Monthly Archives: August 2008

Ideas Have Consequences: Free Will vs. The Programmed Brain

Ideas have consequences! One such was recently shown through an experiment described in Scientific American. [R]esearchers found that the amount a participant cheated correlated with the extent to which they rejected [the philosophical notion of] free will…. The correlation was positive: those who rejected free will tended to cheat more. The 22-page original research paper, …

August 19, 2008 – 10:42 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics | Tagged , , | Comments (102)

The Present Future: Six Tough Questions For the Church

Book Review A counselor once told me he had just one problem with a particular book: “I wish I had written it myself,” he said. He meant that in that book, the author had expressed all of his own most crucial beliefs about personal growth. I’ve never felt that way about a book before. Usually …

August 18, 2008 – 7:31 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in The Faith | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Christian Carnival 237

Rodney Olson is hosting this week. I appreciated Jason’s entry on “Do Hard Things”–the book has definitely influenced my teenagers. Meanwhile, I don’t know if Johnny Brooks has read the book, but he’s practicing the message. And why? There’s a hint in what Jeremy said from Augustine’s City of God: In contrast, Christianity places primary …

August 14, 2008 – 9:34 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Miscellanea | Comments Off

“Trees, forests and the Eiffel tower reveal theory of design in nature”

Hmmm… We believe that the main function of the tree is to facilitate the flow of water from the ground and into the atmosphere,” Bejan said. “To achieve that function, the tree is ideally designed to not only maximize the flow of water, but in order to be successful in the real world, it must …

August 14, 2008 – 8:54 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Comments (4)

Alvin Plantinga on Evolution vs. Naturalism

Alvin Plantinga, the prominent Notre Dame University philosopher, says that if you’re a believer in evolution, you have no warrant for believing in naturalism (atheism, roughly speaking). Here’s part of his argument, to whet your interest: Now what evolution tells us (supposing it tells us the truth) is that our behavior, (perhaps more exactly the …

August 13, 2008 – 7:00 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged , , | Comments (94)

Beijing With a J

The other day I finally heard a radio reporter say Beijing with a “j” sound in the middle instead of a “zh” sound. Believe it or not, that was correct. It’s Beijing, not Beizhing; or at least, that’s how it’s spoken right there in Beijing. The Chinese Pinyin (Romanized phonetic) alphabet uses both “j” and …

August 11, 2008 – 2:00 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Miscellanea | Comments (2)

“CADRE Comments: The New Atheists – Based on Antipathy to Those Different?”

Could it be that the New Atheism is a new manifestation of old-fashioned intolerance toward those who are different? BK at Cadre Comments has quoted at length from a provocative column in First Post by Andrew Brown, titled “The Horror of a New Atheist World.” Brown noted that the New Atheists’ contentions are often quite …

August 10, 2008 – 7:36 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in New Atheism | Comments (14)

“In crises, don’t fail to help others — dailypress.com”

This morning it was time again for my quarterly guest column in the Newport News Daily Press. They titled it, In crises, don’t fail to help others. In the two weeks since I wrote it we’ve experienced a touch of relief from rising gas prices, but I trust there’s something there that people will find …

August 9, 2008 – 7:18 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in The Faith | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

“Solzhenitsyn: Calling Evil What It Is”

A new article of mine has just been published at the Center for a Just Society: a tribute to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and thoughts on what made him such a powerful figure in world history. Can we still use terms like good and evil as if they signified something real? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn certainly thought so. Much …

August 8, 2008 – 7:05 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in The Faith | Tagged | Comments (5)

Irony in China

Sometimes it’s fascinating to compare stories. The excerpt on the left is from The Telegraph, on July 21. The one on the right is from today’s Washington Post. Eric Liddell’s story to set Chinese hearts racing Who knows how the Chariots of Fire story is likely to go down in communist China, but we are …

August 8, 2008 – 9:37 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in The Faith | Tagged , | Comments Off