Religion & Law

Oooooh! Scary!

Posted on July 03, 2009
Camp Dawkins ... opps ... Camp Quest has apparently got some British Christians' knickers in a knot.The Christian Institute has criticised a new atheist summer camp for children that has been set up in Somerset to offer a "godless alternative" to religious camps...

The Virgin's Strategy

Posted on July 03, 2009
.Sarah Palin made a splash in last year's presidential election primarily because she was a political virgin on the national level. Unfortunately for McCain, she couldn't be kept out of the public eye enough to prevent her cherry being popped.Now Palin is trying to restore her virginity by resigning as governor of Alaska...

Duty and Country II

Posted on July 03, 2009
The Discovery Institute is repeating its history by distorting the country's history on this Fourth of July eve, as noted by The Sensuous Curmudgeon and John Lynch. Therfore, it's only fair and right that I repeat my post from last year:Hey, kids! What better way could the Discovery Institute have to celebrate the Fourth than to discover that Thomas Jefferson was an IDer?John West is over at the DI's Ministry of Misinformation claiming that "Jefferson not only believed in intelligent design, he insisted it was based on the plain evidence of nature, not religion...

Philosophy and Naturalism

Posted on July 03, 2009
I recently took some interest in Alvin Planting'a evolutionary argument against naturalism, posting here, here and here on it.British Philosopher Stephen Law has taken on a portion of Plantinga's argument, that Law calls the belief-cum-desire component, and, I think, neatly demolishes it...

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Truth In Advertising

Posted on July 02, 2009
Those of us with a respect for the language have difficulty writing "Creation Museum" without a plethora of scare quotes, (sic)s, parenthetical asides and the like.Whatever else Ken Ham's theme park for the proudly ignorant might be, it is not a "museum" of creation...

Running It Up the Zogby Poll

Posted on July 01, 2009
Ho, hum. The Discovery (sic) Institute is humping its poll showing ... well ... what?Just a few months before the 150th anniversary of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, a newly released Zogby poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly rejects Darwinian theory in favor of intelligent design...

Knot Making

Posted on June 30, 2009
Woo hoo!John Lynch at a simple prop has some follow-up on Creation Ministries International's "documentary" about Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, The Voyage That Shook The World and the lie of omission the producers perpetrated. He links to CMI's "defense" that has some amusing squirming...

Word Play

Posted on June 30, 2009
As long as I'm talking about new coinages, here's one from John Wilkins that I like: "indifferentialism."John has coined this as a description of a position I've taken in the past, that that the non-religious should not care about the theology of the religious or their internal struggles with it, that is set out nicely by The Sensuous Curmudgeon (and why wasn't I told about this blog before, eh?):Our position is to totally disregard what we consider to be a sectarian disagreement among various denominations about whether scripture should be read in a manner to deny verifiable information about reality...

The View From the Other Side

Posted on June 29, 2009
Jerry Coyne started the Great Accommodationist-Incompatiblist Flap by, in part, accusing the NCSE of improperly taking sides as to the compatibility of science -- in particular, evolutionary theory -- with religion.Now comes a well-known expert on religion and science -- Casey Luskin -- with another view...

Evil Designer

Posted on June 28, 2009
According to this article in The Christian Post, the late Dr. Ralph D. Winter, described as one of the most influential missiologists* of the 20th Century, had a slightly different take on Intelligent Design:Those Christians who support Intelligent Design, not surprisingly, identify that "intelligent cause" to be God...

Carnival Of Elitist Bastards Fourteen

Posted on June 28, 2009
ARRRGGGG![cought ... hack ... moan]What day be it?What? Blistering barnacles!The Bastard t'were supposed to set sail on yesterday's tide!Pirates have birthdays too 'n yesterday be mine. A modest celebration t'were planned but ended as such things always do, with all 'n sundry hanging out the scuppers...

Stonewall

Posted on June 28, 2009
Forty years of progress to be proud of ...Forty years of progress that has not yet been enough.

PZ Explains

Posted on June 26, 2009
PZ Myers has a good post up on the accommodationist/incompatibilist flap that is, despite the unnecessary slap at "feeble accommodationist claptrap," a reasonable attempt at clarifying matters that I can agree with in large part.That word, "incompatibility", is a problem, though...

Dissembling For God

Posted on June 26, 2009
David Klinghoffer is trying to claim that even a "deist" like Thomas Jefferson supported Intelligent Design. He bases this on a quote mine that I've already addressed:I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition...

Now We Know

Posted on June 25, 2009
Some people are in thrall to cephalopods. Now we know why ... at least in the case of the grown-up boy on the right..

I Say Agnostic ...

Posted on June 24, 2009
John Wilkins has a nice post up about the taxonomies, such as they are, of "atheists" and "agnostics" and why John self-identifies as an agnostic (as do I). John discusses the attempt by atheists to pull, and theists to push, agnostics into the atheist camp via the now popular "definitions" of "strong atheism" and "weak atheism," with agnostics put, rather unflatteringly, the latter category ...

Yuummm!

Posted on June 24, 2009
PZ Mxyzptlk is psychic!No sooner does PZ suggest, in response to whining by Ken Ham, that, for the price of a plane ticket, he'd come and personally tour Ham's "museum," along with a small group of "mouthy, obnoxious, and culturally prominent godless scientists" and let Ham point out the supposed misconceptions PZ has about the place...

Religious Science

Posted on June 23, 2009
Christopher Schoen of u n d e r v e r s e makes an excellent point about how little the incompatibilist "atheist-scientists," as Jerry Coyne calls them, actually use empiric fact or science when describing the religion they deride.Specifically, Chris, in a post titled "Is Neo-Atheism a Pseudo Science?" discusses physicist Sean Carroll's piece at his blog, Cosmic Variance, and Coyne's laudatory post at Why Evolution Is True and how they characterize "typical" religious belief in vague terms, without any appeal to actual studies of religion and the nature or effect of religious belief:To the extent this kind of work is done at all it tends not to support the "incompatibilist" position...

Two Faced Book To Match

Posted on June 23, 2009
PZ Myearshertz took notice of Ray Comfort's latest exercise in stupidity: an abridged Origin of Species with a 50 page "'Special Introduction" by Comfort himself. Comfort or someone in his pay must read PZ ... well ... religiously because, within hours Comfort issued a press release that notes that the edition is "getting raving reviews from evolutionists" and quotes PZ:It's like a book with multiple personality disorder ? two parts that absolutely hate each other, an intro that is the inane product of one of the most stupid minds of our century, and a science text that is the product of one of the greatest minds of the author's century...

WWJD?

Posted on June 22, 2009
I previously mentioned the new "documentary" about Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, The Voyage That Shook The World, from Creation Ministries International and the fact that it includes interviews with two of the best historians of evolution, Peter Bowler and Janet Browne, along with a number of legitimate scientists...

Science, Philosophy and Law

Posted on June 21, 2009
In which I agree more than disagree with Jerry Coyne.Coyne quotes a blog post by Andrew Brown (who, with Michael Ruse, has recently drawn the ire of Coyne), the relevant part of which to me is:But the American courts have never been asked to decide whether science is the negation of religion: in fact the defenders of evolution and of science teaching in schools have gone to great lengths to ensure that the question was not asked...

Now It Gets Interesting

Posted on June 21, 2009
It seems that there isn't just the accommodationists and the incompatiblists. There are the True Incompatiblists? and the not-so-true incompatibilists.According to Larry Moran, Jerry Coyne (and, presumably, PZ Myers, who has taken a similar position) are not the real sort of incompatibilists:If [under the US Constitution] the proper teaching of science promotes a "religious" point of view, namely atheism, then science can't be taught in public schools...

Motivation

Posted on June 21, 2009
It's one week until the next voyage of the H.M.S.* Elitist Bastard.But the deadline is earlier than that: midnight (or there abouts) this coming Friday, June 26th. Send your links in to elitistbastardscarnival@gmail.com.Since it will be here, I'll take it as a personal affront if there is not a plethora of material...

Clown Philosophy

Posted on June 19, 2009
Oh, drat!The accommodationists have well and truly lost now.Dr. Michael Egnor has come out on their side:We are entering an era in which a substantial and loud minority of atheist scientists and philosophers are claiming that science validates and depends on atheism and materialism...

A Pretty Pickle

Posted on June 18, 2009
You may have heard (from A list blogs like Pharyngula and Respectful Insolence) about Zicam, a homeopathic ?medicine? for colds that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an advisory against using because it can cause a long-lasting or permanent loss of sense of smell (anosmia)...

Default Philosophy

Posted on June 18, 2009
.A thought:The Dialogues are a criticism of the argument from design in the form in which that argument was current in Hume's time - a form in which it persisted into the nineteenth century in the writings of Paley and so many others, and which survives in popular and semi-popular forms to the present day...

Coyne Buys Back the Store ... Sort Of

Posted on June 18, 2009
Jerry Coyne has backed away from his previous claim that science is a "world view":o.k. let me clarify this for everyone who seems to have misunderstood it. I don't know if I'd call SCIENCE a world view in itself. But that's irrelevant. What I meant is that the scientific ATTITUDE of requiring evidence for what one believes is incompatible with the religious ATTITUDE of requiring no evidence beyond revelation and dogma...

Holocaust Reliers

Posted on June 16, 2009
John Wilkins has an important post on Herbert Spencer, "Social Darwinism" and the alleged complicity of Darwin and science in the Holocaust:When I first started to read philosophy and history I heard about this demon. His name was Herbert Spencer, and he was famous for three things:1...

Coyne Gives Away the Store

Posted on June 16, 2009
Jerry Coyne has responded to Ken Miller's piece (parts of which I though were less than fair) and, in doing so has expressed a view of science which, if accepted by American courts, would guarantee that science could not be taught as true in our public schools, but could only be taught as a one philosophy out of many or in comparative religion classes...

Taking Things Two Ways

Posted on June 16, 2009
Two Danish schools are under suspicion:Brændstrup Christian School in Rødding and Adsbøl Christian School in Gråsten were both inspected by the Board of Education last week, resulting in the Board raising concerns about their belief that the schools are using science classes to teach alternate theories of origin, including creationism...

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