Jay W. Richards

Senior Fellow, Assistant Research Professor, Executive Editor

Archives

One Person’s Journey to a Fasting Lifestyle: Week Three

Jay W. Richards
December 4, 2019
In week three of the plan I lay out in the forthcoming Eat, Fast, Feast, fasters limit all of their food intake to four hours a day for at least three days during the week. (The days don’t have to be consecutive.) This is called the 20/4 routine, since you don’t eat for twenty consecutive hours of the day. (This includes sleep time of course.) There’s still no attempt to eat less food during the day than you normally would. At this point, you’re just trying to get your body acclimated to going longer periods without food and using its fat-burning metabolism more effectively. This third week happened to land on Thanksgiving week, so I expected it to be even harder for our volunteer faster.

One Person’s Journey to a Fasting Lifestyle: Week Two

Jay W. Richards
November 27, 2019
In the first week of the six-week plan in my forthcoming book Eat, Fast, Feast, you eat a “ketogenic” diet to get your fat-burning metabolism up and running. This is a physical prerequisite for long-term fasting. In the second week, you begin to limit the amount of time during the day when you eat, starting with sixteen hours off, eight hours on. In other words, you eat all your meals with a single eight-hour time window. A few days ago, I checked in with my friend who volunteered to try out the plan and report his results.

One Person’s Journey to a Fasting Lifestyle: Week One

Jay W. Richards
November 21, 2019
In my forthcoming book Eat, Fast, Feast (available for pre-order now), I describe a six-week plan to help Christians make fasting a rewarding part of their lives. Most of us don’t really fast. Catholics do residual fasting — an hour before Mass, for instance. And we eat a little less on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. These are really partial abstinences. The harsh truth is that we’ve abandoned the fasting discipline that defined most of Christian history and replaced it with excuses. Some evangelicals and evangelical churches fast, but it’s not anchored in the calendar or long-standing practice. So, it tends to go in and out of fashion, rather than becoming a permanent spiritual practice. Really the only Christian communities that have retained serious fasting are the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Rite churches. They have something to teach the rest of us.

Money, Greed, and God

The Christian Case for Free Enterprise
Jay W. Richards
June 4, 2019
A prominent scholar reveals the surprising ways that capitalism is actually the best way to follow Jesus’s mandates to alleviate poverty and protect our earth. Christianity generally sees capitalism as either bad because it causes much of the world’s suffering, or good because God wants you to prosper and be rich. But there is a large, growing audience of evangelical Read More ›

Science Uprising 01: Reality

Real vs. Material
Guy
June 3, 2019
Has science proven we are all just matter? Or does reality extend beyond what we can see and touch? Be sure to visit scienceuprising.com to find more videos and explore related articles and books. This transmission of Science Uprising investigates claims by scientists and professors like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, and Daniel Dennett, who try to hijack science to Read More ›

Universal Basic Income? Fear of AI Fuels a New Argument for Socialism

If new technology led to mass permanent unemployment, history would be an endless saga of expanding joblessness.
Jay W. Richards
March 15, 2019
With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democratic candidates for president floating wilder trial balloons than a psychedelic circus, I’m surprised they have not (yet) picked up on the universal basic income (UBI). The UBI (guaranteed income for employable people who choose not to work) is far and away the favorite “solution” among those strong AI enthusiasts who expect machines to replace human work. They expect vast swaths of the country to be out of work for good. So far, the only candidate plugging UBI is entrepreneur Andrew Yang. Yang is more idea-oriented than his Democratic opponents and he has made UBI central to his presidential campaign in the key state of Iowa. His plan would offer $1,000 a month per person. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before other Democratic candidates pick up on this platform plank, on the assumption that their likely voters will imagine it as free money.

Let’s Make Lent Great Again, Together

Jay W. Richards
March 5, 2019
On Sunday, the Twitter user “⫷ † SavedGrace† ⫸” complained that since she couldn’t find Lent mentioned in the Bible, she doesn’t observe it. To which the Catholic website Rorate Caeli replied, “Cannot find ‘bible’ in the Bible either.” I piled on by noting that “Trinity” and “Incarnation” aren’t in the Bible either. It’s a silly argument. Just because something Read More ›

Jay Richards on Our Privileged Planet at Dallas Conference on Science & Faith

Jay W. Richards
January 19, 2019
According to a nationwide survey, more than two-thirds of atheists and one-third of agnostics believe that “the findings of science make the existence of God less probable,” while nearly half of self-identified theists believe “the findings of science are neutral with regard to the existence of God.” But what if there is another option? What if the discoveries of science Read More ›

Jay Richards on How Michael Gerson Muffs Evolution, and Evangelicalism

Jay Richards
April 2, 2018
On this episode of ID the Future, host Mike Keas talks with Discovery Institute senior fellow Jay Richards, editor of God and Evolution, about a recent article by evangelical Michael Gerson in The Atlantic. There Gerson suggests that evangelicals have been culturally marginalized in part due to a misguided rejection of modern evolutionary theory. But Richards argues that Gerson fundamentally misunderstands the theory. Richards and Keas also explore the temptation to cede ground on an issue like evolution in order to curry favor with the mostly secular Washington establishment.

How a Perfect Solar Eclipse Suggests Intelligent Design

Jay Richards
August 18, 2017
On this episode of ID: The Future, CSC Senior Fellow Jay Richards explains how perfect solar eclipses are the tip of an iceberg-size design argument found in a book he co-wrote, The Privileged Planet. The conditions for a habitable planet (right distance from the right size star, a big but not too big moon that is the right distance away to stabilize Earth’s tilt and circulate its oceans) are also conditions that make perfect solar eclipses from the Earth’s surface much more likely. And perfect eclipses aren’t just eerie and beautiful. They’ve helped scientists test and discover things, and are part of a larger pattern: The conditions needed for a habitable place in the cosmos correlate with the conditions well Read More ›

Jay Richards: The March for Science Misses the Roots of Science

Jay Richards
April 21, 2017
On this episode of ID the Future, CSC Director of Communications Rob Crowther interviews CSC Senior Fellow Jay Richards. Listen in as Richards rebuts the warfare thesis – the idea that religion and science are antagonists – and argues that historically, Judeo-Christian culture “was the seedbed from which science emerged.” Has science missed out by being partnered with materialism?

Jay Richards on the March for Consensus Science

Jay Richards
April 14, 2017
On this episode of ID the Future, CSC Director of Communications Rob Crowther interviews CSC Senior Fellow Jay Richards on the upcoming March for Science and the CSC’s partnership with Stream.org to provide critical analysis of the April 22 event. Listen in as Richards discusses the controversy over the politics of the march, and why arguments from consensus should set off your baloney detector.

Revisionist History in Cosmos

Jay Richards
April 23, 2014
On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin talks with Senior Fellow Jay Richards about distortions and outright falsehoods presented in the re-vamped Cosmos TV series. Dr. Richards discusses how Cosmos presents science and religion as enemies by misrepresenting the lives of Giordano Bruno, Isaac Newton, and Mozi.

The Michael Medved Show Weekly Science & Culture Update: Featuring Jay Richards on Economics and Darwinism

Jay Richards
October 4, 2013
On this episode of ID the Future, Dr. Jay Richards joins Michael Medved for a discussion about capitalism and Darwinism. President Obama says that Republicans push a “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” Is the free market an amoral system where only the fittest survive and thrive? Listen in as Dr. Richards offers insight into our current economic climate, negative impacts of Obamacare, and more.

C.S. Lewis, Reason, and Naturalism: An Interview with Dr. Jay Richards

Jay Richards
December 31, 2012
On this episode of ID the Future, host David Boze talks with Dr. Jay Richards, a contributor to The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society. Dr. Richards discusses Lewis’ argument that one cannot consistently believe in both the validity of human reason and the truth of naturalism. For more information, visit C.S. Lewis Web.

Scott Powell: Debt now funds gov’s core duties

Jay W. Richards
June 20, 2012
Scott Powell points out that the defense budget, plus general government operations--including police, prisons and courts, transportation, agriculture and basic research--are already being funded by debt-financed deficit spending."

Anne Bradley on Income Inequality

Jay W. Richards
May 25, 2012
Economist Anne Bradley at the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics has just released a new research paper dealing with both the economic and biblical/theological issues involved in income inequality.

Should Libertarians Be Conservatives?

Jay W. Richards
April 30, 2012
We can make the case for protecting unborn life and conjugal marriage on the basis of limited government and individual rights, without recourse to any narrowly religious assumptions.

Medved on Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality

Jay W. Richards
March 13, 2012
Tonight in Seattle, Discovery Institute is having the official "launch" party for the Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality. Coincidentally, David Boze's podcast interview with Michael Medved, discussing the new Center, has just gone online. Listen to it here.

Evolution and the Problem of Evil

Jay Richards
June 29, 2011
Can Darwin save God from the problem of evil? On this video episode of ID the Future, God and Evolution editor Jay Richards discusses the problem of evil and why Darwinian evolution does not resolve it, contrary to claims by some theistic evolutionists. God and Evolution was just named World Magazine‘s “Book of the Year” for 2011.