Christianity
Stonestreet Puts the United Methodist Anti-ID Ban in the Context of Liberal Christianity and Its Crackup
Let’s Examine the United Methodist Ban on Intelligent Design in Light of Church Teaching
Seeking an Official Definition of “Randomness”: A Reply to Jay Richards
What’s in a Word? “Randomness” in Darwinism and the Scientific Theory of Evolution
The Enigma of Metamorphosis Is Hardly Limited to Butterflies
A Well-Worn Pseudo-Journalistic Template: “The Discovery of ET’s Could Spell Doom for Christianity”
The Closing of Charles Darwin’s Formerly Christian Mind
Clarity and Confusion: Stephen Barr Answers My Questions
Stephen Barr at First Things has responded to the three questions I posed to him in our online dialogue about evolution, God, Christianity, and intelligent design. Parts of Barr’s response are helpful in clarifying the points in contention; other parts continue to leave me perplexed.
For those who have not been following our exchange, it began after Barr took issue with this article I wrote for The Washington Post criticizing proponents of theistic evolution such as Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins (who was just nominated by the Obama administration to be the head of the National Institutes of Health, and who was one of the notable supporters of President Obama’s repeal of the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research earlier this year.) Other installments in my exchange with Barr can be read here, here, and here.
Barr’s latest response comes in two parts: The first part appeared as a comment posted on June 26 to one of his earlier blog posts; it’s a thoughtful answer that advances the discussion by clarifying our disagreements. The second part appeared as a new post on the First Things blog. Unfortunately, this latter rejoinder adopts an exasperated and condescending tone that isn’t especially conducive to civil discussion.
My three questions to Barr focused on his peculiar definition of Darwinism, his public silence on the mainstream theistic evolutionists who promote undirected evolution, and the ways in which Barr thinks design can be detected in biology.
The Humpty Dumpty Approach to Defining Darwinism
In my first question, I asked Barr why he insisted on conflating his teleological view of evolution with the term “Darwinism.” Doesn’t that simply promote confusion rather than clarity?
Read More ›Intelligent Design and the Artist’s Soul (Part 3)
Editor’s Note: This is crossposted at Professor Scot McKnight’s Beliefnet blog, Jesus Creed. The first post in this series is found here, and the second here.
The Origin of Beauty
Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt’s masterful book A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature gives the following illustration of how modern scientific reductionists treat nature and the arts:
Imagine hearing the following account of one of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s symphonies: ‘We have been able to prove that this particular symphony is actually reducible to a series of notes that happen to be played both at the same time in chords and one after another, creating a string of disturbances in the air caused by different frequencies. We realize, of course, that these disturbances cause further disturbances in the audience, due in part to the presence of Earth’s particular atmosphere and in part to the effect such disturbances have on the apparatus of the ear as transmitted by neurons to the brain–so disturbing, in fact, that some break into voluntary tears, remarking that they seemed to be hearing the very harmonies of heaven. Happily, we now know that there is nothing more to Mozart’s work in particular and to music in general than mere notes, themselves reducible to waves disturbing air.’
When Christian intellectuals hear such things, their general response is to think that they can have their Darwinian cake and merely scrape off the reductionist icing. But Darwinism, if I may continue the strained metaphor, is, it turns out, a layered cake with icing all throughout.
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