Making Questioning Darwin made filmaker an agnostic

We know that Charles Darwin slowly changed from being religious to agnostic as a result of his research into how species originated. In an interview, Antony Thomas, the 73-year old British filmmaker who produced the documentary Questioning Darwin that looked at the worldview of creationists, says that during the making of the film, he too changed his views from believer to agnostic. [Read more…]

The cross on the LA county seal

There is an interesting case coming out of southern California that brings to the forefront a few of the constitutional issues involving church and state. The courts have tried to draw distinctions between passive symbols of religion (such as mottoes, crosses and Bibles on seals, and religious sayings on monuments and currencies) and active actions (such as prayer and religious instruction and religion-based actions and policies). It has also tried to distinguish between elimination of long-standing religious practices and those that are introduced as new now, even if the specific act involved is the same. [Read more…]

Albert Mohler and Pat Robertson on the Nye-Ham debate

I did not watch the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. I have been reading the various reviews and most of them seem to think that Nye had the better of it. It is of course hard to conceive of anyone losing an argument to someone who believes that the Bible is literally true and that the Earth is 6,000 years old but, as I said earlier, in these kinds of debates who emerges as victor or vanquished has little to do with whether they are right or not but more on the quality of the rhetorical tricks employed. [Read more…]

Giving advice on how to be an atheist

It is curious how many people there are who think that many atheists are getting it all wrong and feel they must tell us how we should think. Much of this advice comes from fellow atheists ‘and sophisticated theologians’ (i.e., those whose religious beliefs are so rarified that it has almost no overlap with the beliefs of ordinary religious person except that they agree on the fact that the material world is not all there is). [Read more…]

More on the Oklahoma Satanic monument

You may recall that following the erection of a monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol in Oklahoma, a Hindu group proposed putting up a statue to their god Hanuman and a Satanic group has proposed one too. Gideon Resnick joined the New York—based Satanic Temple to learn more people behind the latter effort. This group of Satanists seems closer in outlook to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster than to anything occult. [Read more…]

Why are people so uptight about science-religion debates?

There are two science-religion debates coming up. One is tomorrow (February 4) between ‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye and Answers in Genesis young-Earth creationist Ken Ham. The other is on February 21 between cosmologist Sean Carroll and theologian William Lane Craig. Serious concerns have been expressed by both sides about the usefulness or even the desirability of these debates. [Read more…]

Freshwater finally loses his case

There has been a long running saga in Ohio concerning a science teacher named John Freshwater who was teaching creationism and propagating Christianity in other ways in his eighth grade science classes in a semi-rural community in central Ohio named Mount Vernon. He kept Bibles on his desk and posters of the Ten Commandments and other Christian messages hung on the walls. [Read more…]