Author: Neil Thomas | Page 5 | Science and Culture Today

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 15, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Tagged
, Aristotle, Charles Darwin, Christianity, Europe, faith, Geoffrey Chaucer, George Levine, goddess, Lucretius, Mother Earth, Mother Nature, natural selection, natural theology, On the Origin of Species, Ovid, paganism, Plato, Robert J. Richards, Samuel Wilberforce, Victorian England, William Paley}

Nature Divinized: Darwin’s Goddess for All Seasons

_{Neil Thomas
July 15, 2022

Evolution, Faith & Science

10}

Some modern archaeologists have even gone so far as to claim that the archetype of the Great Mother has been a mythic universal. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 14, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Tagged
, agriculturalists, Basil Willey, breeders, Charles Darwin, Emma Darwin, faith, Gaia, George Levine, goddess, Janet Browne, literature, metaphor, Mother Nature, natural preservation, nature, On the Origin of Species, paganism, Robert J. Richards, Stephen Jay Gould}

Darwin’s Goddess: Natural Selection as “Divine Surrogate”

_{Neil Thomas
July 14, 2022

Evolution, Faith & Science

7}

When parsed carefully, the metaphorical structure of Darwin’s argumentation emerges as little less than a periphrastic description of the goddess Natura. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 11, 2022

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Faith & Science
Geology
Tagged
, Baden Powell, BBC, Bible, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Christianity, creation, Darwinism, faith, fundamentalism, Gospels, HMS Beagle, Honest to God, John Robinson, literalism, miracles, New Testament, Nick Spencer, Old Testament, original sin, orthodoxy, Oxford University, Pentateuch, Principles of Geology, rainbow, revelation, Richard Dawkins, Robert Fitzroy, Rudolf Bultmann, theology, Tower of Babel, Victorians}

Darwin, Lyell, and a Tale of Two Faiths

_{Neil Thomas
July 11, 2022

Biology, Evolution, Faith & Science, Geology

10}

Darwin found himself in the unhappy position of having his faith undermined by what he saw as the non-directed processes of geological and biological evolution. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 8, 2022

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Faith & Science
Geology
Tagged
, catastrophism, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, demythologization, evolution, faith, Hell, James Hutton, jesus, mythology, Noah’s Flood, On the Origin of Species, Principles of Geology, Rudolf Bultmann, saltations, special creation, Theory of the Earth, uniformitarianism}

Darwin, Lyell, and Demythologization

_{Neil Thomas
July 8, 2022

Biology, Evolution, Faith & Science, Geology

7}

The term demythologization is today most frequently associated with the mid 20th-century German theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
July 7, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Tagged
, Alfred Russel Wallace, Arthur Koestler, Charles Darwin, Charles Kingsley, Charles Lyell, Darwinism, epigenetics, Greek philosophers, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Joseph Hooker, Lamarckian theory, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Mendelian genetics, mount improbable, natural preservation, natural selection, On the Origin of Species, Pyrrho, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Stephen Buranyi, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, The Guardian}

Darwin and the Ghost of Lamarck

_{Neil Thomas
July 7, 2022

Evolution, Faith & Science

15}

The lure of Lamarck was exemplified most strikingly in the case of Viennese biologist Paul Kammerer and the unhappy affair of the “midwife toad.” Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
June 16, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Faith & Science
Scientific Reasoning
Tagged
, antiquity, Aristotle, atomism, Cambridge University, Darwinism, David Brown, David Hume, Enlightenment, evolution, fideism, Gospels, Headlong Hall, Judeo-Christian tradition, Meister Eckhart, Mendelian genetics, Middle Ages, New Testament, On the Origin of Species, Oxford University, Phillip E. Johnson, Richard Dawkins, Rudolf Otto, The Selfish Gene, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Love Peacock, Victorians}

On Darwinism and the Abdication of Reason

_{Neil Thomas
June 16, 2022

Evolution, Faith & Science, Scientific Reasoning

15}

It is a pity that Darwin’s homeland no longer boasts a satirist of the caliber of Thomas Love Peacock to exploit this rich seam of comic absurdity. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
June 13, 2022

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Neuroscience & Mind
Tagged
, Alfred Russel Wallace, Animal Liberation, Anthony Flew, consciousness, Darwin, David Bentley Hart, David Hume, deism, Donald Hoffman, Erasmus Darwin, Europeans, evolution, Francis Crick, intelligent design, Irreducible Complexity, Lawrence Krauss, Lucretius, materialism, Michael Ruse, mind, natural selection, natural theology, neuroscience, On the Origin of Species, Peter Singer, Racism, rationalism, Richard Dawkins, Richard Rorty, Richard Spilsbury, Stephen Hawking, Ternate letter, Thomas Huxley, Tom Wolfe}

How Darwin and Wallace Split over the Human Mind

_{Neil Thomas
June 13, 2022

Biology, Evolution, Neuroscience & Mind

17}

Marvelously free of racist prejudice, Wallace noted in his fieldwork in far-flung locations that primitive tribes were intellectually the equals of Europeans. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
June 10, 2022

Categories
Biology
Evolution
Intelligent Design
Tagged
, Alfred Russel Wallace, Aristotle, biosphere, Charles Lyell, David Hull, Democritus, Edward Blyth, Empedocles, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, evolution, Georges Cuvier, Greece, Homo sapiens, intelligent design, Joseph Hooker, Law of Correlation, Linnaean Society, Loren Eiseley, materialism, natural selection, On the Origin of Species, Patrick Matthew, pigeons, Rome, Royal Society, Samuel Haughton, Thomas Malthus, Victorian England, Whitwell Elwin, William Irvine}

Meet Samuel Haughton, Darwin’s First Scientific Critic

_{Neil Thomas
June 10, 2022

Biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design

18}

Darwin reports Haughton’s verdict as having been that “all that was new in there was false, and what was true was old.” Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
June 8, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Geology
Physical Sciences
Tagged
, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Dean Kenyon, evolution, Fred Hoyle, Isaac Newton, James Hutton, James Thomson, On the Origin of Species, Percival Davis, Peter Bowler, Principles of Geology, Robert Elsmere, Theory of the Earth, Thomas Huxley, William Shakespeare}

Was Darwinian Theory Based on a False Analogy to Geology?

_{Neil Thomas
June 8, 2022

Evolution, Geology, Physical Sciences

10}

Given the degree of discipleship for Sir Charles, Darwin fully expected to receive Lyell’s commendation for his labors. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
May 20, 2022

Categories
Biology
Cosmology
Faith & Science
Fine-tuning
Physical Sciences
Tagged
, astrophysicists, atheism, bioengineering, brain, Charles Darwin, Copernican Revolution, cytology, demiurge, Democritus, Denis Diderot, earth, Erasmus Darwin, human eye, humankind, Judeo-Christian tradition, life, natural selection, nature, Paul Davies, philosophes, physiology, Plato, purpose, teleology, The Miracle of Man, theism, William Paley}

In His New Book, Denton Shows How Science Leads the Charge to Theism

_{Neil Thomas
May 20, 2022

Biology, Cosmology, Faith & Science, Fine-tuning, Physical Sciences

8}

In his new book, Michael Denton is particularly strong on what he terms “the post-Copernican delusion of mankind’s cosmic irrelevance.” Read More ›