24Feb 2020 by Post

Where Science and Faith Meet: Westminster Conference, April 3-4, in Philadelphia

betrayal, biology, cosmic fine-tuning, cynicism, Daniel Reeves, design detection, Early Church, faith, Faith & Science, foresight, Intelligent Design, John West, Marcos Eberlin, Melissa Cain Travis, nanomachines, Parents, Philadelphia, reproduction, science, scientific evidence, scientists, Secularism, Stephen Meyer, students, teachers, Vern Poythress, Westminster Conference on Science and Faith, youth track
It’s possible to simplistically sweep aside challenges to a materialist picture of reality. Proponents of atheism do this all the time. And it’s possible to sweep aside challenges, or what seem to be challenges, to a theistic understanding. People do this, too, all the time. Neither is intellectually satisfying. And the latter sets a trap for young people. Parents and educators might feel it’s the safest way to take shelter from claims by scientists and other academics that are thought to engender cynicism and undermine faith. But what happens when young people grow up, are immersed in a university or secular culture, and realize how little they were prepared for or exposed to counterarguments against their family’s religious tradition? The resulting sense of betrayal has been reported many times. Youth…
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17Feb 2020 by Post

On Evolution, Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Charles Darwin, Darwininan theory, Divine Foot, Evolution, Faith & Science, free will, Genetics and the Origin of Species, Intelligent Design, Keith Stewart Thomson, Macroevolution, Microevolution, mind, Neal C. Gillespie, Richard C. Lewontin, spirit, Ted Peters, Theodosius Dobzhansky, William A. Dembski, Zombie Science
On February 10, 2020, Lutheran theologian Ted Peters published an online article titled “Fighting over Evolution. Why?“ He concluded that “a culture war is raging, to be sure. But, this is not a war between science and faith.” I agree completely — if by “science” we mean empirical science. Empirical science searches for the truth by proposing hypotheses and comparing them with the evidence. If a hypothesis is consistent with the evidence we tentatively take it to be true. If it is inconsistent with the evidence we revise it or reject it as false. In reality, things can get a bit more complicated. But this is science at its best. A Different Meaning Yet “science” has taken on a different meaning in the modern world. For many people, “science” is…
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20Jan 2020 by Post

Westminster Conference on Science and Faith, April 3-4 in Philadelphia: Design and the Designer

biology, Burke Museum, Center for Science & Culture, Chemistry, cosmology, Dallas, Daniel Reeves, Early Church, East Coast, Evolution, Faith & Science, foresight, Intelligent Design, John West, Marcos Eberlin, Melissa Cain Travis, orphan genes, Paul Nelson, Philadelphia, Stephen Meyer, Westminster Conference on Science and Faith
Here in Seattle, the University of Washington recently opened a spectacular and expensive ($106 million) new building for its natural history museum, the Burke Museum. A friend visited there yesterday — I have not yet had a chance to do so — and sent along photos. We were both struck by how the exhibits lay it on thick with regard to evolution as an unguided process. Large signs seem aggressive in advertising the curators’ position: “EVOLUTION ISN’T PLANNED,” declares one display. Another insists that life is “SHAPED BY NATURE,” and, by implication, by nothing else. The culture invests great energy and wealth to bombard us with messages like these. That’s the case even as, at deeper and deeper levels, science reveals evidence of a plan, foresight, a deliberately shaping force working…
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08Jan 2020 by Post

Dallas Conference Will Unveil Intelligent Design’s Original Edition

Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence, Brian Miller, Charles Thaxton, Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, Daniel Reeves, Darwin's Doubt, Discovery Institute Press, Douglas Axe, Faith & Science, Guillermo Gonzalez, Intelligent Design, James Tour, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, origin of life, original edition, Paul Nelson, Roger Olsen, Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer, The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Walter Bradley, William Dembski
We are just a couple of weeks out from the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, Saturday, January 25 in Denton, TX. Until today, though, we have withheld one important piece of information about the event: it will be the launch of a wonderful new book from Discovery Institute Press. Actually, it’s an updated, expanded edition of a classic: The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy, the 1984 Ur-text or original edition of the modern theory of intelligent design, now with new supplementary essays by scholars extending the work. This is very exciting for us because the three co-authors, biochemist Charles Thaxton, materials scientist Walter Bradley, and geochemist Roger Olsen, will all be on hand for a panel discussion. To Spark a Debate The new edition includes the…
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06Jan 2020 by Post

Astrophysicist Asks: Did God Create the Universe?

Aristotle, astrophysicist, atheists, Big Bang, cosmic inflation, Darwinian evolution, Ethan Siegel, Evidence, Faith & Science, First Mover, Five Ways, general relativity, Heresy, information, logic, microwave radiation, natural theology, non-overlapping magisteria, Ontological Argument, Physics, Earth & Space, quantum mechanics, reason, red shift, special relativity, Stephen Jay Gould, theists, theory of potency, Thomas Aquinas, universe
Ethan Siegel is an astrophysicist who writes a lot for the public. I like his stuff; he explains interesting complex topics well. But his recent essay “Ask Ethan: Did God Create the Universe?” misses the mark in a sadly common way. He not only botches logic and the metaphysics. He botches science.  Seigel answers a reader’s question about the existence of God. The reader asks: I am very interested in space and with who made us and what made us… what do you have to say about people who say that “God” made us? Seigel is interested in this question too, and he replies (I summarize his argument — read his whole essay for details): You can ask a question whose answer is not only knowable, but already known. You…
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13Dec 2019 by Post

Heal a Divided Heart: Join Us for the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith

college, Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, Eric Metaxas, faith, Faith & Science, John West, professors, registration, religious leaders, science, scientists, Stephen Meyer
Think about the implications of this statistic: “55 percent of American adults now believe that science and religion are often in conflict”: Given the prestige of science in our culture, and the diffidence of many religious leaders and teachers in thinking independently about what they’ve been told “Scientists Say,” that means a lot of Americans are on a track like the one the young woman John West wrote about this morning was on.  In a powerful statement, she said that she had her heart broken as a college student — not by a boy, but by her own professors. They told her she had to choose between science and faith. She could not have both. Providentially, she ended up on the video crew assigned to record the 2019 Dallas Conference…
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12Dec 2019 by Post

New Atheism: A Shipwreck of Fools

aquinas, Arc Digital, Asherah poles, Atheism, autopsy, bacteria, book deals, child sacrifice, Christopher Hitchens, computer program, creation myth, Edward Feser, evolutionary theory, Faith & Science, First Amendment, Five Ways, Gaia, genetic information, John Haldane, Lawrence Krauss, Ludwig Wittgenstein, meat machines, New Atheists, Nobel Prize, paganism, plagiarism, religion, Richard Dawkins, Valley of Hinnom
New Atheism is dead. It was conceptually dead from birth, but now it’s stopped twitching. Ben Sixsmith at Arc Digital has a good article with a lot of insight into its demise. From  “New Atheism: An Autopsy”: To be sure, New Atheists could be very, very bad at arguing that God does not exist. There was, for example, Lawrence Krauss writing a book about how something can come from nothing while attributing material qualities to the latter. There was Richard Dawkins trying to refute the famous “Five Ways” of Aquinas without even attempting to understand their terms. (“Whereof one cannot speak,” groaned Wittgenstein, “Thereof one must remain silent.”) There was Christopher Hitchens striding into philosophy like an elephant onto an ice skating rink and saying: “…the postulate of a designer…
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09Dec 2019 by Post

David Berlinski on Europe, Entropy, Agnosticism

agnosticism, biological origins, Darwinism, David Berlinski, demographic winter, entropy, Europe, Evolution, Faith & Science, Human Nature (book), ID The Future, Jews, Muslim, nation state, nationalism, patriotism, Peter Robinson, Physics, Earth & Space, Podcast, s atheism, science, Second Law of Thermodynamics, theism, Uncommon Knowledge
A new episode of ID the Future features the third and final part of a conversation between Uncommon Knowledge host Peter Robinson and Darwin skeptic David Berlinski, author of the newly released book Human Nature. They discuss the fate of Europe, then turn again to science, and the challenge the second law of thermodynamics poses for Darwinism and, by implication, to any theory of biological origins restricted to purely mindless processes. Berlinski suggests that this poses a considerable challenge, tempting Robinson to ask Berlinski whether he still consider himself an agnostic. Download the podcast or listen to it here. The post David Berlinski on Europe, Entropy, Agnosticism appeared first on Evolution News.
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06Dec 2019 by Post

Letter from San Diego: Science for Seminaries or Materialism for the Masses?

American Academy of Religion, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Andover Newton Theological Seminary, biomimicry, Columbia Theological Seminary, creationism, Darwinian materialism, Decatur, dialogue, DoSER program, ecological problems, Faith & Science, Georgia, Intelligent Design, Jeffrey Kripal, materialism, McCormick Theological Seminary, pastors, priests, religion, Rice University, San Diego, science, Science for Seminaries, scientific orthodoxies, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, The Flip, The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms
I recently traveled to San Diego to attend the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. While there, I participated in a workshop organized by the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A current project of the DoSER program called “Science for Seminaries” aims to enhance the scientific literacy of pastors, priests, and rabbis by making cutting edge scientific resources available to seminary and rabbinical school professors. Though the DoSER program also states as one of its goals to help scientists engage with pastors, priests, and theologians, I got the feeling at this workshop that the DoSER program might better be renamed MoSER, the Monologue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. There was definitely more emphasis on getting science…
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30Nov 2019 by Post

Q&A with Michael Behe: What’s Wrong with Theistic Evolution?

DiscoveryU, Evangelical Christians, Evolution, faith, Faith & Science, Francis Collins, Intelligent Design, Michael Behe, science, The Language of God, theistic evolution
We now reluctantly conclude the past week’s series of Q&A sessions with biochemist Michael Behe, highlighting his 41-part video course for DiscoveryU, “Michael Behe Investigates Evolution and Intelligent Design.” Here’s another challenge he often gets: Why doesn’t Professor Behe go along with famed Evangelical Christian scientist Francis Collins, and others, in opting for theistic evolution? Dr. Behe observes that in reading Dr. Collins’s book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, he found it notable that Collins “does not even try to address the problems for evolution that I and other intelligent design proponents have brought up.” So that is one reason. Behe, like Collins, is a scientist not a theologian. The science of ID, and the scientific problems with Darwinian evolution, are the focus of his video…
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