Author: Logan Paul Gage
Pascal Boyer Dissects Religion
pascal, boyer, religion, religious, belief, atheism, theism, nature
Behe’s Critics Fail to Understand Analogies and Design Detection
Whenever biochemist Michael Behe’s argument for design from “irreducibly complex” molecular machines appears, there is a Darwinist waiting in the wings with a devastating critique (or so he thinks). Take as an example the following passage from biologist Craig M. Story. He recently reviewed Fazale Rana’s new book The Cell’s Design for Christianity Today (see “Same Song, Second Verse“). In his review, he critiques Behe’s argument, because according to Dr. Story, Rana merely regurgitates Behe. Rana, like Behe before him, may be commended for providing a layman’s description of a number of astonishingly intricate cellular processes. But his portraits of cellular workings will fail to convince most mainstream scientists for the same reason that Behe’s book has been roundly dismissed: Read More ›
On Non-Nihilistic “Scientific” Atheism
Nobel laureate in physics Steven Weinberg recently revamped his 2008 Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard University for an essay entitled “Without God” in The New York Review of Books. As the essay moves toward a close, Weinberg tells us: the worldview of science is rather chilling. Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by Read More ›
Nature Comments on Evolution and the U.S. Presidential Election
Nature recently had this to say in an editorial regarding our upcoming election: The most worrying thing about a McCain presidency is not so much a President McCain as a Vice-President Palin. Sarah Palin, Alaska’s governor and McCain’s running mate, opposes all research into human embryonic stem cells. She is a creationist…. Contrast that with Obama’s statement on page 448, in which Nature asked him about the teaching of intelligent design in science classes. It is not easy to address students’ questions about evolution without falling prey to the false notion of ‘teaching the controversy’, as the Royal Society’s director of education discovered last week in a public-relations meltdown (see ‘Creation and classrooms’). But Obama could not be more clear: Read More ›
Steve Fuller Returns A.C. Grayling’s Favor
Those of you who read A.C. Grayling’s arrogant and intellectually vacuous thrashing of Steve Fuller’s new book, Dissent Over Descent: Evolution’s 500-Year War on Intelligent Design, will want to know that Fuller now has a reply available at the New Humanist. Grayling’s method is to simplify opponents’ arguments to the point of misrepresenting them. Just as bad, Grayling’s “review” reveals a woefully disappointing grasp of the the origins of modern science and the history of Christianity. One begins to wonder whether the days of truly intellectual atheists are over. Perhaps it is no longer possible for atheists, uneducated in the history of Christianity and its doctrines, to level serious, challenging criticisms of the faith. It seems they just have too Read More ›