Michael Egnor

Science journalist and global warming alarmist Chris Mooney is many things.
From his own lavish blog bio at Discover Magazine:

The silence of the ‘pro-science’ blogsphere on the ClimateGate scandal is remarkable. For years, readers of Pharyngula, Panda’s Thumb, Neurologica, WhyEvolutionIsTrue, Denialism, Respectful Insolence, and other militantly ‘pro-science’ blogs have been treated to rants about the need to protect the integrity of science from frauds and ideologically motivated practitioners. Of course, ‘protection of the integrity of science’ in the faux ‘pro-science’ blogsphere has generally meant suppression of skeptics who question so-called ‘consensus science’ on Darwinism and on Anthropogenic Global Warming. ‘Protection of science’ has more often that not entailed personal invective, recourse to ‘consensus’, advocacy of professional destruction of skeptics, deference to scientific authorities, censorship, and judicial coercion. The ClimateGate e-mails and data sets obtained from the Climate Research Unit Read More ›

Christopher Monckton has a good essay on Pajamas Media on the growing ClimateGate scandal, in which hacked e-mails and data reveal that the leading scientists in the global-warming alarmist community faked and destroyed data and took measures to prevent other scientists from examining or critiquing their work. Monkton is the chief policy advisor to the England’s Science and Public Policy Institute, and served as Margaret Thatcher’s policy advisor from 1982 to 1986. He has been a vocal advocate for integrity in science and a harsh critic of global warming alarmism.

Monckton:

Eco-science has a checkered past. And, we are learning, a checkered present. In what is shaping up as one of the biggest science scandals in modern times, hackers have obtained thousands of e-mails, computer codes, and data sets from climate scientists at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England. The CRU is one of the world’s leading climate research institutions; its scientists play central roles in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The e-mails involve conversations between CRU scientists and scientists from all over the world who support the theory of man-made global warming. The content of the e-mails is astonishing.

British journalist James Delingpole has a synopsis of the scientific misconduct and criminal fraud revealed in the e-mails that have been analyzed thus far:

The Problem of Evil is perhaps the most vexing problem in theology. There are many answers to it, which means that there is no single satisfying answer to it. What I’ve never understood about theodicy is this: why do atheists ponder the Problem of Evil?
Jerry Coyne has a recent post on theodicy. He (finally) admits

…I’m no philosopher…this is amateur philosophizing.

Damn right. For a man who recently sneered at Thomas Aquinas, this is progress.
Coyne:

In my view, the most important question in the ID-Darwinism debate is this: what do we mean by design? All participants in the debate agree that living things manifest design of some sort; Darwinists assert that the design is unintelligent, the product of ateleological genetic variation and natural selection. ID proponents assert that design implies an intelligent source. Philosophers of an Aristotelian and Thomist stripe assert that teleology pervades nature, but insist that a proper understanding of teleology entails a metaphysical understanding of nature (hylomorphism) that differs from the metaphysical presuppositions of most ID advocates, who generally accept (implicitly if not explicitly) the mechanical view of nature shared by materialists.

In my view, we need to integrate our understanding of the obvious design that is manifest in biology with the teleology that is evident in all of nature. We need a “unified theory” of teleology in nature that intrinsically explains the obvious design in living things as well as the obvious teleology in scientific “laws” and in all natural change. That integration necessarily will come from the “teleology” camp; Darwinist “ateleology” is an impoverished philosophical mistake that persists only when it not made explicit. The ID-Darwinism debate is rapidly eroding materialist credibility, not only because of the strength of the ID arguments, but because ID proponents have forced materialists to state clearly what they believe. Candor is incompatible with materialist ideology; Darwinists are angry in large part because they’ve been forced to explain themselves.

Can a teleological understanding of nature of an Aristotelian sort bring together the seemingly disparate strands of modern science? Philosopher Ed Feser suggests that a hylomorphic understanding of quantum mechanics, which intrinsically depends on a teleological view of nature, provides a coherent framework on which to understand some counterintuitive aspects of quantum mechanics. His source for this insight is Werner Heisenberg, a pioneer in the development of quantum theory.

Recently the Wall Street Journal published dueling articles by Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins entitled Man vs. God. The editors’ choice of Dawkins to represent the atheist viewpoint is understandable enough; in the interest of balance, it seems that the WSJ editors searched hard to find a theist who mangles theism as effectively as Dawkins mangles atheism. Author Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun given to syncretism who believes that “we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence,” answered the WSJ’s “Mangler of Theology” Ad, and Dawkins had his disputant. Armstrong: …Darwin may have done religion — and God — a favor by revealing a flaw in modern Western faith. Despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our understanding Read More ›

The world is awash with charities. Most are quite worthwhile. For pennies a day, you can send a child in an impoverished country to school, and kindle a lifetime of learning. But there remain many unmet needs.
What about people living in ideological poverty?

We’ve all heard the stories. Materialist philosophers of the mind who deny that the mind exists. Full professors of evolutionary biology who misunderstand demonstrations of the existence of God that are routinely mastered by teenagers in Introductory Philosophy courses. Atheist authors of letters to Christian nations who excoriate religion and ignore the unparalleled atrocities of atheism. Unrepentant Trotskyites who scold Christians for adherence to a messianic ideology.

Some of our fellow men live in intellectual squalor.

Jerry Coyne and Jim Manzi have been mixing it up lately over the religious implications of evolution. Coyne asserts, quite rudely at times, that evolution disproves the existence of God. Manzi disagrees, and asserts that theism is compatible with evolutionary science.

I’ve had a blog discussion or two with Manzi, and he’s a thoughtful courteous interlocutor. He doesn’t believe that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific inference (so he’s not perfect), but he is logically rigorous and very well informed on scientific matters as well as on the broader philosophical issues. He believes that evolution, understood as an algorithmic process by which populations of organisms change over time, is compatible with belief in God. He asserts that evolutionary science does not demonstrate that atheism is true. He’s right.

Jerry Coyne is another matter. Coyne’s manner is sarcastic and supercilious, or at least as supercilious as one can get without relevant literacy. Coyne is an evolutionary biologist of the first rank, but that is where his competence ends. His arguments against the existence of God are embarrassing, and, like the arguments of Richard Dawkins and other New Atheists, are eliciting a backlash among intellectuals who have at least a modicum of philosophical and theological education. I don’t claim for myself any more than a marginal competence — an amateur’s competence — on such matters, but in refuting Coyne, that’s all that’s necessary.¹
Coyne:

P.Z. Myers has a recent post (“Morality Doesn’t Equal God”) in which he takes issue with Robert Wright, who is proposing a new kind of rapprochement between religion and science. Wright recommends that we move to a consensus on the view that purpose and moral law is inherent in nature, a view cleverly dubbed ‘Neism’ (Naturalism melded with Deism) by Joe Carter. I believe that Wright’s view is philosophically incoherent and even pernicious. His motives for imputing teleology and morality to nature are clear enough: Darwinism is faltering under scrutiny, as it denies teleology and fails to explain the moral law, and it will crumble unless it is welded to an ideology that invokes both. It’s ironic that Darwinism may well segue into a nature religion, which is probably its only way out of its inexorable slide into the materialist dust-bin (Marxism and Freudianism will shift over to make room). But mankind has had plenty of nature religions, and they have never failed to be intellectually vacuous and culturally pernicious. We don’t need another.

P.Z. Myers takes issue with Wright from the Darwinist perspective: