Religion

Closing our religion coverage for the week (a bit late), over at ReligionNews.com, Emily McFarlane Miller reports that Mike McHargue tells us: ‘Science Mike’ McHargue: ‘Christians aren’t stupid, and atheists aren’t evil’ … What are some of the most compelling things you’ve found in your scientific studies that point you back to God? Probably the first thing would be how ideally suited the human brain is as a host for beliefs about God, the way belief seems to be relatively inevitable a consequence of human consciousness, and the way our brains tend to develop in healthy ways when we indulge that belief, especially in a God who is loving. Beyond that, as you learn more about cosmology and physics, particle Read More ›

Collectively, they are, um, dumb. After a while, one gets plumb tired of it. From Graham Lawton at New Scientist: IT COST more than $13 billion and took 14 years, but eventually, as expected, God showed up. The joy and relief were immense. That was in 2012, and the evidence has only become stronger. Disbelief is no longer an option. God is real. Not the God of course, but Her particle, aka the Higgs boson. If only proving the existence of God were that simple. Gallons of ink and blood have been spilled over this question but have largely got us nowhere. Belief in a god or several gods is a leap of faith. So is disbelief. The only coherent Read More ›

From Hugh Ross at Salvo: With access to gravitational waves emanating from both medium-sized and supermassive black hole binaries, astronomers will be able to explore new properties of gravity and general relativity. They will be able to determine in much more detail the formation histories of both stars and galaxies in the universe. These advances will lead to a more precise understanding of the cosmic creation event and the subsequent development of the universe. Inevitably, worldviews will come into play, but scientific testing can and should overcome preconceived ideas. How did our universe come to exist? Was it by chance? For a fair-minded person, the understanding to be gained by these advances promises to remove any remaining doubts about the Read More ›

One wouldn’t think anyone had to point that out, but physicist Christopher Graney does a good job at Aeon: … Yes, [an opponent] said, a moving Earth messes with certain Biblical passages, like Joshua telling the Sun to stand still. But it also messes with certain astronomical terms, such as sunrise and sunset. Copernicans had work-arounds for all that, Locher said, even though they might be convoluted. What Copernicans could not work around, though, were the scientific arguments against their theory. Indeed, Locher even proposed a mechanism to explain how Earth could orbit the Sun (a sort of perpetual falling – this decades before Isaac Newton would explain orbits by means of perpetual falling), but he said it would not Read More ›

We usually save these treats for Sunday but, oh well: From Daily Mail: TV shows designed to inspire awe at the natural world could make viewers less inclined to believe scientific theories about existence, a study suggests. It found religious people who watch programmes such as BBC’s Planet Earth, presented by Sir David Attenborough, are more likely to have their faith in God reaffirmed by the beauty they see on screen. Atheists, meanwhile, are more likely to believe scientific theories that involve order rather than randomness in the universe. More. Well, the obvious solution is to mainly air nature shows about ugly, boring places and tell people to watch them out of a sense of duty. Or pass laws making Read More ›

Imagine if atheistic materialism was actually true and humans are nothing more than biological automatons – complexly programmed and reactive robots that behave and think in whatever manner happenstance chemical interactions dictates at any given time.  Let’s think about what would actually mean. There would be no way for a biological automaton to determine whether or not any statement was in fact true or not since all conclusions are driven by chemistry and not metaphysical “truth” values; indeed, a biological automaton reaches conclusion X for exactly the same reason any other reaches conclusion Y; chemistry.  If chemistry dictates that 1+1=banana, that is what a “person” will conclude. If chemistry dictates they defend that view to the death and see themselves Read More ›

From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: One of the main goals of the foundation is to bring together science and religion. Among the many things they are funding to accomplish this is a $871,000 grant to Arizona State University to fund Think Write Publish Fellowships in Science and Religion. If you’re a hard-up writer, these people will give you the opportunity to get $10,000 to write “creative nonfiction stories about harmonies between science and religion” and help you get them published. Sure. The world needs more flatulence. If you tried to show that the universe shows evidence of design, chances are, you’d get nowhere. These people a interested in the warm, the fuzzy, the deniable.) Over the Read More ›

Painful. Closing our religion coverage for the week (a bit late, as it is the Labour Day weekend) from Rabbi Moshe Averick, in his Nonsense of a High Order: The Confused World of Modern Atheism: Atheists are prepared to deny our very grasp on reality Atheists are prepared to burrow very deep down the materialist rabbit hole in order to avoid any possible confrontation with the spiritual. How deep? Deep enough to cast doubt on our very connection with reality. The skeptic claims that a scientific investigation of the brain leads us to the conclusion that there resides within us a separate “executive self” is an illusion. Leaving totally aside the issue of whether or not that assessment of the Read More ›

Here: Perhaps the most striking trend in American religion in recent years has been the growing percentage of adults who do not identify with a religious group. And the vast majority of these religious “nones” (78%) say they were raised as a member of a particular religion before shedding their religious identity in adulthood. … About half of current religious “nones” who were raised in a religion (49%) indicate that a lack of belief led them to move away from religion. This includes many respondents who mention “science” as the reason they do not believe in religious teachings, including one who said “I’m a scientist now, and I don’t believe in miracles.” Others reference “common sense,” “logic” or a “lack Read More ›

Chapter 6, “Is God Really Good?” of my new Wipf and Stock book Christianity for Doubters is almost the same as the “Epilogue” of my 2015 Discovery Institute Press book In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design. What does the problem of pain have to do with intelligent design? A lot, I think, because after 40 years of promoting intelligent design, it is obvious to me that many of the strongest opponents of design, for all their talk about defending science, are completely immune to scientific arguments, they will never look objectively at the scientific evidence until they can find answers to some very legitimate theological questions they have, three of which I try to address in chapters Read More ›

I don’t want to survive. I want to live! – Captain McCrea Over the past several months, I’ve taken a new position at Truett McConnell University (TMU) as an Associate Professor of Microbiology. 1 I was attracted by what makes it different here. Virginia was a good season, but I sought to focus on closely mentoring students. TMU is unique because of its stances are uncommon in academia for the right reasons and from an Anabaptist heritage. No more non-overlapping magisteria During the 16th century, the state told everyone what to believe. The idea of separation of church and state is supposed to always let (y)our conscience be (y)our guide. Letting your conscience guide you began largely in the 16 Read More ›

Granville Sewell in Christianity for Doubters: The odea of a judgment after death is terribly difficult for our modern minds to take seriously. But, for me, the idea that there will be no final justice – no reward for generosity, kindness, mercy, and courage, and no punishment for selfishness, betrayal, arrogance, and cruelty—is even harder to accept. That would mean that those who are confident that they will never be punished for their corruption and cruelty will be proved right, while those who believe their unselfishness and sacrifices will someday be recognized are deluding themselves.Christianity for Doubters:, p. 50 Maybe the mathematician in him sees unjust judgement as somehow wrong? See also: Granville Sewell on resurrection as metamorphosis Follow UD Read More ›

Closing our religion coverage for the day, from UTEP mathematician Granville Sewell’s Christianity for Doubters: The idea that a decomposed, dead body could be replaced by a new body someday, somewhere, seems impossible. But to me it seems equally impossible that an ugly caterpillar could enter a tomb and be resurrected as a beautiful new butterfly, and yet a butterfly with many entirely new organs is constructed out of the dissolved and recycled parts of a caterpillar every day in a chrysalis, as the film (p. 47) Metamorphosis documents so magnificently. This film includes photography (through magnetic resonance imaging) of the transformation as it happens within the chrysalis. If you find it impossible to believe in the miracle of resurrection, Read More ›

The following is section 2.3 of my new book  Christianity for Doubters. As the title indicates, much of this book is explicitly theological, but the first two chapters are about intelligent design. In the preface, I wrote “Of course, you do not have to believe anything in chapters 3-6 of this book or anything in the Bible to believe in intelligent design…. In fact, some intelligent design advocates are uncomfortable with a book that combines chapters on intelligent design with explicitly Christian chapters, because it might encourage those who claim that ID proponents do not understand the difference between science and religion. Most of us do understand the difference, we are just interested in both. And so are ID critics.” Read More ›

We have been talking a bit about Rope Kojonen this last week, with his presentation at the AM-Nat conference and his recent paper on methodological naturalism in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Now he has a new book out covering a philosophical perspective on the Intelligent Design debate.
Read More ›