Evolution Reads Like “Scroll,” Pope Says

For some unknown reason, the recent confab of scientists and theologians at the Vatican has gone largely unremarked by the mainstream media. But our colleague Bruce Chapman was paying attention and has some thoughts on the Pope’s address to the scientists, philosophers, theologians and others in attendance. Read all about it here.

Ayala Plays Both Sides

Many readers of Scientific American Magazine have recently written me about the new article, “The Christian Man’s Evolution: How Darwinism and Faith Can Coexist.” Most have pointed out how fatuous Ayala’s view of God comes across. As author Sally Lehrman writes, seeming to think this very clever, Ayala (and “science-savvy Christian theologians”) “present a God that is continuously engaged in the creative process through undirected natural selection.” (bolding added) This line, of course, prompted much talk of square circles and Christian atheists, as well it should. Writes one reader, “You mean: ‘a God who is continuously engaged’ by being completely unengaged?” But apart from the clear contradiction in this thinking, Ayala demonstrates an inconsistency we find repeatedly from Darwinists who Read More ›

“Anti-Science” is the New Left Wing Smear

We notice a trend on the left to denounce scientists who disagree with a social policy objective of the left as “anti-science.” It’s a major theme on the evolution issue. Now it is true, too, on the issue of whether global warming is as big a danger as the Al Gore sorts say and what contribution human activity makes to the problem. And as a Washington Post article shows, the materialist left have decided that medical professors who promote reproductive medicine that doesn’t include abortion or test tube fertilization because of moral scruples are being denounced as “anti-science,” too. At the same time we hear, a la Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion are properly “non-overlapping magisteria,” that one Read More ›

Contra Kass, Not All Scientific Claims About Origins Are Metaphysically Neutral

This past Thursday, October 26, Dr. Leon Kass, learned intellectual and former Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, presented a paper before an excellent group of intellectuals at the American Enterprise Institute (Stephen Barr, Eric Cohen, Joseph Bottum, Charles Murray, and Marcello Pera, among others). Dr. Kass had many good things to say about the false nature of scientific reductionism and how it goes against everything we know about reality from everyday life. He also denied that random mutations and natural selection were the whole story to life’s evolution. That said, I took umbrage with one major point Kass made.