The Jewish Tanakh (or Christian Old Testament) includes a creation myth in Genesis Chapters 2 and 3. The story describes Adam and Eve's famous sojourn in the Garden of Eden, which ended abruptly after they disobeyed God. Though only a handful of verses, Christians consider this narrative an essential truth of the faith and call it the Fall of Man story. In "Truth, the Fall, and Hominins," G. P. Denken questions whether there can be any historical truth to the Fall in light of human evolution. He focuses on the Catholic Church's current accommodationist approach to the subject, seeing the Fall story as symbolic and allowing scholarly speculation on how evolution fits into the narrative. He concludes that the Church has failed to extract the Fall’s historical truth from our hominin history, and its speculations on evolution raise more problems for its complicated theology than they resolve. Once the Church recognizes that it can accept either human evolution or the Fall story, but not both, Denken predicts that it will abandon evolution and return to an irrational, literalist reading of the Fall.
"I discuss some of the implications of Intelligent Design, implications that may not have occurred to its believers. Putting aside, for now, the validity or otherwise of Intelligent Design, I argue that--using the believers'--own arguments, it is possible to show that God is not the Creator. I do this by showing that the human body, rather than being the creation of a perfect god, is in fact a sign of engineering incompetence."
Whatever benefit religion is to emotional stability, religion works (when it works) by coincidence or the placebo effect because god, heaven, and the soul do not exist. Faith is unreasonable in light of scientific truth and historical fact.
The freedom of our schools to teach well-established science and to instill an appreciation for independent critical thinking is under attack by religious fundamentalists. To the extent they succeed, our children and our society will suffer.
Creationists often point to the alleged orderliness of the universe as evidence for the existence of a creator deity, "God." But what are the facts? Is the alleged orderliness of the universe actually evidence for--or against--the existence of a creator?
Creationists claim that science cannot demonstrate evolution in the lab before their eyes. Creationists demand that they need this kind of proof if they are to accept evolution. Gosling sets the record straight.
Do vestigial organs exist? Answers in Genesis says no. Craig Gosling says yes. Who is right? Does it matter? What is the significance of vestigial organs if they do exist?
"This is a review of More Than a Theory by Dr. Hugh Ross. Ross' goal in writing this book is to present a 'testable creation model.' My goal in writing this response is to challenge the arguments he makes and point out potential and/or actual problems with it. Although it would be impossible for me to point out all problems I see in his book, I think it would be pertinent to the evolution/creation debate to point out the most serious problems."
"Answers in Genesis" (AiG) is an apologetics (i.e., Christianity-defending) ministry which focuses on providing answers to questions surrounding the biblical book of Genesis, and on exposing the alleged "bankruptcy of evolutionary ideas." "AiG teaches that 'facts' don't speak for themselves, but must be interpreted." But, as Nick Covington demonstrates, AiG gets it wrong.
"This is presented as science. There is no method to it. There is no predictivity, no falsifiability, no plausibility, no consistency. It is not science. It is not a philosophy. It is not even a theology. It is a waste of my time."
Antony Flew. a long-time ace atheist and once-astute philosopher, now a born-again deist, responded to Bradley's "
Antony in Wonderland," by appealing to Gerald Schroeder's
Genesis and the Big Bang--calling Bradley a "secularist bigot" in the process. Bradley responds.
A brief overview of intelligent design, prompted by President Bush's recent endorsement of the theory.
