Tag: Dawkins
Guardian Misses the Debate
You cannot fairly pit the educated views of Darwinian scientists against the opinions of students. To be honest, you need to hear from scientists who doubt Darwinian evolution and have the evidence to defend themselves. To merely stigmatize skeptics of Darwinism as “fundamentalist Christians” and “creationists” is to serve the cause of propaganda, not objective discourse.
Scientism’s Forefathers
Have you ever spent time pondering the intellectual pedigree of scientism–say, of the Dawkins variety? It would be nice if folly really were an orphan, but unfortunately he is not. And Herbert Spencer was only one link, though an important one, in a long chain of Western scientism. Consider this Spencerian quote from Steven Shapin’s recent New Yorker article “Man with a Plan: Herbert Spencer’s Theory of Everything“:
Dawkins Attacks Behe in New York Times, But Where’s the Science?
Perhaps the most striking feature of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is its lack of science. I had thought that this was an anomaly, but Dawkins’ New York Times review (out Sunday) of Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism is the same patchwork of fallacies devoid of science as The God Delusion. Let me count the ways…
Beckwith: Dawkins Unwittingly Endorses Purpose in Nature
Over at the First Things blog On the Square, Francis Beckwith carefully shows how even Professor Dawkins cannot escape the common sense perception that the world is filled with agency, and those agents have a proper function. To get at all this, Beckwith describes Dawkins’ lambasting of Kurt Wise, the young-earth creationist who did doctoral work under Stephen Jay Gould at Harvard. Dawkins writes:
University of California, San Diego Forces All Freshmen To Attend Anti-ID Lecture
Since 1998, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, Jonathan Wells, William Dembski, and Paul Nelson have all spoken at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). Now UCSD is striking back. Tonight, anti-ID philosopher of science Robert Pennock is being paid by UCSD’s Council of Provosts and the Division of Biological Sciences to speak against intelligent design in a lecture that is free and open to the public in UCSD’s RIMAC Arena (which holds about 5000 people). Of course, these groups are all taxpayer-supported. Not only is this free event open to anyone, but TritonLink, the UCSD student website, on its main home-page, reports that Professor Pennock’s lecture is mandatory attendance for all freshmen: “All first-quarter freshmen are required to attend Read More ›