Would St. Thomas Have Been an Evolutionary Psychologist?

Over at the Huffington Post, that organ of sophisticated theological analysis, Matt Rossano argues: If he were alive today would Aquinas be an evolutionist? His writings suggest a mind already resonating with many evolutionary concepts. My sense is that Aquinas, like Aristotle and Albert before him, was just too curious and too smart not be at the intellectual vanguard wrestling with exciting new knowledge. Limping weakly behind with whiny unimaginative creationists would have been far too boring for a mind such as his. In fact, Rossano actually tries to marshal St. Thomas for the least plausible part of the Darwinian program–evolutionay psychology. Rossano finds some simlarities between Thomas’ thought and the ideas of evolutionary psychology. But any two schools of Read More ›

What I Really Believe

Recently I asked Larry Moran of Sandwalk: what do you, as a New Atheist, really believe? To focus the discussion I asked eight fundamental philosophical questions. The insistent New Atheist claim has been that belief in the supernatural in any form- traditional Christian belief seems to rile them the most- is nonsense and has been shown to be such by modern science. New Atheists claim the mantle of logic and reason, as against irrationality and superstition of theists. Dr. Moran replied to my questions, courteously, and as I have promised I will answer the questions in the same spirit. For clarity, I will give the original question, then Dr. Moran’s answer, and then mine. A little background on my perspective: Read More ›

Intelligent Design vs. Theistic Evolution: Behe debates Fox on UK’s Premiere Radio

Biochemist and CSC Fellow Michael Behe engaged in a lively radio debate with Keith Fox a British biochemist and theistic evolutionist. Premiere Radio describes it this way: Michael Behe is professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania and the founder of the modern Intelligent Design movement. His book “Darwin’s Black Box” ignited the controversy 14 years ago when it claimed that certain molecular machines and biological processes are “irreducibly complex” and cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution. His new book “The Edge of Evolution” takes his conclusions further, arguing that the Darwinian processes of random mutation and natural selection are incapable of producing the variation and complexity we see in most of life. So can we conclude that life was Read More ›

Darwinian Assumptions Leave “No Doubt” About Extraterrestrial Life

FoxNews recently published two articles (see here and here) about extrasolar planets and extraterrestrial life. Although skepticism is supposed to be a hallmark of science, one evolutionary scientist quoted, Steven Vogt, boasts that he has “no doubt” that there is life on this newly discovered extrasolar planet: “Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent,” said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today. “I have almost no doubt about it.” Let me make sure I understand this right. Dr. Vogt has “almost no Read More ›