Category: Science and Religion
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Jerry Coyne’s Modal Confusion
In the course of studying Plantinga's new book, Where the Conflict Really Lies, I have encountered some surprisingly hostile web materials directed against Plantinga. Some of this stuff is too scurrilous to refer to, and I won't. Coyne's rants against Plantinga are somewhat milder but still unseemly for someone in the academic world. Alvin Plantinga:…
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Plantinga Versus Dawkins: Organized Complexity
This is the third in a series on Plantinga's new book. Here is the first, and here is the second. These posts are collected under the rubric Science and Religion besides being classified under other heads. This third post will examine just one argument of Dawkins' and Plantinga's response to it, pp. 26-28. Here is Plantinga…
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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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Why Do Some Physicists Talk Nonsense about Nothing?
Sam Harris poses the following question to physicist Lawrence M. Krauss: One of the most common justifications for religious faith is the idea that the universe must have had a creator. You’ve just written a book alleging that a universe can arise from “nothing.” What do you mean by “nothing” and how fully does your…
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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…