Moran on theistic evolution

Eugenie Scott is going to have to increase the length of her list of scientists out to “destroy religion.” Larry Moran (fans of Talk.Origins will recognize the name) has posted an article, Theistic Evolution: The Fallacy of the Middle Ground.

There is no continuum between science and non-science. You can’t practice methodological naturalism 99% of the time and still claim to be a scientist. It’s all or nothing. Either your explanations of the natural world are scientific or they are not.

It’s too bad his site isn’t set up like a blog—you can’t make comments there, so you’ll have to settle for making howls of outrage here, or tracking him down on usenet to complain there.

I also like this wonderful quote:

My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.

J.B.S. Haldane

My story of faith

Andy says the Washington Post is asking for personal “spiritual stories”. They want it under 400 words, and they’re looking for “a time of crisis that tested your faith, the person who most influenced your beliefs, a life-changing event that shaped your spiritual identity, or a religious teaching or ritual that you find especially moving.” Awww, how heart-warming.

I sent mine in. I doubt that they’ll accept it, so I’ve put a copy below the fold.

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More press for the godless

Ho hum, I’m quoted in Nature again this week (do I sound convincingly blasé?) It’s a short news article on Francis Collins’ new book, The Language of God, which I find dreadfully dreary and unconvincing, and I find his argument that “The moral law is a signpost to a God who cares about us as individuals. God used a mechanism of evolution to create human beings with whom he could have that kind of fellowship” to be ridiculously unscientific garbage.

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Rapture rubbish and apocalyptic asininity

Unbelievable. Whenever I read about these End Times kooks, I wonder what is wrong with people.

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus’ message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

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A good start

Mark Isaak has opened a discussion on The Panda’s Thumb about The Larger Issue of Bad Religion. It’s good to discuss the problem of religion, but my main complaint is the attempt to separate ‘good religion’ from ‘bad religion’, and suggesting that we should be lauding those ‘good religionists’ to win them over to our side. Unfortunately, we don’t have a criterion to distinguish the two, and I fear that if we did define them, those practitioners of ‘good religion’ would be vanishingly small, and not particularly strongly associated with any particular sect.

I’d suggest that ‘good religion’ is merely something called a religion, which has stripped away everything relating to superstition and any concrete concept of a deity, but then everyone would call them godless atheists anyway and we’d be right back where we started.

Just Another Salem

You may recall that distressing story of discrimination against atheists in Oklahoma—it worked out well in the end, but the family involved was raked through the coals first. I recently received some email that is purportedly written by the defendant in that case, Chuck Smalkowski. I haven’t been able to get more information to verify it, but it doesn’t seem to be anywhere else on the web, and the mail does trace back to an origin in Hardesty, OK, so I’m accepting it as legitimate. It’s Smalkowski’s own perspective on the events in his trial.

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You can have him

Like rats deserting a sinking ship…atheism is in trouble. We’ve lost a beloved leading light of atheism, a highbrow master of humanist ethical conduct, a highly principled representative of secularism. One of our own has converted to Christianity. Oh, how shall we bear it? The Christians will be trumpeting this news ecstatically.

Alas. Larry Darby, holocaust denier, racist sleazebag, and opportunistic maggot, has embraced Jesus.

Godless conservative?

DarkSyde interviews Brent Rasmussen of UTI today. The interview is good, but skip the comments—they descend into the usual mush-mouthed yammering about dictionary definitions of “agnostic” and “atheist,” ignoring the fact that for all practical purposes they’re exactly the same, and they’re both going to get burned at the stake for apostasy and heresy when the theocracy comes.

I’ve decided that when I invent my time machine, my first stop is going to be 19th century England, where I shall slap Tom Huxley upside the head and tell him that he’s being a waffling coward by inventing a word that’s going to paralyze freethinkers for the next 150 years or more. Then I’m going to go on to the Cambrian.

Oh, and being a godless conservative isn’t that unusual—witness the Corsair and the Commissar.

What’s the difference between a pope and a frill-necked lizard?

In superficial morphology, surprisingly little. The lizard looks a little more friendly to me.

The lizard is probably a little less concerned about where other lizards put their hemipenes, though, and certainly isn’t at all worried about this:

Benedict, a German, has made combating a Europe of empty churches and religious apathy a priority of his papacy. Vatican officials have declared that such former Catholic bedrocks as Spain are in need of what they call a “new evangelization.”

Empty churches and religious apathy? What an excellent idea! I’m thinking we need to begin some secular evangelization over here in the States.