It seems to be open season on religious speech in the public arena. Two weeks ago, a group of religious leaders called for a “moratorium on religious rhetoric” from presidential candidates, attacking candidates who shared their personal faith on the campaign trail. A few days earlier, the FCC issued a ruling discouraging noncommercial educational TV stations from offering “programming primarily Read More ›
Many critics of intelligent design have argued that design is merely a negative argument against evolution. This could not be further from the truth. Leading design theorist William Dembski has observed that “[t]he principle characteristic of intelligent agency is directed contingency, or what we call choice.”1 By observing the sorts of choices that intelligent agents commonly make when designing systems, a positive case Read More ›
Introduction The cosmological argument for God’s existence has a long history, but perhaps the most enduring version of it has been the argument from contingency. This is the version that Frederick Copleston pressed upon Bertrand Russell in their debate about God’s existence in 1948. In 1997 (“A New Look at the Cosmological Argument, American Philosophical Quarterly 34:193-212), I noted that Read More ›
In a memorable scene from the movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s parents throw him a party to celebrate his graduation from college. The parents’ friends are all there congratulating him and offering advice. What should Hoffman do with his life? One particularly solicitous guest is eager to set him straight. He takes Hoffman aside and utters a single word — Read More ›
The Sunday mails debate during the early nineteenth century was the first national controversy to focus on the meaning of the religion clauses of the First Amendment. The debate was sparked by the practice of transporting and delivering mail on Sundays. While the subject might seem arcane today, the issues underlying the controversy reached to the very core of American Read More ›
BIOSCIENCE VIEWS Download these files to your computer. 1) Mouse over the link and right click 2) Select “save target as” 3) Choose a location to save the file to your computer All files below are in the .wav audio file format. BSV1 Dignity RAW https://www.discovery.org/f/1206 BSV2 Infanticide – RAW https://www.discovery.org/f/1207 BSV3 Scientism – RAW https://www.discovery.org/f/1208
This is the sidebar that supplements “Spring in Purgatory: Dante, Botticelli, C. S. Lewis, and a Lost Masterpiece” The Allegory of Love: a Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), p. 83. “No religion, so long as it is believed, can have that kind of beauty [the beauty of pagan gods, ‘pure aesthetic contemplation of their eternity, their remoteness, Read More ›
5 Foxglove Close. Dunkeswell, Honiton, Devon EX14 4QE. 1987 doctoral thesis at Exeter College: “Shadow into Substance: Education and Identity in the Fantasy of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien” IN DEBT TO C. S. LEWIS: a collection of 200 accounts of how C. S. Lewis has influenced readers (1999). Saturday, February 5, 2000 Dear Patricia Batstone, A Read More ›