Category: Culture
Robert Wright’s “Grand Bargain” on Evolution? Maybe Not So Grand After All
I like Robert Wright and enjoyed his recent book The Evolution of God. One thing I value about him is his candor. Thus in his New York Times op-ed on Sunday proposing a “grand bargain” between religion and science (i.e., Darwinism), he can’t help but blurt out what would be asked in this bargain even of religious believers who think they’ve already managed to square God with Darwin. These believers, notably adherents of “theistic evolution,” with their minimalist view of the Deity, should be prepared to “scale back their conception of God’s role in creation.” If I’m reading Bob Wright correctly, even the theism-lite of theistic evolution can be reconciled with a full-bodied Darwinism only at the cost of further Read More ›
Three Tips for Students Going Back to School to Study Evolution
After attending public schools from kindergarten through my masters degree, I learned a few lessons about staying informed while studying a biased and one-sided origins curriculum. My large, inner-city public high school was rich in diversity, and I learned to appreciate a multiplicity of viewpoints and backgrounds. Unfortunately, this diversity did not extend into the biology classroom. There I was told there was one, and only one, acceptable perspective regarding origins: neo-Darwinian theory. As students head back to school this year, I want to share some tips I’ve learned to help students stay informed on this topic: Tip #1: Never opt out of learning evolution. In fact, learn about evolution every chance you get. Evolutionary biologist Patrick J. Keeling claims Read More ›
Dear Ben…
To: Ben SteinFrom: Walter DurantyNew York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist (deceased, but never fired).936,287,434 Seventh CircleMoloch Township, Gehenna. Dearest Ben,My condolences on your involuntary departure from the New York Times. Down Here, we all find it very amusing.Yea, we all know that you got canned by the Grey Lady- by e-mail, no less. The pretense: your ‘crime’ was to hawk the services of an on-line credit report company that the Times management thought unethical.Of course, causing people who trusted you to lose money would have been your quickest ticket to promotion at the ‘Newspaper with a of Record.’ Pinch Sulzberger reduced the value of the stock of the world’s ‘Newspaper of Record’ by 6 billion dollars (1999 50 bucks /share; Read More ›
A “Heretic” in Jewish Terms? Someone Who Denies Intelligent Design
Last week some readers of my Beliefnet blog had a hard time accepting that the rabbinic term “apikoros,” a kind of heretic, denotes someone who rejects — if I may use the contemporary term — intelligent design. One fellow, by a rigorous Google search, even believed he’d found Internet-based proof that an apikoros designates a Christian! Um, no. The Mishnah uses the word without explanation, for a category of persons who have no share in the World to Come. The Talmud links it with insolence either to the face of the Sages or in their presence. (See Sanhedrin 90a, 99b.) Maimonides finds an etymological connection to an Aramaic word for “disparagement.” But what of the idea content of the term? Read More ›
Tom Gilson Reviews Bradley Monton’s New Book: “Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design”
Last year ID the Future featured a series of podcasts (see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) with Bradley Monton, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which discussed Monton’s support for intelligent design. Monton is notable as he’s one of the atheist intellectuals who feels that many intelligent design arguments hold merit. He has recently published a book, Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design, which was reviewed by Tom Gilson at Breakpoint. Gilson’s excellent review is titled, “ID’s Unlikely Defender,” and he writes: Monton is willing to evaluate ID according to what its proponents actually affirm about it. He devotes most of a chapter to working through what the Discovery Read More ›