Religion & Law

Insulted Insulter

Posted on July 24, 2009
David Klinghoffer is whining again ... and, as usual, in a totally clueless fashion:In a post with the exquisitely ironic title "Why Darwinists Have a Hard Time Being Civil," he compounds his insulting use of "Darwinists" with even worse incivility:What you have to understand about these people -- I mean, those committed to Darwinism -- is that many operate in a world of academics, would-be academics, and failed academics...

Setting the World on Fire

Posted on July 24, 2009
Ow.I think it takes more faith to believe in evolution and the increasing order of things in the universe than creationism. Evolution directly opposes the repeated, scientifically-proven Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that everything moves from a beginning state of highly organized order (which supports intelligent design) to a latter state of random disorder...

False Spring

Posted on July 23, 2009
Michael Barton has a very interesting post at his excellent blog, The Dispersal of Darwin about an instance of multiple quote mining of John Tyndall, the 19th century Irish physicist and prominent supporter of evolution and Darwin. In the usual fashion, a scientist is made to look like he opposes evolution when, in fact, the opposite is true...

The Fall of Mann

Posted on July 22, 2009
I just wanted to note this for future reference. A recent (and probably temporary) addition to my commentariat (hat tip: Dr. Isis), one Daniel Mann, an instructor at the New York School of the Bible, going under the nym "Mann'sWord," has again made the connection between ID and religion clear...

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PARTEE!

Posted on July 22, 2009
It's time for Carnival!Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, that is! We've got a short month this time and entries are due this Friday, July 24!Given the little uptick in traffic I've had of late, I'm going to take this opportunity to urge everyone with a blog or webpage friendly to bastardly elitism to scour the place for suitable take-downs of stupidity, cupidity and general mopery or, if you prefer, affirmations of the good things that a little education and erudition can bring to life...

Spittake!

Posted on July 22, 2009
Steven Pinker responded to Stephen Meyer's dishonest attempt to hijack Thomas Jefferson as an IDeologist by pointing out that Judge Jones (a conservative Republican) after a six-week trial where the IDers were given every chance to defend ID's supposedly scientific status, ruled that it is religion in disguise...

God Slinging

Posted on July 21, 2009
Well, the Spencer (Iowa) School Board is back at it, further discussing a Draft Policy on Religion that is bound to get them in trouble. School Board member Rev. Barb Van Wyk, one of the drafters of the policy, went so far as to say:"We are looking for common ground here, not battle ground," added Van Wyk, one of the policy's writers...

"Modern" Intelligent Design

Posted on July 20, 2009
Not content with the Discovery Institute's attempt to hijack Thomas Jefferson into the ranks of IDeologists, despite his death some 33 years before he could consider Darwin's first exposition of natural selection as a mechanism to explain evolution, David Klinghoffer has decided to go medieval...

Get Writing

Posted on July 19, 2009
Uh, oh.The new atheism is over and done, and its angry tone of voice will not be missed. That's according to Byron R. McCane, Albert C. Outler Professor of Religion and chair of the Department of Religion at Wofford College. According to Dr. McCane, the new atheists ignored important facts about religion in America today: First, they dramatically overestimated the number of unbelievers...

Celebration

Posted on July 18, 2009
Well, here it is at last! The creationists are about to deliver at last on their old (old, old, old, old, old) promise of the demise of evolution. It is:The Book That Changes Everything!That would be Signature in the Cell by the Discovery Institute's own Stephen Meyer...

Requiescat In Pace

Posted on July 18, 2009
And That's The Way It Was ...

Catching the Religious

Posted on July 17, 2009
In no surprise whatsoever, Jerry Coyne has also endorsed Sean Carroll's attempt at a de novo philosophy of science, without regard to the work of generations of philosophers and scientists who have come before. Coyne's adoption of Carrollism has some amusing aspects...

Contrasts

Posted on July 16, 2009
PZ Myers points to Sean Carroll's article as if it is a good thing, demonstrating that Carroll is not alone among scientists who concurrently do not understand philosophy but, nonetheless, deride it -- much as Ray Comfort treats evolutionary biology. Interestingly, PZ also points to Daniel Dennett's article on the belief in belief...

Good Science, Bad Philosophy

Posted on July 15, 2009
[Sigh!]Here we go again. Scientists are justly upset with people who have no experience or knowledge in their field nonetheless presuming to lecture them on science. For some reason, scientists who have obviously never put much effort into studying philosophy think themselves competent to babble on about it...

Designing Design

Posted on July 14, 2009
Okay, this is just cute:"There have been 23 elephant-like animals in history, and yet only two survive today (and we add, they're not doing very well). Clearly, this is the mark of an all-powerful creator who is stuck on the same stupid idea and can't figure out why the hell they keep dying off...

Skilling the Messenger

Posted on July 14, 2009
Okay, I've made my case for the overreaching of the "incompatiblists." Now it's time to turn to the "accommodationists," in particular Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. At their blog, The Intersection, they say this:Science and religion are not mutually exclusive and must not continue to be portrayed as such...

Of Methods and Madness

Posted on July 13, 2009
Here is a bit more on the "incompatiblist" position on religion and science. An "Anonymous" commenter [Konrad Scheffler] on my last post stated this:As often with this sort of debate, it seems to come down to quibbling about definitions. The word "science" is commonly used to denote at least four distinct concepts: 1...

Blogflation

Posted on July 12, 2009
Thony C., the longtime and generally rational commenter on John Wilkins' blog, Evolving Thoughts, has taken the deeply irrational step of starting his own blog, The Renaissance Mathematicus -- the intellectual equivalent of owning a boat, i.e. a hole in the water into which you pour all your money...

Joint Philosophies

Posted on July 12, 2009
That well-known New Agnostic, Larry Moran, has once again entered the Accommodationist-Incompatiblist fray with at least something new (to me, that is, as far as my memory goes), the so-called "Doctrine of Joint Belief." Larry cites to a short piece by Clay Shirky at The Edge on "Religion and Science" that asserts that:The idea that religious scientists prove that religion and science are compatible is ridiculous, and I'm embarrassed that I ever believed it...

Novel Religion

Posted on July 11, 2009
Sometimes I think David Klinghoffer is more un-self-conciously honest than the other Discovery Institute drones because he is more literary and, therefore, cannot help but reveal himself through the stories he uses as tropes. The latest, and perhaps the funniest, is his "argument" against Simon Conway Morris' claim, adopted as well by Ken Miller, that the well-known cases of convergence in evolution (multiple evolutionary origins of eyes and wings, for example) suggest that an intelligent creature was bound to arise somewhere in the universe through evolution...

Compatible Education

Posted on July 10, 2009
PZ speaks:I recommend something different. Our next generation of great science communicators should be flesh-and-blood people with personalities, every one different and every one with different priorities, all singing out enthusiastically for everything from astronomy to zoology, and they should sometimes be angry and sometimes sorrowful and sometimes deliriously excited...

Peter Principle

Posted on July 10, 2009
Are we supposed to take Jerry Coyne seriously?I understand that he is a great scientist but what are we to make of his primitive philosophy and un-self-aware and contradictory statements on science, religion and atheism? Quite apart from the embarrassment of having Martin Cothran at the Discovery Institute Ministry of Misinformation pointing out his philosophical errors, now there is this on the appointment of Francis Collins:I expect Collins to resign from BioLogos if he wants to maintain any scientific credibility...

Moving On?

Posted on July 09, 2009
Is a perhaps surprising defection in the works?Stephen M. Barr, a theoretical particle physicist at the Bartol Research Institute of the University of Delaware and a "theistic evolutionist", has been having a running argument with John West of the Discovery Institute, proving the uncomfortableness of the middle...

Next!

Posted on July 09, 2009
The Sensuous Curmudgeon has been following the tentative steps of the Spencer (Iowa) School Board as it prepares to wade into the deep waters of Establishment Clause jurisprudence. The Des Moines Register has provided a copy of the Board's Draft Policy on Religion which can be downloaded here...

Alien to Truth

Posted on July 07, 2009
Matt Zeitlin a sophomore at Northwestern University and an editorial intern at Campus Progress, an online magazine affiliated with the Center for American Progress, has a nice takedown of the Discoveyless Institute's Stephen Meyer and his new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design...

The Theology of Incompatibility

Posted on July 06, 2009
There is an interesting exchange (that may well continue) in the Chicago Daily Observer. A Catholic priest, Fr. Robert Barron, a self-described "Catholic evangelist," has responded to Lawrence Krauss' Wall Street Journal article which took, for the most part, the incompatibilist view of science and religion...

The Theology of Incompatibility II

Posted on July 06, 2009
Jerry Coyne has reinforced my impression that the nature of claims by "scientist-atheists" (as Coyne calls them) concerning the supposed incompatibility of science and religion are really assertions of the incompatibility of atheism and religion. Coyne claims that Francis Collins, as Ken Miller before him, have allowed "their scientific statements and beliefs to be infected with religion...

Pledging In the Creationist Fraternity

Posted on July 06, 2009
There is an advantage to having a curmudgeon around, sensuous or not. Curmudgeons have a need to read stupid stuff to exercise their curmudgeonerliness on. Thus, the rest of us are spared the pain of reading really stupid stuff but still get the chance to laugh at the sillier bits...

Dear Abbot

Posted on July 05, 2009
The Sensuous Curmudgeon has begun a new feature to which he has exclusive world rights: Dear Mentor?. Mentor, who has devoted his life to studying the science of creationism and the catastrophic errors of evolution, will be answering questions for the faithful on evolution and how to deal with its moral consequences...

Scientists and Philosophy

Posted on July 04, 2009
Francisco Ayala is an unrepentant Popperian.From Ayala's his recent contribution to the Sackler Colloquium: In the light of evolution III: Two centuries of Darwin, entitled "Darwin and the scientific method":The requirement that a scientific hypothesis be falsifiable has been appropriately called the criterion of demarcation of the empirical sciences because it sets apart the empirical sciences from other forms of knowledge (13, 14)...

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