Jerry Coyne’s “The Templeton Bribe”
According to Jerry Coyne, atheistic evolutionists and ID proponents have at least this in common — they can expect no bribes from the Templeton Foundation. Read Coyne’s post on the topic here.
Religion
Naturalism’s Moral Foundations
Jeffrey Dahmer: “If it all happens naturalistically, what’s the need for a God? Can’t I set my own rules? Who owns me? I own myself.” [Biography, “Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Within,” A&E, 1996.] Naturalists like to stress that you don’t need God or religion to be good. Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins even suggest that leaving God out of the equation actually allows one to be more moral because then our moral acts are authentic, motivated by deep conviction rather than by having a divine gun to our heads. Even so, Dahmer’s logic is compelling. We need some external reference point — God — to justify being good. And that justification is significant in its own right. Without it, we can still Read More ›
Will Evolution Weekend Sermons Discuss Alleged Murderer Amy Bishop?
Today is the closing day of “Evolution Weekend”. The weekend is promoted by The clergy letter project. This is a weekend dedicated to glorifying Darwinism in churches.
Curiously one of the scientists on call to help clergy and parishioners promote the glories of Darwinism was Amy Bishop, she is listed here:
Name: Amy Bishop, Ph.D.
Title: Associate Professor
Address: Department of Biological Sciences
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899
Areas of Expertise: neuroscience, molecular biology, genetics, evolution of the human brain
Email: ——-@uah.edu
Amy Bishop was charged in the murder of several people recently. Now, there are some very fine Darwinists like Francis Collins, and I don’t mean to say Amy Bishop is representative of all Darwinists. But I’d recommend that if the Clergy Letter Project wishes to put on a good face for Darwinism, they might consider disassociating themselves from Amy Bishop.
They may not want to promote “survival of the fittest” in their sermons today. That would be kind of poor taste in light of the fact a presumed societal degenerate (Bishop) is the “fittest” survivor while 3 (possibly 4) innocent victims are the “unfit” dead. Think I’m overstating the case against Darwinism? Consider what Evolutionary Psychologist David Buss argues in his book The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill
murder is the product of evolutionary forces and that the homicidal act, in evolutionary terms, conveys advantages to the killer.
Do We Need God To Do Science?
Premier Radio, one of the UK’s leading Christian radio stations, has been featuring several interviews/debates in recent weeks on matters related to ID, some of which have been flagged here and here. The most recent one bears the title of this post and was aired last weekend (6th Feb), in which I debated the question with the historian Thomas Dixon, who basically holds that while we may have needed God to do science, we don’t need the deity anymore. My own view is that if we mean by ‘science’ something more than simply the pursuit of instrumental knowledge, then that quest still doesn’t make much sense without the relevant (Abrahamic) theological backdrop. I continue this line of argument in a Read More ›
Frank Turek Apologetics Simulcast Tonight on the “Youth Exodus”
Tonight my friend Frank Turek will be interviewing me as well as other Christian apologists (such as William Lane Craig and Josh McDowell). Below are the details.
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This Tuesday, January 19th I’ll be hosting a live radio and internet simulcast event called Church Dropout: Overcoming the Youth Exodus. The producers tell me that this program will draw an audience of over 200,000 to hear and see evidence for Christianity. The program is intended to help reverse the trend that 75% of Christian youth leave the church after high school.
My guests will be some of the top Christian apologists in the world:
We’ll start the evening with the man who is currently the best debater on our side, Dr. William Lane Craig (http://www.ReasonableFaith.org). Bill does scores of college events every year, and he provides great resources on his website. You need to hear Bill’s evidence for the existence of God– irrefutable!
We’ll then turn to one of the founding fathers of the Intelligent Design movement– Dr. Bill Dembski (http://www.designinference.com). Bill has two PhD’s, but he’ll show us very simply how life points to an intelligent designer, and how most of the so-called “evidence” for macroevolution is based on materialistic and counter-factual philosophical assumptions. Read More ›
A blow-by-blow response to Dr. Denis Alexander
In the last year and a bit I’ve done a lot of work in trying to understand and then critique the approach of Dr. Denis Alexander of the Faraday Institute in Cambridge (UK). I know that many readers of UD are familiar with Alexander’s big-selling work, “Creation or Evolution – Do We Have To Choose?”. This book is probably (alongside Francis Collins) the work with the most traction by Darwinists seeking to argue from a Biblical Christian viewpoint. I’ve previously drawn attention to IVP’s “Should Christians Embrace Evolution”. In this post I want instead to draw attention to my own response, “Creation or Evolution – Why We Must Choose”. If you don’t want to read the blurb and just want Read More ›
GODORNOT.COM VIDEO CONTEST
B & H Publishing Group, publisher of Dr. Dembski’s excellent new theodicy The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World, is sponsoring a video contest at www.godornot.com. C. S. Lewis wrote in his journal, after the passing of his wife Joy Davidman Gresham from cancer, “Sooner or later I must face the question in plain language. What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, ‘good’?” The journal entries written during his mourning were later to become the book A Grief Observed, which he initially published under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk. The publisher believes that the above quote from Lewis is the central question Read More ›
Truth and Science
It is almost axiomatic in our culture that the pronouncements of Science are synonymous with Truth. This received wisdom is so prevalent that whenever media reports begin with the words “Scientists have found that…[fill in the blank]”, whatever follows is widely believed by the public to be unassailable fact. So revered is Science and so respected its methods, that the mere suggestion that something might be amiss is considered ignorance or heresy. And so the statements of Science are defended vigorously while the critics are dismissed as quacks and uninformed idiots. The prevailing attitude seems to be (to slightly bend the well-known quote from Richard Dawkins) “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in the findings of Science [emphasis and edit mine], that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”
For those of us who have long been engaged in the ongoing Evolution/Intelligent Design debate, we know that Read More ›
William Dembski’s Interview on New Book “The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World”
William Dembski was interviewed recently by the Evangelical Philosophical Society, which can be read at their blog, about his new book The End of Christianity, Finding a Good God in an Evil World. This book is the long anticipated refutation of the “new atheists” position, such as that of the Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens vein. But it is also a theodicy worthy of reading in its own right, regardless of the prominence of new or old atheists. Here’s an excerpt of the interview: What’s the main point that you are trying to communicate in this book? What is the “end of Christianity” that you speak of in your title? My book attempts to resolve how the Fall of Adam Read More ›
IVP launch website to plug anti-evolution book
When I posted before to mention IVP’s new anti-Darwin book, I had no idea they’d launched a website: www.shouldchristiansembraceevolution.com It’s very comprehensive, and very impressive. IVP (UK) are obviously taking this particular publication very seriously.
Manhattan Declaration — Where are the theistic evolutionists?
About 150 Christian leaders were the original signatories of the recent manifesto asserting the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and liberty of conscience — the Manhattan Declaration. At the time of this writing, over a 100,000 have signed it (including me). I encourage readers of UD to read the document and sign it if it reflects your views on God and culture.
Of the 150 original signers, I know about 25 personally. Interestingly, the original signers seem overwhelmingly pro-ID. That raises the question why no notable theistic evolutionists are signers (e.g., Francis Collins). To be sure, signers such as Tim Keller and Dinesh D’Souza have indicated an openness to evolutionary theory. But I’m not finding any among the signers who are adamantly committed to theistic evolution, seeing it as the only way to be both scientifically and theologically responsible.
Perhaps I’m missing something here. If so, I’m happy to be disabused. But is it possible that ID is friendlier to classic Christian teaching on the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and liberty of conscience than theistic evolution? It not, I’d like to see the names of theistic evolutionists who are also signers of the Manhattan Declaration.
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Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience
November 20, 2009
The following is the text of the Manhattan Declaration signed by 149 pro-life and Catholic and evangelical and Orthodox Christian leaders. LifeNews.com supports the pro-life aims of the resolution.
http://manhattandeclaration.org
Preamble
Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.
While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.
After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines. Read More ›
36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction
The title of this post is also the title of a recent book by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. According to the website for The Edge Foundation,
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, known to Edge readers as a philosopher who has interesting things to say about Gödel and Spinoza, among others, enters into this conversation, taking on these and wider themes, and pushing the envelope by crossing over into the realm of fiction.
Goldstein isn’t the first novelist to appear on Edge, nor the first to discuss religion. In October 1989, the novelist Ken Kesey came to New York spoke to The Reality Club. “As I’ve often told Ginsberg,” he began, “you can’t blame the President for the state of the country, it’s always the poets’ fault. You can’t expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don’t have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold.”
It’s in this spirit that Edge presents a brief excerpt from the first chapter, and the nonfiction appendix from 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.
Published Today: Should Christians Embrace Evolution?
Today, Intervarsity Press (IVP) in the UK publish a new symposium, entitled “Should Christians Embrace Evolution?” edited by leading geneticist Professor Norman Nevin. Andrew Sibley has already posted about it on UD and linked to the preface. Believers in a God-guided Darwinism are preaching that Darwinism is a fact and that the Bible can be reconciled with it. This new book comprehensively refutes both ideas. Far from necessary, theistic evolution is both bad theology and bad science. It particularly interacts with Dr. Denis Alexander and his recent work, “Creation or Evolution – do we have to choose?”.
Here is the contents table from the first draft:
Theist, Agnostic, Atheist: Will the Real Charles Darwin Please Stand Up?
Those old enough to remember TV in the late 1950s through the 60s will recall a delightful game show, “To Tell the Truth.” As a kid I fondly recall trying to figure out along with the celebrity panelists which of the three contestants was the “real” person to be identified. It was a challenging game; the three contestants would all introduce themselves as “I am Mr./Miss /Mrs. [the generic Ms. hadn’t come along yet] X” and, after the announcer read a brief description of the featured guest, the panelists would begin their questioning. The idea was for the contestants to try and stump the panel as to the which of them was the real X, so the impostors had their ingenuity tested in how well they could manufacture deceptive but plausible lies. At the end celebrities would cast their vote and then the telling question: “Will the real Mr./Miss/Mrs. X please stand up?” After some pregnant pausing and feinting, the truth would literally emerge.
Somtimes history imitates game show and no more so than when we try to guess at Charles Darwin’s religious beliefs, for surely there are more ideas on Darwin’s convictions (or lack thereof) in this regard than perhaps any figure of the modern era. Darwin, in his various comments on religion and God, could have been a one-man “To Tell the Truth” stumper on the question of his own beliefs. A brief review of the many conclusions offered in this regard will serve to make the point.
For the Benefits of Religion without Religion …
[This just in an email from the skeptics:]
The Center for Inquiry is launching a Secular Celebrant Program!
CFI Secular Celebrant Training
December 5, 2009
Center for Inquiry Indiana
350 Canal Walk, Suite A, Indianapolis
Click here to register online.
Why a CFI Secular Celebrant Program?
As we move through life, we celebrate many occasions filled with joy and love, accomplishment and striving, loss and grief. Unfortunately, the choice of persons to conduct ceremonies for these occasions is usually between religious clergy and impersonal civil officials.
For the 16% of the U.S. population not affiliated with any religion,
this can be a traumatic experience.
They may be required to go through religious counseling and/or have religious references in their ceremony. They may be prevented from having their choice of music or readings as part of the ceremony. The local minister called on to conduct a funeral/memorial may preach a “come to Jesus” sermon or otherwise use religious references that are not in keeping with the worldview of the person being memorialized. Many of us have seen this done.
Wedding ceremonies, memorials, and other life passages are extremely important events—they are life’s milestones—and people should be able to have these ceremonies conducted in a manner and by a person of their choosing.
While some people of the secular worldview do not see a need for rituals and ceremonies of any kind, many feel that having a way of marking life passages is important. CFI feels that this is a personal choice and that secular ceremonies—and persons to conduct these ceremonies—should be available to those who want them.
Who can become a Secular Celebrant?
CFI Secular Celebrant Training is open to all, but additional steps are required of those wishing to receive CFI Secular Celebrant Certification and listing in the CFI Celebrant Directory.
Cost for all-day training workshop: $75.00 Read More ›