A bunch of topics that I can't be stuffed blogging in detail, but are important:
Larry Arnhart and Roger Scruton, both Darwinians (see previous post) and conservatives, justify the existence of religion as a social cohesive force. I wonder, though, as a Darwinian (see previous post) and a not-conservative, why we can't use the values and rituals of social justice and morality as a cohesive force, especially given that religion can only cohere a society by excluding and marginalising those who disagree with it. That said, we can invert the issue and say that a function of religion is to cohere the religious community, for sure.
Eugenie Scott and Ken Ham posed for a photo before resuming their club-fight, for the BBC, with a picture of the delightful Professor Steve Steve, who visited me and travelled with me through the US, particularly Hawai'i a while back, and more recently I met him in Vancouver.
Ham was interviewed by the Post-Chronicle, where it said
"'If you don't believe in Genesis,' his father told him, 'then the whole rest of the Bible falls.'"
Here I'm going to agree with him - and we can't believe in Genesis, as it is shown to be historically and scientifically false. Draw your own conclusions...
And Science Notes notes that John Dennehy at the Evilutionary Biologist has a promising new blog reviewing classic papers. I particularly liked the review of G. Evelyn Hutchinson's "Homage to Santa Rosalia."
Stumble It!
Comments
The Ham family is not alone in declaring that upon the literal truth of Genesis depend all of Biblical revalation and salvation. In his foreword to a 1998 special issue of the Chalcedon Report devoted to evolution (strange phrase, that), the late R.J. Rushdoony (the Christian Reconstructionist) said:
All attempts to undermine strict six-day creationism have a deadly effect. First, they require a different view of the Bible. Orthodoxy has long held that the plain and obvious meaning of the text must prevail, not those meanings known only to scholars and apparent to none else. ... The life of the church is at stake.
Additional articles in that issue (September 1998, no longer online) echoed the message and spewed the same old anti-evolution, anti-science nonsense we have come to expect from such sources.
Posted by: mark | April 15, 2007 9:13 AM
It's great that Martin Redfern (BBC) can write the article with muted disbelief -- "Can you believe these Creationists believe this crap?" In the US, similar journalists (e.g., CNN's Anderson Cooper) would feel the need to treat each claim with equal credulity.
Posted by: Ex-drone | April 15, 2007 10:55 AM
As this would be off-topic anywhere, here seems as good a place to suggest that your banner should read "One man's struggle against banner impermanence".
Bob
Posted by: Bob O'H | April 17, 2007 2:33 AM
Like it? I'm experimenting.
Posted by: John Wilkins | April 17, 2007 2:43 AM
Well, I prefer it to the last one (not that it was bad, it just didn't fit my image of the blog). Mind you, I'm not sure about the implication that there is a connection between this blog and the real world.
Evolving Thoughts: One man's struggle against commenter impertinence.
Bob
Posted by: Bob O'H | April 17, 2007 12:06 PM
It's a pic I took myself, of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, which is where the type locale for the Ediacaran period is. In case you don't know, the Ediacaran is the pre-Cambrian period in which large flora and fauna exist.
And my basic struggle is against incontinence, but I'm sure you didn't need to know that.
Posted by: John Wilkins | April 17, 2007 9:09 PM