philosopher of religion, theologian, journalist, writer
Many religious believers still cling to the idea that there must be a first human, somewhere down the line. Creationists even cling to the idea of the biblical parents of humankind: Adam and Eve. However, if you take evolutionary theory seriously, it turns out, there was no first human. The following video explains why this…
On his personal blog, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has given his opinion of Thomas Nagel’s review of Plantinga’s book. To those familiar with Coyne’s rantings about everything religious, it will come as no surprise that Coyne has no respect for Nagel’s appeal to Plantinga’s position. However, if you read Nagel’s review and Coyne’s review of…
Nicholas Rescher is an American philosopher, an extremely productive one (or at least, he used to be like that). He has written a lot on epistemology. And he is also a theist, a religious believer. Just a couple of minutes ago I received an e-mail from a German friend who pointed out to me that…
Theoretical physicist and atheist Marcelo Gleiser asks himself in a blogpost why so many religious believers have issues with evolutionary theory. And his conclusion is excellent: Does evolution really need to be such a stumbling block for so many? Is it really that bad that we descended from monkeys? Doesn’t that make us even more…
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…
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…
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…
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…