Last year I read Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth (well okay, I read about 70% of it) and I enjoyed it immensely. Dawkins’ philosophical powers may be limited but as a wordsmith he is outstanding. Consider this passage where he describes the interrelation of all life in a Darwinian universe: Take a rabbit, any […]
evolution
Should we “teach the controversy”?
In “Monkeying around with common sense” I offered a critique of Tennessee’s new bill for teaching scientific controversies in school. My critique consisted of pointing out that this kind of method would be frowned upon in other knowledge discourses like history and English. So it seems inappropriate for this bill to single out science as […]
Monkeying around with common sense: Tennessee’s anti-evolution bill
According to the Huffington Post, a bill is about to be enacted into law in Tennessee which intends to offer protection to teachers who want to encourage their students to explore “controversial” scientific perspectives. I’ll quote Huff Post quoting sections of the bill and then offer some commentary: In an effort to cultivate “intelligent, productive, […]
From Adam to Zorg: A Dialogue on Creation and Evolution
In response to my article on Young earth creationism and old things Walter asks: Now that we have established that YEC is a pile of baloney, could you point me to a prior post or article of yours that explains the biblical Fall as you understand it? Was there a single pair of humans that […]
Young earth creationism and really old living things
When I grew up in a conservative evangelical (Pentecostal) church young earth creationism was the only game in town. With a blush I remember arguing the view to incredulous friends in high school and handing off a copy of It’s a Young World After All to my polite science teacher. In the early 1990s I […]
A plea for intelligently designed evolution
Back to the CP vault of 2009 articles. Here is another digitally remastered work of art on evolution and ID. *** Intelligent design is a great idea, but why is it owned by those who repudiate neo-Darwinian evolution? A clue as to why the theistic IDers reject evolution comes in the neo-Darwinian definition of the […]
Was “Expelled” intelligently designed? A Review
Expelled was released three years ago to great fanfare (at least in the evangelical subculture). Here was a film hosted by a famous comedian (okay, not really; it was actually Ben Stein) which claimed to take on the evolution bullies in the name of God, intellectual freedom, and intelligent design. I did this belated review […]
Isn’t it time to make peace with Darwin?
Another vintage 2009 post from my CP days, this one focuses on the overdue need for reconciliation between Darwin and evangelicals. Content-wise it seems especially apposite as the fall semester at university is about to begin. I develop these thoughts further in a chapter from my book You’re not as Crazy as I Think (Biblica, […]
Why no professional philosopher would use Dawkins’ argument
I have been accused of being unfair to Dick Dawkins. Well let’s look at what Dawkins calls “the central argument of my book” (The God Delusion, 187). He summarizes it in six steps. Steps 4-6 are not directly relevant to the core of the argument against God, so I’ve only reproduced steps 1-3 (see The […]
Signature in the Cell: Monologue on the Prologue
Believe it or not, I stated my intent to review Steve Meyer’s Signature in the Cell about seven months ago and I finally made it to the prologue. You can just imagine the kind of fines I have to pay at the library. The book opens by setting the stage: Meyer notes three significant events in 2004-5 […]
“Signature in the Cell”: The Review Begins (albeit very modestly)
Stephen C. Meyer. Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. Harper One, 2009. 611 pp. ISBN:978-0-06-147278-7 I have been saying for some time (six months actually) that I was going to review Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell. This is the first, faltering step toward that end. But please note […]
