Category: Darwinism and Design
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Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies: Notes on Chapter One
This is the second in a series on Alvin Plantinga's latest book. The first post, on the preface, provides bibliographical details and an overview of Plantinga's project. In this post I will merely set forth what Plantinga understands by Christian belief and what he understands by evolution and where he sees real conflict between the two. Things…
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Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism: Notes on the Preface
I now have Alvin Plantinga's new book in my hands. Here are some notes on the preface. Since I agree with almost everything in the preface, the following batch of notes will be interpretive but not critical. Words and phrases enclosed in double quotation marks are Plantinga's ipsissima verba. 1. Plantinga is concerned with the…
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Original Sin in a Darwinian World
Our old friend Jeff Hodges of Gypsy Scholar e-mails: I liked the interesting argument that the consequences of belief and nonbelief in original sin are both bad and thus evidence of our fallen natures. But I do wonder what either original sin or fallenness mean in a Darwinian world . . . Jeff has posed…
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Nagel on Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion
I have in my hand a copy of Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (Oxford University Press, 1997). The last essay in The Last Word is entitled, "Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion." One hopes that Nagel does not consider it the last word on the topic given its fragmentary nature and occasional perversity. But…
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Consciousness: What Evolutionary Good Is It?
Bear in mind that the word 'consciousness' has several distinct meanings. 'Consciousness' can refer to the state of being awake, to the ability to introspect internal states, and to the phenomenon of attention. But 'consciousness' insofar as it poses a 'hard problem' for physicalists is the subjective quality of experience. These subjective qualities can be…
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Jeff Skilling’s Favorite Book
I learned just yesterday that The Selfish Gene is (or was) Enron's Jeff Skilling's favorite book, which begs raises the question: Was Skilling Misled by Dawkins?
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Public Education and Intelligent Design
A 2008 article by Thomas Nagel. Ladder Man calls it "comically bad." You decide who the joker is.
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Do You Understand Natural Selection?
A tip of the hat to John Farrell for drawing my attention to T Ryan Gregory's Understanding Natural Selection: Essential Concepts and Common Misunderstandings. A paper well worth careful study. Points out a surprising lack of understanding of natural selection among biology teachers. Supports the point of view I defend in the posts in the…
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Are Biological Functions Observer-Relative?
The following three positions need to be distinguished: There is design in nature, and a complete account of it is impossible without recourse to a cosmic designer such as God. There is intrinsic design in nature, and it is wholly explainable in naturalistic terms. There is no intrinsic design in nature: all features that exhibit…
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Ernst Mayr on Natural Selection
Another of the concepts we need to be clear about is that of natural selection. What I will do in this post is pull some quotations from Ernst Mayr, What Evolutions Is (Basic Books, 2001), and raise some questions. An important point will emerge: natural selection is not teleological!
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The Concept of Design
To move towards a resolution of some of the questions posed in the comment threads to recent posts it is necessary to back up and try to clarify some of the fundamental terms in the debate. One of them is 'design.' Our starting point must be ordinary language. As David Stove points out, "it is…