At BioLogos, Evangelicals Break With Stereotype
Evangelical attitudes on evolution are two-sided: all polls show a fat majority for total rejection, about 65%, but a little over a quarter of US evangelicals affirm the statement that “humans and other living things have evolved over time” (a recent Pew Forum survey). Evangelicals who accept evolution, the basic organizing principle of modern biology, are therefore a far from endangered species: in fact, there are about 19 million of them (i.e.,... Read More
Violence and Religion
A few years ago some psychologists performed an experiment to see if college students who read a violent story would display more aggression afterward if they were told that God sanctioned the violence than if they were told the story was merely from an “ancient scroll.” The story they chose was from the book of Judges, chapters 19–21: nothing unusual for the Old Testament, just a nip of city-razing and total massacre. I can imagine Alex... Read More
Marilynne Robinson Errs (But Still Rocks)
To see a fine thinker bamboozled by a minor fallacy is always a freaky spectacle, like watching an elephant trip over a peanut. It’s sad, too: a little spring goes out of my step and my shoulders droop lower. If the mighty can take such falls, what hope for the rest of us? Consider G. K. Chesterton, who repeatedly proclaimed with ringing certainty that gradual evolution cannot produce a bat’s wing because a wing is useless until it’s complete—the... Read More
Why Science Is Right to Ignore God
In response to a recent post on this blog, a commenter challenged my view that science is quite properly “naturalistic” in its method—that is, ignores God. He raised some points that are worth unraveling. Here’s my response: Dear Trevor, Thanks for writing. I respectfully disagree with your idea that methodological naturalism is “nonsense (at least for the Christian).” You write, Science doesn’t explain existence, i.e. that... Read More
The Thing Works Out Until It Doesn’t: GKC and Evolution, Part II
This continues my previous post. ———————————————————– G. K. Chesterton hated people-breeding. Eugenics, which he called “a thing no more to be bargained about than poisoning,” was perhaps the only idea that he wrote an entire book to destroy (Eugenics and Other Evils, 1922).1 It’s easy to forget how mainstream eugenics was... Read More
The Thing Works Out Until It Doesn’t: GKC and Evolution, Part I
I posted this two-part essay on G. K. Chesterton, evolution, and eugenics on this blog quite a while ago — but the original is no longer available online, and a butchered version has been posted on a thing called, I think, the Anti-Fascist Encyclopedia, where it’s received a goodly number of “Likes.” It seems a pity that the undamaged version isn’t out there — so, now it is. ————————————————————————————————– In... Read More
The Great Cosmic Sock Hunt: Why Science Works
In a reply to an interesting interview with theologian Conor Cunningham, here at The Other Journal, commenter Denis Devcich says the following: Creationists have no problems with fossils – they had to be rapidly buried in order to be preserved as fossils, and this fits in with Noah’s flood. Yes, the dinosaurs were created with all the other land animals on the 6th day and survived on Noah’s ark. Some even survived into the Middle... Read More
On the Origin of Specious: Why Does Religion Exist?
When did religion arise? Judging by burial practices, perhaps about 95,000 years ago. That is the age of the oldest known symbolic burial site, a grave in Qafzeh, Israel where a nine-year old is buried with their legs bent and a deer antler cradled in their arms (Elizabeth Culotta, “On the Origin of Religion,” Science, Nov. 6, 2009, 326:784-787). But numinous awe does not always leave durable traces; as psychologist Justin Barret so sensibly... Read More
Pond Scum in the Sky, Oh My
Journalists seem to reserve a special inanity for questions pertaining to space travel and extraterrestrial life. The New York Times is particularly heinous, uncritically cheering any and all claims for our manifest destiny on Mars or for the wonders of space tourism or the International Space Station (which has produced less scientific return on the dollar than any project ever conceived by human genius except the Superconducting Supercollider,... Read More
Jesus on the Line
Operator, give me information. Information, give me long distance. Long distance, give me heaven. . . . Give me Jesus on the line. —“Operator,” The Manhattan Transfer, 1975 What is the Bible? Most obviously, a book—hence its English name, from the Greek biblion, “book.” Like any book it consists (or used always to consist, until recently) of words on paper. It is a thing fixed and physical, a manufacture, an object you can kiss... Read More
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