Tag Archives: Knowledge

Jerry Coyne: “Why you don’t really have free will” – USATODAY.com

Jerry Coyne, who knows a lot about biology, doesn’t know nearly enough about other things on which he claims to be an authority. If what had written were only on his blog I would ignore it, but USAToday published it online: “Why you don’t really have free will.” It includes, Now there’s no way to …

January 2, 2012 – 10:04 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in New Atheism, Origins and Science | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (169)

Something In the Air: Science’s Supposed Superiority To Religion

I got an email recently from “Loren,” who sought to inform me, Science is knowledge of proven facts, religion is a belief system based on unproven theory. The matter is closed, science is alive and growing where as religion is based on ancient history. That’s all she wrote. (I know both men and women named …

December 14, 2011 – 11:02 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science, Thinking Christianly | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (45)

Is It Rational To Believe In Spiritual Battle? (Part 1)

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Spiritual Battle

It’s been just over a year since I began working with BreakPoint/The Colson Center for Christian Worldview. (I’m still on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ, soon to be named Cru, and this is my current assignment.) The year has been remarkably intense. We’ve made significant progress toward high-impact ministry goals, yet meanwhile our …

October 15, 2011 – 8:31 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (4)

Disentangling Beliefs About Knowledge and Beliefs

Geoff Arnold had some very significant trouble with my recent statement about the Noachian flood. He said, Do you actually, literally, believe this? The complete lack of any physical evidence for this amazing claim doesn’t trouble you? Do you reject all of science, and if not, how do you disentangle the bits you accept from …

January 15, 2010 – 10:56 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science, Thinking Christianly | Tagged , | Comments (166)

Where Can the Small Things Take You?

Where can the small things take you? Responding to my last point on the distinction between magic and supernaturalism, doctor(logic) offered this: When you make a voodoo doll, don’t you have to follow a recipe and include one of the victim’s hairs or possessions? That would mean that there’s a very specific relationship between the …

December 1, 2009 – 10:01 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Evidences, Origins and Science | Tagged , | Comments (14)

“Science and Religion are Not Compatible” — Discover Magazine

Sean Carroll, physicist at CalTech, says science and religion are incompatible—not that they couldn’t be compatible, somewhere, though: It’s not hard to imagine an alternative universe in which science and religion were compatible — one in which religious claims about the functioning of the world were regularly verified by scientific practice. We can easily conceive …

July 11, 2009 – 9:57 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged , | Comments (57)

Knowledge and Evidence: Third Response to Tom Clark

This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Tom Clark and Naturalism

In this third look at Tom Clark’s paper, Reality and Its Rivals: Putting Epistemology First, I have just one topic to address: Most thoughtful religionists, paranormalists, New Agers, or adherents of other non-science based worldviews feel, at least to some extent, the force of the empirical imperative: that beliefs need validation independent of one’s subjective …

January 20, 2009 – 7:29 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Evidences, New Atheism | Tagged , , , | Comments (13)

Knowledge and Bias: A First Response to Tom Clark

This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Tom Clark and Naturalism

Several weeks ago Tom Clark commented here on a blog entry about dualism. Clark is the director of the Center for Naturalism and is (I believe) also responsible for a related website, Naturalism.org. He speaks nationally on naturalism and has authored many articles on the topic. I’ve read several of these articles and exchanged a …

January 18, 2009 – 4:21 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in New Atheism, Origins and Science | Tagged , , , | Comments (22)

“Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion” Part 4

This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Darwin's Gift?

Book Review In this, my fourth and final post on Francisco Ayala’s book Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion, I wish to examine very briefly his views on knowledge as related to science and religion. I am addressing the same primary audience that he does in his book: believers in God. For the sake of …

May 17, 2008 – 10:52 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science, Thinking Christianly | Tagged , , , | Comments (12)