Today, I’ve gotten into discussions with folks on Twitter about whether Karl Popper’s principle of falsification should be invoked to judge the value/veracity/legitimacy of theological theories. Things got going with my tweet in response to Counter Apologist. (Follow up on Twitter to see our full back-and-forth exchange.) It's interesting how many atheists assume without question […]
philosophy of science
What’s wrong with the scientific study of morality? An interview with Paul Rezkalla
Paul Rezkalla has an MA in Philosophy and Ethics from the University of Birmingham and an MA in theology from St. John’s University. He is currently working on a PhD in philosophy at Florida State University (with the esteemed Michael Ruse) and an MSc in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology from Oxford University. In this conversation, […]
Intelligent Design Explanations are not Science Stoppers
It’s a familiar charge for anybody well versed in the ID literature: ID explanations ought to be rejected because they are “science stoppers.” (See, for example, Karl Giberson and Donald Yerxa, Species of Origins: America’s Search for a Creation Story (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 225-26.) How’s that exactly? The idea is that once you invoke intelligence as […]
Scientism and Metaphysics-of-the-Gaps
In this article I am going to address the concept of “God-of-the-gaps”. Any person who spends any time reading in the theology/science literature will find that the term God-of-the-gaps is often wielded as a sort of accusation. In other words, people don’t typically accept God-of-the-gaps. Instead, they accuse others of falling into the God-of-the-gap-trap (aka […]
Is evolution the easiest theory to disprove? A Response to Denis Lamoureux
Yesterday I posted my review of the new Zondervan book Four Views on The Historical Adam. One of the book’s contributors, Denis Lamoureux, offered a response. Despite the fact that I stated Lamoureux presented the strongest case, he didn’t seem very happy with the review and listed several points that he thought I got wrong. […]
24. Travis Dumsday on evil and divine hiddenness
If there is any person in the modern age who has embodied saintliness, it was that pillar of faith, Mother Teresa. So it was quite the surprise when, after her death in 1997 her diaries were published and we discovered that this paragon of faith had often struggled with doubt. She wrote: “If there be a […]
Intelligent Design: A response to the A-Unicornist
Mike D (aka The A-Unicornist) wrote an article yesterday titled “Randal Rauser is an ID proponent“. Near the beginning of the article Mike D quotes me as stating: “ID is the view that appeal to intelligent or agent causal explanations is a legitimate part of natural science.” He then replies: That’s not accurate, actually. Because of […]
Intelligent design: The ultimate science stopper?
The Atheist Missionary’s claim: “The problem with ID is not that it is propounded by the Discovery Institute but rather that it dissuades research into biological origins by asserting a mile “0? without going any further.” Translation into general claim: “The problem with ID is that once you invoke an intelligent cause as the explanation […]
Intelligent Design, explanation, and the laws of physics
The debate on intelligent design continues with the latest proposal coming from Mike who writes: Intelligent Design could only be a valid scientific explanation if you were proposing an intelligent entity that is bound by the laws of physics. If God is any part of the proposal, it is by definition unscientific, since no science […]
Intelligent Design, Unknown Intelligence, and a Ouija Board
Joseph H. Axell posted a long rebuttal in the comment section of my article “Unintelligent arguments against intelligent design: A Primer“. There are a number of claims I’d like to challenge in the response. For instance Axell writes: “Dembski’s ‘explanatory filter’ for detecting design has been shown to be inadequate (false positives being but one […]
Why denying intelligent design borders on insanity
Earlier this week I challenged The Atheist Missionary’s rejection of intelligent design and thus his position that it is illegitimate to make intelligent design inferences. I did so by posing the following scenario: The Atheist Missionary returns home on his birthday to see several dozen balloons taped to the side of his house forming a huge welcoming […]
Unintelligent arguments against intelligent design: A Primer
Earlier in the week a discussion of intelligent design arose in one of the threads. I was interested by the large number of really bad arguments that were produced and so I’ve decided to include them in this post along with the responses that David and I provided. What you see among the skeptics of ID are sound bites […]
