Dutch scientists not enthusiastic about Dawkins’ criticism of religion

Posted on by
2

Recently, Richard Dawkins visited the Dutch university of Groningen for a public lecture. It was a major event, where eventually students sold (originally free) tickets for quite some money on the black market. Anyway, science journalist René Fransen, who works for the Groningen Universiteitskrant as well as for the Nederlands Dagblad did not get the chance to interview Dawkins. Instead, he asked scientists working at Groningen University what their opinion was about Richard Dawkins. I expected them to be enthusiastic about Dawkins’ qualities as a science popularizer. What I did not so much expect was the outright criticism of the scientists when it comes to Dawkins’ crusade against religion. Quite interesting.

http://uk.webhosting.rug.nl/archief/jaargang41/17/14c.php

A child’s perspective on Dawkins’ “The Magic of Reality”

Posted on by
Reply

A very interesting review in Chemical and Engineering News (of all places) of Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality. The review is a collaboration between a 46-year old father (a chemist) and his 7-year old son Max. Though the review is not completely devastating, the review does expose very nicely that Dawkins scolds at mythology where he shouldn’t and is sarcastic where he oughtn’t – and really that he really doesn’t know very well how and what children actually think…

http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i2/Deciphering-Magic-Reality.html

Terry Eagleton vs. Alain de Botton

Posted on by
Reply

A while ago I read Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists (which for some reason was published in Dutch several months before the English edition). I was not too enthusiastic about the book (to put it mildly – and I did put it mildly in the review that I wrote). But then again, I’m no Terry Eagleton.

In the British journalThe Guardian, Eagleton published a short but brilliant review of De Botton’s book. Eagleton writes in his characteristic style, very readable, humorous, ironic, and with a conclusion that I found right on the mark:

What the book does, in short, is hijack other people’s beliefs, empty them of content and redeploy them in the name of moral order, social consensus and aesthetic pleasure. It is an astonishingly impudent enterprise. It is also strikingly unoriginal.

Creationist brainwashing techniques exposed

Posted on by
Reply

Actually, I’m trying to get away from discussions concerning creationism and Intelligent Design, since I think in the last couple of years everything there’s to say about it has already been said. There are topics in the field of science and religion that are more interesting, rewarding, and fruitful. However, every once in a while I simply come across something that infuriates me and that I need to write about. Creationist brainwashing strategies to confuse the whit out of young children’s minds is one of them…

Continue reading →

Is the New Atheism movement dying?

Posted on by
Reply

Recently, I came across a very interesting new perspective on the New Atheist movement – or rather, it’s a kind of eulogy written by R. Joseph Hoffman, a “non-believing” scholar in religious studies (he’s a historian of religion).

In his blog entry, “Re-Made in America: Remembering the New Atheism (2006-2011)”, Hoffman severely criticizes the New Atheists, and especially Richard Dawkins, for their fanatical rantings against religion.

Not only does Hoffman (rightly in my view) point out the blatant ignorance of the new atheists concerning what religion is and does – they actually construct stereotypes that they sell as being “true” religion – but Hoffman also argues that the New Atheist movement actually has had a damaging effect on the scholarly study of religion in the United States – and then I don’t mean theology, but religious studies.

Hoffman writes:

The real success story of the new atheism is that it was bought and sold after being intellectually panned by almost all the cognoscenti who weren’t atheist activists.  In fact, as the circle closed around a tightly knit cadre of God-opposers, opposing God became virtually the sole criterion for what, in their parochial view, counted for anthropology, archaeology, sociology and the study of religion–about which all of the four (check the footnotes) were blissfully ignorant.

In other words, the New Atheists not only constructed a definition of religion, that is  false yet widely accepted (almost canonical) among atheist communities worldwide, but they also implicitly have redefined the mission of all the scholarly approaches of religion: to be scientific means to scoff at religion, to debunk it as being an illusion, not only silly but perhaps even a menace to society. The consequences of this, Hoffman argues, are quite severe:

The willful ignorance of the new atheists matters because it makes almost impossible the work of serious religion scholars who have no commitment to belief, but who happen to feel that the study of religion belongs to and is inestimably important to the study of history and culture.

http://www.rjosephhoffmann.com/2012/01/01/re-made-in-america-remembering-the-new-atheism-2006-2011/

And do check out Hoffman’s other blog entries, there’s much more interesting stuff there!

(Picture credits: http://www.theatheistmama.com/2006/05/is-atheism-a-religion.html.)

LeRon Shults on evolution and original sin

Posted on by
1

A lot of people believe that evolutionary theory is in deep conflict with the basic ideas of Christian theology – including US pastors. One of those conflicts is about the first humans, Adam and Eve. Many creationists point out that if you don’t accept that Adam and Eve have ever lived, you also have to give up the idea of the fall and thus of original sin. But if so, Christology also loses its force – for if the fall never happened, why then did God have to become human?

If one sticks to a literalist interpretation of the Genesis-text, there indeed is a problem. LeRon Shults, once a student of Princeton professor Wentzel van Huyssteen, now a professor in the philosophy of religion in Norway, writes in his Reforming Anthropology: After the Philosophical Turn to Relationality (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans 2003):

The idea of a first couple coming into existence in a state of perfection sometimes in the last ten thousand years simply cannot be reconciled with evolutionary science. The sciences of embryology and genetics deminstrate the continuity of human organisms with the rest of organic life as it has emerged and become more complex over millions and milions (not merely thousands) of years. Analysis of the mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid of contemporary homo sapiens indicates that human populations never consisted of fewer than several thousand individuals. Paleological evidence shows that death and suffering were in the world long before the emergence of human beings. (208)

Okay, doesn’t this indicate a problem? Again, on a literalist reading of the Bible, yes. However, Shults argues:

One can accept the illuminative force of evolutionary hypotheses without denying the heart of the doctrine of original sin, which is that each and every person is bound by relations to self, others, and God that inhibit the goodness of loving fellowship, and that only by divine grace may humans share in the righteousness of God. (209)

To this I fully agree. Leaving a literalist reading of the Bible behind doesn’t mean giving up on the basic ideas of Christianity. Indeed, in my view (and in Shults’), it opens up a perspective that allows one to incorporate insights of different (also scientific) disciplines. How that might work out in detail? – For that I urge you to check out LeRon Shults’ book (which, by the way, is about much, much more than merely original sin)…

US Protestant Pastors overwhelmingly creationists?

Posted on by
Reply

Quite disturbing news today. A poll by LifeWay Research shows that apparently many US protestant pastors have big issues with evolutionary theory. 74% of the pastors believe that Adam and Eve were real people, and 64% reject the claim that God used evolution to create people. A startling conclusion follows:

“Recently discussions have pointed to doubts about a literal Adam and Eve, the age of the earth and other origin issues,” said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research. “But Protestant pastors are overwhelmingly Creationists and believe in a literal Adam and Eve.”

What for me was especially shocking that only 25% of the mainline pastors agrees that God used evolution to create people – meaning that 75% disagrees or doesn’t know. This means that even the more liberal pastors fall under the creationist category. Of course, I don’t know how reliable this poll is. But it seems obvious that there’s still much, very much to do for scholars in the field of science and religion…

Source: http://www.lifeway.com/Article/Research-Poll-Pastors-oppose-evolution-split-on-earths-age

Dutch creationist conference scheduled for March 2012

Posted on by
Reply

The Dutch have their own creationist movement, although so far it is not very much structured (and let’s hope it stays that way). The individuals that push the movement organize mostly meetings on an ad hoc basis. One of those meetings is scheduled to take place on 2-3 March 2012, in Almere. To me it seems to be one of the biggest creationist meetings we’ve had in the Netherlands so far. I haven’t the slightest idea how many people wil attend. The program, it seems, is very preposterous, and it not even completely filled in yet. The names mentioned in the program do actually represent the creationist movement in the Netherlands (meaning: this is all there is to it).

If you’re able to read Dutch, visit the conference website to see what they’ve put together:

http://www.dcsconferences.com/

Update, 12 January, 11:30: The (new) website of the Dutch Creation Science group can be found here: http://www.dutchcreationscience.com/.

No creationism in British schools

Posted on by
Reply

The British government has revised the model funding agreement for Free Schools by the Government in order to preclude “the teaching, as an evidence-based view or theory, of any view or theory that is contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations.”

This means that free schools that do want to teach creationism instead instead of evolutionary theory cannot get any government funding. The revision was necessary because British creationist organizations intended to found their own free schools based on creationist ideas. This was followed by a campaign by the British Humanist Association followed, which now seems to have proven succesfull.

http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/961

Has Lawrence Krauss defeated religion?

Posted on by
Reply

According to this interview, Lawrence Krauss wrote his latest book, A Universe from Nothing as a way to defeat the philosophical-theological question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The motivation to write a book about how the universe arose seems thus to be a theological one, although Krauss admits in the interview his goal “is not to destroy religion, though in fact that would be an interesting side effect”. The answer he seems to give to the age-old question amounts to another multiverse story. Not really that ground-breaking, and Krauss seems to be aware of that:

“Some people say, ‘Well, that’s just a cop-out,’” Krauss acknowledged. “But it’s actually less of a cop-out than God.”

My point is: does he really answer the philosophical question? The point of the book probably is to answer the question by referring to natural laws, etc. – all the stuff that makes up the toolbox that the natural sciences use to explain the world we live in. But where does the toolbox itself come from? Science can’t answer that, since it has no meta-toolbox to answer it. (Note that I’m definitely not claiming that philosophy or religion do have such a meta-toolbox!) So does Krauss really answer the age-old question, or does it stand unshaken and as fresh as when it was first asked, probably  many centuries ago?

Anyway, I haven’t read the book yet, but only the interview. The book seems interesting in itself, as a book about cosmology, and not because it tries to answer a philosophical or theological issue. Because it can’t and it doesn’t.