When science and faith clash - losing and finding faith

I have a confession to make. Even when I was a dogmatic YEC, a small part of me sensed that there was more to evolution than the creationist parody of evolutionary biology that my creationist books routinely dismissed. In retrospect, when I had my first crisis of faith in 1985, a large part of that sudden collapse of belief was due to long-suppressed doubts finally breaking free. When that happens, the positive feedback loop of doubt eroding faith creating more doubt can very quickly destroy faith. Ironically, this collapse often is more dramatic among the young believer from devout, conservative faith communities who are highly invested in their faith tradition and have spend an inordinate amount of time in apologetic activities. The ones who seems the strongest often fail the most dramatically.

Nephilim and dinosaurs and humans, oh my! Answers in Genesis embarrasses Christianity yet again

The Answers in Genesis Ark Encounter theme park has already attracted justifiable criticism for its pseudoscience and blurring of church-state boundaries. Now, Ham has published a series of pictures of a new diorama to be added to the Ark Encounter park which depict giant nephilim, humans, and dinosaurs fighting in an arena. Seriously.

A wasp that parasitises other wasps - a ghoulish argument against special creationism

Darwin's statement that he could not see how a loving God could have created  wasps whose larva "grew with the express intention of...feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars" remains to this day a considerable problem for special creationists who appeal to beauty and elegance in nature as proof of creation. Desperate attempts by special creationists to explain away the problem by declaring that they were designed by God to control insects ignore both the fact that less ghastly methods of insect control (swift predation such as seen by mantises) already exist, and that at least 40,000 species of parasitoid wasp have been described. The creation of one species that plies its trade by laying its eggs within the body of another so that its young can devour the host alive poses serious moral issues. For this to be repeated tens of thousands of times multiplies this dilemma even more so.

The problem for special creationists becomes even more profound when we consider the crypt-keeper wasp, Euderus set. This parasitoid wasp lays its eggs inside oak tree stems inside which another parasitic wasp, the crypt gall wasp is maturing. The crypt keeper wasp is not able to gnaw its way out of the oak tree, so it relies on the crypt gall wasp to do this. The way in which it does this is particularly gruesome.

New Atheism and the myth of the "Medieval Gap"

Even though the "conflict hypothesis" model of the relationship between science and Christianity has been discredited by historians of science, some anti-theists still assert that Christianity has been implacably opposed to science, going as far as to argue that during the approximately 1000 years between the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire and the start of the Renaissance, scientific knowledge was lost, plunging Europe into a 'Dark Ages'. This 'Medieval Gap', to use the term employed by Carl Sagan in the companion book to his justly celebrated Cosmos television series, as anyone familiar with James Hannan's excellent God's Philosophers would realise exists only in the minds of anti-theists. Far from retarding or suppressing science, Christianity preserved and extended scientific knowledge.

"Your Inner Fish" - the Documentary Series

Palaeontologist Neil Shubin will be familiar to many people for his co-discovery of Tiktaalik roseae, the "fishapod" which remains one of the icons of tetrapod evolution. Shubin is also well-known for his popular science book Your Inner Fish which is an accessible overview of the long trail of human evolution, showing why our anatomy, physiology, and genetics makes sense only in the light of evolution.

For those interested, you can view the three-part PBS series based on the book below.

New Atheism and the Religion / Science War that Never Was

The belief that the relationship between science and religion has been one of unremitting war, with religion steadily retreating in the face of science triumphant, is a deeply mistaken reading of the history of science, but one that has been harnessed for anti-apologetic benefit. However, as historian of science Stephen Snobelen points out in his ongoing BioLogos series Science, Religion, and the New Atheism, this has not stopped the New Atheists from using it, and in the process demonstrating considerable naivety in the process:

In a video-taped discussion with Dawkins in 2012, the physicist Lawrence Krauss made the following (rehearsed) comment: “Maybe I’m not qualified to talk about nothing because philosophers and theologians are experts at nothing.” Clever, but hardly fair. With this witticism he renders irrelevant at least two and a half millennia of sophisticated philosophical and theological discussion of many of the questions he attempts to address in his book. Krauss seems to be suffering from a form of historical myopia, for several of the key concepts he discusses in his book—a universe from nothing, laws of nature, and the multiverse—were either introduced or embraced by religious thinkers centuries before his birth. (I do not mean that all religious thinkers embraced multiverse. Then, as now, some religious thinkers favour and some do not favour the idea.) The very title of Krauss’s book was first formulated by the early modern German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and resonated with theological meaning. Krauss’ statement is similar to Dawkins’ claim that theology is about nothing and that it is a non-subject (although in an apparent contradiction he has also qualified this claim by acknowledging that the scientific study of religion does exist). Sadly, an examination of A Universe From Nothing and The God Delusion reveal that both Krauss and Dawkins would have benefited from training in philosophy and the philosophy of science. The epistemology (including scientific epistemology) in these works is often either naïve or non-existent.

You can find the articles here. As the series progresses, they will be updated.

1. Science, Religion and the New Atheism: Introduction
2. New Atheism and the "Conflict" Between Science and Religion
3. New Atheists, the God of the Gaps, and What's Wrong with the "Conflict Thesis"
4. Carl Sagan and the Myth of the Medieval Gap
5. The Medieval Gap and New Atheists Today

Ken Ham the Heretic: A recent Twitter outburst by the AiG head shows their sectarian, heterodox worlview

2017 opened with AiG leader Ken Ham railing against 'secular media' in a Twitter storm, Five tweets within an hour would certainly indicate Donald Trump level rage. What blasphemy would trigger such an outburst? Claims that archaeology has proven the Bible false? Assertions that Jesus never existed? Something even worse, it seems.

The Washington Post, in commenting on a soon to be released film that refers to Ham stated that his organisation believed that all the dinosaurs died out during the flood. Ham was infuriated by this outrageous slander  because AiG in fact believe that most of the dinosaurs were wiped out, except for those taken aboard the Ark, which eventually went extinct shortly after the flood due to a post-flood ice age. If you are struggling to see why this minor error is worthy of such a tirade of righteous indignation, then obviously you do not understand the gospel according to AiG.