Darwinism as religion

I love watching atheists try to tell religious people what they should believe about God. I’m not talking about atheists trying to convince religious people not to believe in God. We expect that. I’m talking about atheists telling religious people how to continue properly believing in God. I find this incredibly amusing, because, you know, atheists are experts in things like keeping faith. Michael Ruse is a prime specimen. An atheist (he says “I find it a great relief no longer to believe in God”) and self-declared “ex-Christian,” a few years back Ruse wrote a book titled Can a Darwinian be a Christian? and answered “Absolutely!” (p. 217) Now, in a recent piece in the UK Guardian, Ruse lectures none Read More ›

“Go to hell!” said Ron Numbers cheerfully to me, as we greeted each other at the front of Rockefeller Chapel last night. “Hey, did I say that loud enough?” he asked, looking around at the various evolutionary biology and history and philosophy of science worthies — Lewontin, Kitcher, Sober, Ruse, Dennett, Richards, and so on — milling about. Ron’s smiling insult was a mocking attempt to redress the widespread criticism that he had let me off easy in our notorious Bloggingheads conversation. A spirit of raillery was in the air, given a vigorous kick at the beginning of the evening by Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin. Little of the secular sanctimony of the 1959 Darwin centennial (see below) was in evidence. Read More ›