Science and Culture Today Discovering Design in Nature
Topic

American

Pope Benedict XVI
Photo credit: Catholic Church England and Wales, via Flickr (cropped).

Evolution Reads Like “Scroll,” Pope Says

For some unknown reason, the recent confab of scientists and theologians at the Vatican has gone largely unremarked by the mainstream media. But our colleague Bruce Chapman was paying attention and has some thoughts on the Pope’s address to the scientists, philosophers, theologians and others in attendance. Read all about it here [link expired]. Pope’s Wise, if Limited, Message on Evolution The Vatican has still not really dealt adequately with the issue of Darwinian evolution, but on evolution broadly Pope Benedict XVI continues to make more sense than anyone else in the hierarchy. His greeting last Friday to the Pontifical Academies of Science conference that is now concluding in Rome is well worth reading.  The conference as a whole appears to have Read More ›

“Anti-Science” is the New Left Wing Smear

We notice a trend on the left to denounce scientists who disagree with a social policy objective of the left as “anti-science.” It’s a major theme on the evolution issue. Now it is true, too, on the issue of whether global warming is as big a danger as the Al Gore sorts say and what contribution human activity makes to the problem. And as a Washington Post article shows, the materialist left have decided that medical professors who promote reproductive medicine that doesn’t include abortion or test tube fertilization because of moral scruples are being denounced as “anti-science,” too.

Read More ›

Contra Kass, Not All Scientific Claims About Origins Are Metaphysically Neutral

This past Thursday, October 26, Dr. Leon Kass, learned intellectual and former Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, presented a paper before an excellent group of intellectuals at the American Enterprise Institute (Stephen Barr, Eric Cohen, Joseph Bottum, Charles Murray, and Marcello Pera, among others). Dr. Kass had many good things to say about the false nature of scientific reductionism and how it goes against everything we know about reality from everyday life. He also denied that random mutations and natural selection were the whole story to life’s evolution. That said, I took umbrage with one major point Kass made.

Read More ›

© Discovery Institute