9/11 prompted Richard Dawkins and others to bemoan the harmful effects of religion. One of those was alleged to be the tendency for "religious wars." Of course the Crusades have been mentioned as quintessential examples. Over time this blogger and many commenters at Telic Thoughts posted historic examples of nations being led into war by atheists or non-religious leaders and questioned the reliability of the Dawkins inspired linkages of violence to religion. However, to be honest, sometimes religion can be linked to the motives of a violent person.
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From C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain, chapter V, "The Fall of Man":

What exactly happened when Man fell, we do not know; but if it is legitimate to guess, I offer the following picture — a "myth" in the Socratic sense,¹ a not unlikely tale.

¹ I.e., an account of what may have been the historical fact. Not to be confused with "myth" in Dr. Niebuhr's sense (i.e., a symbolical representation of non-historical truth).

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I enjoyed John Polkinghorne's Unseen Realities. Polkinghorne is a distinguished physicist who has more than a passing interest in religion. That plus his thoughtful nature made him a natural for the linked interview. Here's a part of it:

Do science and religion approach reason in different ways? Is the reasoning of faith different from the reasoning of science? Can either help the other to get a more complete understanding of the universe?

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What can Darwin teach us about morality? is a brief piece which packs quite a bit into two paragraphs. Anti-IDists are fond of using stalking horse imagery and historic incidents to mold a public perception of a "movement" with ulterior motives. The ID movement is said to be a sociological and political one which uses biological design as a wedge to further a related agenda. In support of the charge quotes from Philip Johnson are often linked to as is the notorious DI wedge document. I've pointed out many times previously that if ID is a movement it is a very amateurish one that needs to takes a cue or two from the real movement- one that uses Darwinian biological concepts to spearhead an effort to advance sociological and religious views. This comment comes from the linked piece:

According to Hamilton and his fellow sociobiologists, altruism is real, but only to the extent that it is not in fact disinterested. What's left of morality in such a world?

HT: Clare

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Ken Miller just can’t win is an unusual title for an acclaimed Ivy League professor but Miller has been a target of some very disparate groups. This might explain the motives of his latest detractors:

The source of their concern: Miller, a practicing Catholic, has made a very public bid in the last decade or so to square religion and science; to mix church and state, in their view. "It's an effort to reconcile a legitimate discipline," says biology professor and prominent atheist blogger PZ Myers, "with foolishness."

A true scientist, the New Atheists argue, must renounce God. Must acknowledge the fundamental incompatibility of an empirical science and a revelatory faith. Miller couldn't disagree more.

Remarkable is it not? The NA attitude does not square well with that which nourishes science- rigorous intellectual endeavor and freedom of thought. But Miller seems to have retained his serenity:

And if the New Atheists' attacks get to him, he doesn't let on. Miller says the long hours he has devoted to baseball and softball umpiring have left him immune to even the sharpest digs. "Do you have any idea what people say to an umpire in a ballgame?" he says.

Stanley Fish wrote a brilliant opinion piece in the New York Times titled Are There Secular Reasons? Tom Gilson authored a blog entry on it at Thinking Christian. Fish takes notice of a debate centered around the role of religion in public life and cites an argument from Classical Liberalism that policy decisions should be formulated based on secular reasons and not values which are linked to a religious source. Fish goes on to describe this as a form of "intellectual/political apartheid known as the private/public distinction." He develops these thoughts is some detail and then refers to a new book by law professor Steven Smith titled The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse. The first paragraph at the link is a good one:

Prominent observers complain that public discourse in America is shallow and unedifying. This debased condition is often attributed to, among other things, the resurgence of religion in public life. Steven Smith argues that this diagnosis has the matter backwards: it is not primarily religion but rather the strictures of secular rationalism that have drained our modern discourse of force and authenticity.

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The Freedom from Religion Foundation is complaining about the 2010 Mother Teresa stamp. Actually, their charge against her is exactly right—you can’t separate her faith from her humanitarian actions. It was that faith that gave her the strength and grace to carry on loving the least of these.

here

Stephen Barr's essay The End of Intelligent Design? was the object of a prior blog entry. I had left off where Barr was about to discuss natural theology. Continuing where I left off and quoting from paragraph four:

The older (and wiser) form of the design argument for the existence of God—one found implicitly in Scripture and in many early Christian writings—did not point to the naturally inexplicable or to effects outside the course of nature, but to nature itself and its ordinary operations—operations whose “power and working” were seen as reflecting the power and wisdom of God.

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The Navhind Times carries a story about a decision by the government of India to have a climate change panel of its own and not depend on the beleaguered UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I love this quote from Union Environment Minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh:

There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am all for climate science but not for climate evangelism.

Climate evangelism. How apropos.

Evangelism has a religious ring to it. That would come as no surprise to James Bowman, author of Creation. Judeo-Christian scriptures contain an story of global catastrophe. Of course we are much too sophisticated for ancient views of good and evil and Noah's flood. Now we speak of the size of your environmental footprint and environmental catastrophes resulting from global warming. Government regulations will rescue us if we can just rid ourselves of denialist influences. Quoting from The American Spectator article:

It will come as no news to readers of The American Spectator that science is now no longer just science but has become a religion-substitute for a large number of Americans. This faith, perhaps, claims even a majority of those in some other liberal democracies of the West. And if science, and its political arm, environmentalism, is the new religion, Charles Darwin is its Christ figure, despised and rejected of (theist) men and persecuted for the Truth he sought to bring to set men free of their inherited chains. These are not the bonds of sin and death but of the superstition and ignorance which supposes the world to have had any Creator at all or any Redeemer other than Darwin himself. That is what we mean by myth: a story that explains the world, whether or not the story happens to be true, and the Darwinist myth now comes closer to an explanation that people are prepared to accept than any other since the Redemptive history in the Christian interpretation of the Bible.

Kindly genuflect before reading the linked article and gird yourself against the blasphemous comments of the infidel Bowman.

Thank you Victor Reppert for linking to Luke Muelhauser's What if God existed?, an interview with Christopher Hitchens.
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Thanks to Victor Reppert at dangerousidea.blogspot.com for linking to E.T.Babinski's very interesting article. Babinski writes:

Many evangelical Christians today suppose that Bible believers have always been in favor of a "young-universe" and "creationism." However, as any student of the history of geology (and religion) knows, by the 1850s all competent evangelical Christian geologists agreed that the earth must be extremely old, and that geological investigations did not support that the Flood "in the days of Noah" literally "covered the whole earth."

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The Biologos Foundation website has an article titled What role could God have in evolution?

Conclusion

Our modern understanding of physical laws combined with a proper understanding of God’s relationship to time can be synthesized into a robust theistic worldview. Darrel Falk provides the following perspective:

“The Bible tells us that God created, but it does not tell us how, and we need to be careful that we do not force the God of the Universe into one of our human molds. […] What do we learn about the nature of God’s activity from studying the Bible? One thing we learn is that God builds freedom into His creation. […] Just as God builds freedom into our lives today, so freedom may well be a central component of God’s biological world as well. This is not to say that God is not playing a supervisory role in creation in a manner resembling the role God plays in my life and yours. But there is no a priori scriptural reason to assume that the biological world was created one species at a time by the God of the Universe “pushing creation buttons” each time he wanted a new species. […] God’s spirit guides the progression of life. His presence is never far from creation, just as it is never far from the events of my life. Nonetheless God respects my freedom and (I suspect) values freedom in the rest of creation as well.” 6

The question posed is not whether you agree with the article but rather is its theme contradicted by scientific findings? If so how?

Is Science Just a New Religion? is authored by Cara L. Santa Maria and appears at the Huffington Post website. A read of this is timely in the wake of Climate Gate which shows that scientists are not immune to unethical impulses which sometimes plague mere mortals as well. Cara seeks to explain "two enormous differences between science and religion: doubt and faith." Cara gets off course almost immediately by asserting that religious certainty quickly dwindles when doubt is present. Her point is tautological for one could remove the adjective religious and insert almost anything and come out with the same result. Certainty about the correctness of U.S. policy toward Iran quickly dwindles when doubt is inserted. Certainty about global warming quickly dwindles when doubt is inserted. Certainty about RNA world proposals quickly dwindles when doubt is inserted…

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"I'm reading a book on the infallibility of the Bible by some guy named Benjamin B. Warfield," I mentioned to my friend.
He laughed and replied, "That's like saying I'm reading a book on democracy by some guy named Thomas Jefferson." That was nearly 30 years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Evolution had to lead to humans – or something like us – because it is very much more constrained than many scientists suggest, according to evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris.

What is this world coming to? Did TTers sequester Simon Conway Morris in the memory hole for a month on bread and water? Is that what accounts for what follows?

HT: Claire

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