A short Francis Collins interview on the BBC

Here’s a short (7.5-minute) interview with NIH director and Templeton Prize awardee Francis Collins that was played on NPR yesterday but came from the BBC Newshour.  Collins answers questions about God, evil, coronavirus, and so on, but you may already be familiar with his theological views, which are at the preceding link. Collins’s interview starts […]

Egnor claims that the evidence for God is as strong as it is for evolution and the Big Bang

Christian neurosurgeon and intelligent-design advocate Michael Egnor insists that he and I are “debating” the appropriateness of prayer in response to the coronavirus (see my post here). But there is really no “debate”, just Egnor’s assertion (and my denial) that God is real and that prayer couldn’t hurt. He insists that I am “clueless” about […]

Egnor: We need to pray during this pandemic

Once again the creationist neurosurgeon Michael Egnor can’t resist scrutinizing my website and trying to find flaws in what I say. I suppose this is because he and his Discovery Institute colleagues, despite their confident assurances of two decades ago, have failed to make progress in getting the scientific community to accept Intelligent Design. So, […]

Science versus religion: Are they “gifts” to each other?

Reader Mark called my attention to an accommodationist essay in Aeon by Tom McLeish, described as “a professor of natural philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of York in the UK. He is the author of Faith and Wisdom in Science (2014), Let There Be Science (2016) and The Poetry and Music of Science (2019)”. McLeish, […]

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ evidence

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “being”, once again highlights the bizarre world of theology. I needn’t expand on this, for it’s certainly true that many believers mistake “conviction” (or “revelation” or “feeling”) for evidence. And the last panel gives the whole thing a kind of ontological-argument feel:

A philosopher at the NYT writes about the incoherence of most people’s theism

It’s surprising that the New York Times would publish an atheistic op-ed showing that most people’s notion of God is incoherent, but the piece below (click on the screenshot), is actually Unsophisticated Atheism in at least part of its argument. And the parts that aren’t weird are old and familiar arguments. Well, perhaps believers need […]

Dawkins’s Darwin Day lecture for Humanists UK: “Taking Courage from Darwin to Fight the Hubris of Faith”

Reader Michael called my attention to Richard Dawkins’s Darwin Day Lecture to Humanists UK (HUK). Richard is introduced by Humanists UK President and evolutionary biologist Alice Roberts, who was the moderator when I gave this lecture a few years ago. Richard’s lecture was just posted today, and as I write there are only 194 views. […]

The blind leading the bland: Nicholas Kristof interviews William Lane Craig

When I saw the headline below in the New York Times, I wondered why the deuce Nicholas Kristof wanted to talk to William Lane Craig. But who could NOT read that article after the headline, wanting to see how Craig answered? (Click on screenshot and be prepared to facepalm.) It turns out that this is […]

My anti-accommodationism article at The Conversation

A while back I posted a critique on this site of an article by Tom McLeish at The Conversation, “Religion isn’t the enemy of science: it’s been inspiring scientists for centuries.” In that critique I wrote, “I think it’s time I contributed an article to The Conversation showing why science and religion are incompatible, as that site […]

“Peanuts” and theology

I used to assidulously read “Peanuts” cartoons when I was a kid, but the religion in them—and apparently there was quite a bit—went over my head. Atlantic has an 2016 article called “The Spirituality of Snoopy,” which recounts how often the artist Charles Schulz used religious themes in his strips. “Many familiar with the Peanuts strip don’t […]