Bruce Gordon

Dr. Bruce Gordon is a Senior Fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and Associate Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at Houston Baptist University. He is an historian and philosopher of physics who earned his Ph.D. at Northwestern University, as well as degrees in applied mathematics and analytic philosophy from the University of Calgary, piano performance from the Royal Conservatory at the University of Toronto, and systematic theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

Dr. Gordon has taught at the University of Calgary, Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, Baylor University (where he served as a research professor and director of the program in science and religion) and The King's College in New York City (where he taught science and mathematics).

Dr. Gordon's scholarly work focuses on interpretive questions at the intersection of quantum theory, cosmology, analytic metaphysics and philosophical theology, along with fine-tuning issues in physics and biology, and the socio-historical and cultural dimensions of scientific and philosophical ideas. The recipient of National Science Foundation and Templeton Foundation conference grants, he has published technical articles in philosophy of science journals and contributed to edited collections. Recent publications include an appendix on inflationary string cosmology in a book authored by Fr. Dr. Robert Spitzer of Gonzaga University and the Magis Center of Reason and Faith, three essays in a book co-edited with William Dembski titled The Nature of Nature: Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science, essays on the deleterious effects of Darwinian naturalism in Western culture in Darwinian Evolution and Classical Liberalism: Theories in Tension and on ID as a species of uniformitarian analysis that can and should replace methodological naturalism as a constraint on science (in Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith). He also served as co-editor of the volume Biological Information: New Perspectives. Some of these essays are part of ongoing project leading to a book examining the metaphysical implications of quantum physics and their integral connection to theistic metaphysics.

Archives

How Does the Intelligibility of Nature Point to Design?

_{Bruce Gordon
April 1, 2022}

Albert Einstein famously remarked that “the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility…[t]he fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”

In the Beginning: How the Summer Seminars on Intelligent Design Got Their Start

_{Bruce Gordon
February 24, 2020}

The very first Seminar, held in July 2007, had twelve enthusiastic students and gave us a solid start.

What Should We Make of Gravity-Wave Detection?

_{Bruce Gordon
February 19, 2016}

The gravity waves detected at LIGO were produced by the collision of black holes about a billion years ago.

A Matter of Considerable Gravity: On the Purported Detection of Gravitational Waves and Cosmic Inflation

_{Bruce Gordon
April 4, 2014}

Theophobic scientific materialists must come to terms with what is, for them, a worldview-defeating fact.

The Argument for Design in Cosmology

_{Bruce Gordon
September 9, 2008}

On this episode of ID the Future, CSC Research Director Bruce Gordon speaks with Casey Luskin about the evidence for cosmic fine-tuning. With this technical discussion, Dr. Gordon explains some of theoretical and mathematical problems with attempts to dodge the evidence for cosmic fine-tuning such as the “multiverse” hypothesis and string theory. Dr. Gordon explains that, in the end, these objections to cosmic design amount to thinly veiled materialist philosophy that are rife with logical contradictions and a fundamental in ability to explain why something, rather than “absolute nothing,” …

The Divine Comedy: Dawkins’ Disco Inferno

_{Bruce Gordon
April 21, 2008}

Richard Dawkins has got himself in a bit of a pickle and, in an effort to wash off the brine, now appears to be in a bit of a lather. In an op-ed this morning in the L.A. Times (see here), he is at pains to distance himself from remarks he made in the newly released movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Toward the end of the film, in an interview with Ben Stein at the British Museum, Dawkins confesses he has no idea how life originated on earth — nor does anyone, he admits — but, as Nobel laureate Francis Crick once theorized, it could well be explained by having been seeded here by an alien intelligence. Of course, he demurs with great gravity, this alien race would itself have evolved elsewhere in the universe by Darwinian means. In other words, Dawkins recognizes …

A Few Words about a Long-Winded Breach of Etiquette

_{Bruce Gordon
February 22, 2008}

After debating whether Dan Brooks’ recent post at Panda’s Thumb should be dignified with a response, I’ve been persuaded that clearing away the worst of the dross is worth some of my time. Dan Brooks, a parasitologist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, was invited by the Discovery Institute to participate in a private symposium held in Boston in early June 2007. The symposium revisited the issues raised at the 1966 Wistar Institute conference on mathematical challenges to the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution with a view toward assessing any progress that has been made in the last forty years. Brooks’ post at PT not only evinces poor etiquette in its attempt to discuss the content of a private symposium …