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Tag: Science and Religion

25 Lies Dominating Western Culture Today

25 Lies Dominating Western Culture Today

25 Lies Dominating Western Culture Today … and seeking to rule over your own view of reality. Not one of these is true. Even Christians are falling for some of them, though — especially the last three. Humans are unexceptional among the animals. Human nature is malleable according to human will. Innocent, defenseless human life is dispensable without moral consequence. Human flourishing is best promoted through shielding persons from contrary opinions, beliefs and values. Disagreement on moral choices and practices is equivalent to hate….

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Some Belated Comments On Lawrence Krauss’s Enforced Ignorance in the New Yorker

Some Belated Comments On Lawrence Krauss’s Enforced Ignorance in the New Yorker

So here I am, finally getting around to responding to Lawrence Krauss’s New Yorker article last September, “All Scientists Should Be Militant Atheists.” Someone posted a reference to it on Facebook that reminded me of it again. He thinks he’s correcting “enforced ignorance.” We shall see. I’m compelled to respond to several things: The Kim Davis story raises a basic question: To what extent should we allow people to break the law if their religious views are in conflict with…

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Faith vs. Fact? No, Jerry Coyne’s Theology vs. Whatever

Faith vs. Fact? No, Jerry Coyne’s Theology vs. Whatever

Book Review With all its sloppiness, error, and bias, it’s hard to know where to start in on evaluating Dr. Jerry Coyne’s latest book, Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible. Throughout the book I highlighted sentences and paragraphs where his facts were dubious or his reasoning questionable. My impression (I didn’t count) is that I averaged one of these “highlights” per page. Maybe I’m off by a factor of two, and there was just one every other…

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Michael Shermer’s Inadvertent Argument for Christianity

Michael Shermer’s Inadvertent Argument for Christianity

A reader wrote and asked me if I had seen Michael Shermer’s Salon article, “Bill Maher is right about religion.” I hadn’t. The article is subtitled, “The Orwellian ridiculousness of Jesus, and the truth about moral progress.” I found it, well, ridiculous. Misguided Criticism of Normal Human Groups There’s too much wrong there to respond to in one blog post. His main point, concerning religions’ moral history, will be part of the first topic I plan to take up with…

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The Strangely Simple World of Internet Atheism

The Strangely Simple World of Internet Atheism

There is a strangely simple world of Internet Atheism. Let me clarify what I’m referring to. The brand of “Internet Atheism” I’m thinking of when I say that does not include all atheists, nor does it refer all atheists on the Internet, but it is an atheistic world that could only exist because of the Internet. It couldn’t thrive in any numbers if not for the unique features of its environment: blogs, social media, and Reddit, mostly. I’m not referring…

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God and Science Do Mix

God and Science Do Mix

Just published at BreakPoint: God and Science Do Mix, beginning, In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that is replete with unintended irony, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss says, “Science and God Don’t Mix.” With all due respect for a man who has contributed significantly to what we know about the universe, on this point Krauss is wrong…

Melanie Phillips on “The Secular Inquisition”

Melanie Phillips on “The Secular Inquisition”

From Melanie Phillips today comes possibly the most intellectually aware statement I have seen from any journalist on the Intelligent Design controversy, including this: While materialist fundamentalists can deal with religious believers by scoffing they are in a separate domain altogether from the real ie scientific world, the suggestion that science might itself arrive at the conclusion that there are limits to what it can understand is a heresy that directly threatens the materialist fundamentalist closed thought-system — and therefore…

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“The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom”

“The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom”

Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott write in a Scientific American article dated today, Creationists who want religious ideas taught as scientific fact in public schools continue to adapt to courtroom defeats by hiding their true aims under ever changing guises Such is the expected stance from leaders of the National Center for Science Education, which would be more aptly named the National Center for Serving up Evolution. The burden of their message is this: Creationism hasn’t changed in any…

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Confusing Science With Religion

Confusing Science With Religion

From the comic strip Partially Clips, via Language Log. “[The scientist] knew that he could say yes or no, and the reporter would print whatever answer he gave. But he also should be grateful for any kind of media interest in his field, even if treating scientists like oracles of knowledge this way is probably why some people confuse science with religion.” Compare: Servants of a Twisted God

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