On April 22, a “March for Science” will take place in Washington, D.C. and hundreds of other cities around the world. March organizers say they believe that “science works best when scientists come from diverse perspectives.” They also claim that the “scientific community is best served by including voices and contributions from people of all identities and backgrounds.” Tell that Read More ›
Thursday marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of filmmaker and theme-park creator extraordinaire Walt Disney. Despite Disney’s status as a beloved icon of popular culture, he remains woefully under-appreciated as a filmmaker — especially for his live-action productions, which are often dismissed as trite or inconsequential. As I explain in my book Walt Disney and Live Action, that assessment Read More ›
December 15 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Walt Disney, arguably Hollywood’s most influential conservative filmmaker. Disney usually receives apolitical veneration for his animated films and his creation of Disneyland, but as I explain in my book “Walt Disney and Live Action,” Disney’s live-action films and television shows consistently championed limited government, self-reliance, the American Founding, and Judeo-Christian Read More ›
Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a racist and a proponent of eugenics, the effort to breed a superior human race in the name of Darwinian biology. Imagine if Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and Speaker of the House John Boehner both accepted an award named for slave-owner and President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis. Imagine further that Jeb Bush Read More ›
Today is the birthday of Charles Darwin, and enthusiasts around the globe will be marking the occasion with special dinners, lectures, birthday parties and more. Darwin boosters often insist they are inspired simply by a disinterested commitment to science, while their critics are motivated primarily by religion. But Darwin Day festivities make it painfully obvious that many promoters of Darwinian theory Read More ›
Theistic evolutionist Stephen Barr is a serious and thoughtful man, and on the First Things blog, he has raised some serious and thoughtful objections to an essay I wrote for The Washington Post as well as to reflections on that essay by Joe Carter (also at the First Things blog). Unfortunately, I think Barr’s criticisms confuse matters more than they clarify them. Nevertheless, I’m grateful that he has aired his objections, because some of his misunderstandings are shared by other conservative intellectuals, and they deserve a response.
Barr first claims that Joe Carter and I “are trapped in a false dilemma” because we wrongly think that random processes cannot be directed by God. Barr points out that even random events, properly defined, are part of God’s sovereign plan. Just because something is random from our point of view, doesn’t mean that it is outside of God’s providence. Barr may be surprised to learn that I agree with him. Indeed, most, if not all, of the scholars who believe that nature provides evidence of intelligent design would agree with him. The problem with Barr’s argument is not with his understanding of the proper meaning of random, but with his seeming blindness to the fact that the vast majority of evolutionary biologists do not share his view. Barr’s ultimate disagreement here is not with me or Joe Carter, but with the discipline of evolutionary biology itself.
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Six talented writers and Tolkien scholars describe the role that J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has in the literary, political, and religious traditions of Western civilization. Chapters include “The Lord of the Rings as a Defense of Western Civilization” by John G. West; “Wartime Wisdom: Ten Uncommon Insights about Evil in The Lord of the Rings” 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 ›
Today, such issues as abortion, capital punishment, sex education, racism, prayer in public schools, and family values keep religion and politics closely entwined in American public life. This encyclopedia is an A-to-Z listing of a broad range of topics related to religious issues and politics, ranging from the religious freedom sought by the Pilgrims in the 1620s to the rise Read More ›
With over sixty contributing authors, this volume brings together the best of American constitutional scholarship for a comprehensive and provocative discussion of the Constitution’s history, its principles and its current meaning. Contributing authors to the book range from historians and political scientists to Congressmen and Supreme Court Justices. Some of the better-known contributors include former Speaker of the House Tip Read More ›