Snoke at the Christian Scientific Society: Some people gave me feedback that this was the best CSS meeting ever. We had a great time discussing both the strange science of quantum mechanics, and some of the implications for religion … Erica Carlson gave a great introduction to the strangeness of QM. She argued strongly against the idea that our minds control reality, as some “new age” writers have argued. Rather, our minds at most control the set of questions that measurement may give answers to. More. The Society now has a Facebook page. See also: At Scientific American: “Inexplicable lab results may be telling us we’re on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm” This doesn’t sound like Read More ›

From Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True: Templeton wastes $ 630,791 on “biology” research, finally making its anti-evolution agenda explicit The John Templeton Foundation has announced yet another big grant for “biology” research, except that its principal investigators are a theologian (Christopher Southgate) as well as a biologist (Niles Lehman). Click on the screenshot to go to the announcement. As you see, the grant, which just started, will last 32 months, and eat up over half a million dollars: … Relax, people, it is not your tax money anyhow. In other words, because the Templeton foundation doesn’t like competition (although of course Sir John made his money as a mutual fund manager) or nonteleological—i.e., naturalistic—explanations, they have to attack Read More ›

From RJS at Patheos: Ten years ago, when I first started writing on science and faith, Intelligent Design was a hot topic. It was in the news and high on the agenda for many in my local church. Today it has slid into the background, occasionally mentioned, but there are often other fish to fry. Greg Cootsona devotes a case study in his recent book (Mere Science and Christian Faith: Bridging the Divide with Emerging Adults) to the topic of intelligent design but not more than this because it is not one of the major issues for the emerging adults in his target audience.More. Okay, but with respect to the term “emerging adults,” are we talking about Millennials, many of Read More ›