Religion

From Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: accepting Templeton Prize: A free society is a moral achievement. Without self-restraint, without the capacity to defer the gratification of instinct, and without the habits of heart and deed that we call virtues, we will eventually lose our freedom. That is what Locke meant when he contrasted liberty, the freedom to do what we ought, with licence, the freedom to do what we want. It’s what Adam Smith signalled when, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It’s what Washington meant when he said, “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.” And Benjamin Franklin when he said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” And Read More ›

Recently, our WJM offered: Debunking The Old “There Is No Evidence of God” Canard Atheists/physicalists often talk about “believing what the evidence dictates”, but fail to understand that “evidence” is an interpretation of facts. Facts don’t “lead” anywhere in and of themselves; they carry with them no conceptual framework that dictates how they “should” fit into any hypothesis or pattern. Even the language by which one describes a fact necessarily frames that fact in a certain conceptual framework that may be counterproductive. More. I sometimes get lassoed into such discussions and have found three rules to help: 1. First, find out if the person is a pure naturalist atheist who believes that nature is all there is, everything just somehow Read More ›

My 2015 Discovery Institute Press book In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design, 2nd edition included a section entitled “A Theological Supplement,” where I wrote: 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 Evolution News and Views, Max Planck Institute biologist W.E. Loennig said “Normally the better your arguments are, the more people open their minds to your theory, but with ID, the better your arguments are, the more they close their minds, and the angrier they become. This is science upside down.” The case for Darwinism Read More ›

Priceless: Perhaps no topic appears as potentially threatening to evangelicals as evolution. The very idea seems to exclude God from the creation the book of Genesis celebrates. Yet many evangelicals have come to accept the conclusions of science while still holding to a vigorous belief in God and the Bible. How did they make this journey? How did they come to embrace both evolution and faith? Here are stories from a community of people who love Jesus and honor the authority of the Bible, but who also agree with what science says about the cosmos, our planet and the life that so abundantly fills it. Among the contributors are Scientists such as … More. Just think. The rest of the Read More ›

Only religion prevents us from seeing the Darwinian truth about evolution. Or at least that’s what one would think reading ScienceDaily: Generally seen as antithetical to one another, evolution and religion can hardly fit in a scientific discourse simultaneously. However, biologist Dr Aldemaro Romero Jr., Baruch College, USA, devotes his latest research article, now published in the open access Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), to observing the influences a few major religions have had on evolutionists and their scientific thinking over the centuries. … “Since the advent of Modern Synthesis we have a pretty consistent set of evidence that evolution is not linear, that there is not such a thing as direction for evolutionary processes, and that nothing is predetermined Read More ›

As exemplified in Sean Carroll’s new book, The Big Picture, From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: The last chapter of the book begins with a description of Carroll’s early experiences in the Episcopal church, which he was quite fond of. I also had such experiences (I was an altar boy for several years at an Episcopal church, the American Cathedral in Paris). Unlike Carroll, I was never a believer, but just figured this was one of quite a few mystifying things that adults got up to, and that it seemed I had to go along with it until I got older. Thinking back to those days, I was struck by the realization that I recognized the tone Read More ›

Wow. Nicholas Baumard here: Christianity’s success is often attributed to its supposedly unique message. Unlike earlier religions, it exhorted people to be good and promised to reward them for their goodness in the afterlife. That is still how most people conceptualise the Christian message: helping others, working hard, controlling one’s sexuality and believing that people who don’t do so will be punished. In other words, a moralising religion. More (paywall) . If Baumard and NS got everything about Christianity so wrong in the second free paragraph (and the topic was their choice), one can hardly recommend paying to read the rest and finding out what “evolution” has to do with it. The main selling point of Christianity through the ages Read More ›

Start your day with pasta: Further to Pastafarians not giving up their claim to be a religion, we hear lawyers seeking clients are asking: Do You Have To Accommodate An Employee Who Worships The Flying Spaghetti Monster? JD Supra: Employers are generally aware of their duty to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs. Whether that means rearranging work schedules, permitting modifications to dress codes, permitting prayer breaks, or any number of other alterations, you know that the law requires you to be flexible when it comes to religion. But what if your employee claims he is a “Pastafarian” who worships the Flying Spaghetti Monster? A recent case from Nebraska might shed some light on your religious accommodation obligations. We didn’t say “asking Read More ›

Closing our religion news coverage for the week: Ross Pomeroy asks at RealClearScience: We are perhaps the first generation of humans to truly possess a factually accurate understanding of our world and ourselves. In the past, this knowledge was only in the hands and minds of the few, but with the advent of the Internet, evidence and information have never been so widespread and accessible. Beliefs can be challenged with the click of a button. We no longer live in closed, insular environments where a single dogmatic worldview can dominate. As scientific evidence questions the tenets of religion, so too, does it provide a worldview to follow, one that’s infinitely more coherent. More. Huh? What with the multiverse and Help! Read More ›

From Jonathan McClatchie: Here is the recording of my recent debate at Monash University in South Africa with agnostic philosopher Charles Villet, on “Does God Exist?” It includes quite a bit of ID material. More. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Vincent Torley wrote about the Canadian national mag’s effort here: To give credit where credit is due, Professor Bart Ehrman, in his recent scholarly attack on the reliability of the New Testament, at least took the trouble to draw upon the latest scientific research relating to the fallibility of human memory, even though he overlooked equally impressive research demonstrating the reliability of memory, both within a community and within the mind of an eyewitness, over the course of time. However, Brian Bethune’s hatchet job on Jesus attempts to cast doubt on His very existence, citing the work of one historian (Richard Carrier) who is not recognized as a New Testament scholar, and whose methodology is highly dubious. I am forced Read More ›

Canadian weekly Maclean’s recently featured an article by Brian Bethune titled, Did Jesus really exist? The article, which drew upon a book recently published by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, titled, Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior, argues that the Gospel accounts of Jesus are largely based on unreliable memories and a highly distorted oral tradition. But Bethune does not stop there: citing the work of New Atheist Richard Carrier, he goes beyond Ehrman and maintains that Jesus may never have even existed at all. The issues raised by Professor Ehrman in his book are of immense philosophical significance, for they pertain to the trustworthiness of human testimony. If Read More ›

Recently there has been a spate of newspaper reports extolling Denmark as the world’s happiest country. Secular liberals often point to the Scandinavian countries as an earthly paradise, when compared with what they see as a broken-down, inegalitarian, hyper-religious United States. Are they right? I decided to check out the facts, and here’s what I’ve come up with. My findings, in a nutshell 1. Latin Americans are actually the world’s happiest people; Danes are the world’s most contented people. 2. The success of Sweden and Denmark is due to its social homogeneity and its Protestant work ethic, rather than socialism. 3. Scandinavian societies are egalitarian, but they also tend to stifle individuality. 4. Denmark and Sweden have their own social Read More ›

Ever since Voltaire mythologized the Galileo Affair, Hume’s Philo demolished Cleanthes, and Gibbon blamed pretty much everything on the Christians, evolutionary thinking has had an unbeatable template: The Warfare Thesis. Anyone who opposes or even questions evolution is automatically branded as having religious motives. Religion is at war with science. That claim has failed the test of historiography over and over, but so what? Who cares about history? Certainly not journalists, policy makers, federal judges, textbook authors, and anyone else who matters. But now there is an entirely different, empirical, falsification of the Warfare Thesis, and evolutionists are in full-panic.  Read more

John Farrell’s article, It’s Time To Retire ‘Theistic Evolution’ (Forbes magazine, March 19, 2016), cites three prominent Catholic thinkers who reject the term “theistic evolution.” But what Farrell overlooks is that these Catholics hold wildly divergent views on the simple question of whether living things were designed by God. Edward Feser insists that they were, and Stacy Trasancos apparently agrees; Ken Miller says they were not – which puts him in the same camp as Jesuit astronomer George Coyne and Catholic theologian John Haught, two outspoken defenders of evolution who were not cited in Farrell’s article. However, the clear teaching of the Catholic Church is that humans and other living things were designed by God. What I find astonishing is Read More ›