The big science-and-religion issue of the week has been Expelled, which The AV Club gave an F, writing: Perhaps what Bruce Chapman of ID advocacy group The Discovery Institute says about Darwinists applies best to Expelled: “People who don’t have an argument are reduced to throwing sand in your eyes.” If only this movie could […]
Category: Religion
There’s No Escape
There’s just no getting away from science-and-religion. Yesterday’s (snail) mail brought a flier from the Williams College Society of Alumni, giving the schedule of events for my upcoming 15th (!!) college reunion. The very first item on Thursday’s list of faculty lectures: 1 p.m. “Celebrating Evolution from a Religious Perspective” featuring Stuart Crampton ’58, Barclay […]
Science-and-Religion Links Dump
The whole framing/ “screechy monkeys” fracas led to a number of people asking for more frequent postings emphasizing a more moderate view of the great science and religion flamewars. As I said at the time, I’m a little hesitant about this, because there just isn’t that much there that crosses the posting threshold for me– […]
John Scalzi Should Be Ashamed of Himself
I’m not sure whether he’s making some kind of obscure point, or just trolling, but John Scalzi gave a recent installment of his “Big Idea” series over to the witterings of “Vox Day,” talking about his book The Irrational Atheist. Curse you, Scalzi, for getting me to even look at that. And it’s not just […]
Moderation, Not Apathy
I had planned to let the current round of screechy-monkey-bashing die, but I woke up this morning to an accusation from commenter Andrew that I don’t want to leave unanswered: As for the blog – I’m not sure you are actually moderate really, it sounds more like vaguely apathetic. Or more accurately (and without the […]
Hoisted from Comments: Moderate, or Linearly Independent?
Stealing a post-generating method from Brad DeLong, Bill Tozier posted and interesting comment that I wanted to highlight: I’ve often wondered why people place me (a moderate in a lot of polarized debates) “in the middle”. I think I’m orthogonal, not “in the middle”. I’m concerned about plenty of things; they’re just not what’s being […]
The Problem of Moderation
It’s probably a little foolish to continue this on a Saturday, but I’d like to wrap up the giant framing/ religion/ screechy monkeys mess and get back to more pleasant topics, at least for a while. Putting it off until Monday would make this more visible, but it would also drag things out, so I’m […]
The Cost of Not Framing
In the comments to yesterday’s post about framing, Damian offers a long comment that doesn’t actually contradict anything I said, but re-frames it in terms more complimentary to the Dawkins/ Myers side of things. I may deal with some of what he says over there (probably not today, though, as I have a class to […]
God and Fraternities
There was a faculty-student happy hour event last week for St. Patrick’s Day, and I spent a bunch of time drinking Irish beer, listening to Irish music (one of the English department faculty is an accomplished piper, and brought a bunch of other local musicians in to play for the party), and talking to some […]
Uncomfortable Questions: Church Wedding
Adrienne asks: Why, when you apparently are an agnostic or atheist, did you get married in a church? And are you going to baptize your baby? Raise him/her in a religious framework? Now, here’s a nice volatile question… Why did we get married in a church? Because religion is more than just superstition and mythology. […]