+ Science and Values

Are the BHA and BCSE Campaigns in Breach of The Equality Act 2010?

2012-01-11T18:31:00.001Z

The British Humanist Association is boasting that they have stopped Intelligent Design and Creationism from being discussed in free schools. http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/961 They claim that the'Government has changed 'Free School model funding agreement to ban creationist schools.' If so, is the Government even in breach of its obligations under the Equality Act 2010? Of course the truth is probably more subtle than the BHA claims. But you can read about their campaign here; http://www.humanism.org.uk/campaigns/religion-and-schools/countering-creationism

The Equality Act 2010 makes some interesting demands. "The act covers nine protected characteristics, which cannot be used as a reason to treat people unfairly. Every person has one or more of the protected characteristics, so the act protects everyone against unfair treatment." The protected characteristics include religion or belief.

"The Equality Act sets out the different ways in which it is unlawful to treat someone, such as direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, victimisation and failing to make a reasonable adjustment for a disabled person.

The act prohibits unfair treatment in the workplace, when providing goods, facilities and services, when exercising public functions, in the disposal and management of premises, in education and by associations (such as private clubs)."

So here is my question. Are the BHA and BCSE, who campaign against creationism being discussed even as a religious position in schools, working against the law? Do they respect religious diversity or do they wish to establish the dominance of humanism in society and silence those of religious faith ?

Word and Spirit - Smith Wigglesworth Prophecy

2012-01-02T11:24:00.003Z

I have been thinking recently about the Word and Spirit prophecy of Smith Wigglesworth. Adrian Warnock has for instance posted it on his blog. http://adrianwarnock.com/2007/07/toam-prophecy-from-smith-wigglesworth/

I think some may know a little bit about what it is to be filled with God's Spirit, but the question I want to ask here is what does it mean for the Church to be committed to God's Word? One aspect I would raise that is relevant to this blog is what a commitment to God's Word implies for our belief in God's work in creation, and the debate between creationists and evolutionists. Of course this is tied up with the interpretation of Scripture as well, but how should we understand such a commitment? I would suggest that for Wigglesworth it is related to belief in God's power in the world because of his wide experience in seeing God bring healing to many people, even raising some from the dead. So what about God's Word and divine power in the act of Creation?

On the wider question of what it might mean for Church identity, David Stroud has offered some very interesting thoughts for the New Frontiers group, but it does have wider relevance for others as well.

http://adrianwarnock.com/2007/07/toam-session-7-david-stroud-on-identity/
Andrew S

The Fall, Creation and Genesis. Can you Adam and Eve It?

2011-12-28T20:14:00.006Z

Here are some thoughts on Evolution, Creation and the Fall courtesy of Denis Alexander writing in a Guardian Comment is Free article at Christmas Evolution, Christmas and the Atonement: We are not descended from Adam and Eve – but still, Jesus was born to save us - 23rd December 2011

It is firstly to be hoped that Christians on both sides of the creation-evolution divide can learn to dialogue with each other. So this is offered in the context of respectful dialogue. Alexander speaks of the ‘Fact’ of evolution, but we may wonder what experiment he might point sceptics to in order to justify such a categorical statement. Many people remain sceptical of evolution for lack of hard evidence, and no amount of mere rhetoric will persuade otherwise. Of course there is evidence for micro-evolution, but Alexander's claim for evolution extends beyond what can be demostrated through direct observation i.e. it is not repeatable science. Furthermore, scientists usually express reticence even with experimental support, so why use such strong language when the 'evidence' seems to be in the form of a narrative?

Alexander blames the doctrine of the Fall on Augustine, and instead claims that Origen’s view of Adam and Eve and the Fall more closely mirrors his own. However, VJ Torley has pointed out that Origen’s view wasn’t actually that different from Augustine Philo and Origen are not your friends, Dr. Alexander: A short survey of what two Biblical allegorists taught about Adam and Eve

Writing further he comments that “Nowhere does the Bible teach that physical death originates with the sin of Adam, nor that sin is inherited from Adam...” There are though that many Reformed theologians who say that the Bible does indeed assert that; for instance Commentaries on Romans by Osborn (IVP) and Moo (Eerdsman), (i.e. Romans 5:12); Henri Blocher has written similarly in a chapter in a recent book editted by Alexander's friend Sam Berry (with Noble) Darwin, Creation and the Fall

But what I find most perplexing is this final statement ‘Evolution's gift is a complex brain that endows humanity with free will, enabling personal moral responsibilities towards our neighbour and towards God.’ Does he really believe that not only has our physical make-up evolved, but moral awareness and responsibility have evolved too? Of course he believes that God is behind evolution too, so why does he feel the need to write such a statement that appears to the uninitiated to be a challenge to Christian theology in terms of who we are as human beings made in God's image; that is with volitional, emotional, rational and relational capacities? Surely the glory belongs to Jesus Christ at Christmas as the Creator of all things (John 1:3 'Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made').
Andrew S

Understanding Faith in Society

2011-06-25T13:37:00.002+01:00

There are a couple of articles in the Guardian 'Comment is Free' blog. Nick Spencer usefully responds to Trevor Phillips who seemed to misunderstand the nature of faith and action in society. Phillips was accused of suggesting that some Christian groups, because they seek to uphold their faith, are less willing to integrate into modern society than some muslims. Spencer believes Phillips fails to grasp the importance of faith to people. Source: Nick Spencer - Trevor Phillips is muddled on faith and equality - The EHRC cannot have it both ways – faith communities are either right or wrong to adhere to their beliefs

Secondly, Salman Hameed writes an item about creation belief and evolution and the methodology of science. Hameed writes that "Some – maybe most – of the blame [for lack of understanding of science] can be attributed to an education system that does not train people to think critically. Similarly, most people do not understand methodologies of science and the way theories get accepted. For some, scientific evidence has no role in the way they envision the world." The problem with this statement is that science is not just about criticism, but about a balance between criticism and intuition as Michael Polanyi pointed out. Truth in science is therefore determined by a careful balance between the two exercised through the moral conscience. Source: Salman Hameed - When evidence is powerless - Beliefs that give meaning to life can't be dislodged by factual evidence

Peter Singer, Ethics and Belief in God.

2011-05-28T08:50:00.002+01:00

There is an interesting item about ethics and the environment in the Guardian 'Comment is Free' by Mark Vernon - Without belief in moral truths, how can we care about climate change? - Peter Singer admits his brand of utilitarianism struggles with the challenge of climate change in a way Christian ethics does not.

Singer comments that he 'regrets' he doesn't believe in God and that he seems to accept that only faith in a creator can properly ground objective morality.

Tim Mulgan, professor of moral and political philosophy at the University of St Andrews also offered some interesting comments. According to Vernon, he explained "why ethical objectivism may be vital to making a robust ethical case against environmental degradation." This is because "Only a doctrine of creation can affirm that we are fundamentally linked to the natural order manifest on Earth. The fantasy of fleeing this planet, or disappearing into virtual reality, won't actually do. Our island home matters because the lives of human beings go well only when her natural systems go well too. Or, as the psalmist intuited many centuries ago: "Truth shall spring out of the earth."

Aborting girls?

2011-05-23T19:10:00.000+01:00

The BBC is reporting a story about abortion in India, and the preference for having male children over female ones. With the possibility now of determining a child's sex before birth there is a relative increase in the number of abortions (foeticide) and even infanticide of baby girls as opposed to male abortions. This is leading to a greater number of male children under 6 years old. The main reason is that male children attract a large dowry for the family upon marriage. A similar situation has arisen in China where there is a preference for male children.

See India's unwanted girls

It will be interesting to see how this impacts upon the whole question of the ethics of abortion generally.

BCSE, Education Policy and Respecting Religious Diversity

2011-05-03T16:27:00.000+01:00

The BCSE, with support from Ekklesia, are campaigning to restrict some religious groups from presenting their views freely, and therefore in a way that respects their beliefs. They wish to stop creationists from claiming any scientific validity for their position. In other words, creationists may only speak in schools if they maintain that their views are not real or even false. I have blogged about this here

So what will be lost by this? Children will be prevented from asking questions in a way that allows them to think for themselves, but instead will be encouraged to think of education in terms of learning 'official facts.' This will not prepare children for higher education where ideas are debated with more freedom. Science itself will potentially be damaged by this, because science advances through dialogue and is not based on authority. Children from religious backgrounds will feel that their beliefs are not respected in the classroom and will turn off of learning altogether.

One may hope that government ministers have greater wisdom when considering policy in light of campaigns from various pressure groups.

Exeter School Under Fire by Secularists for Allowing Creationist into School RE Lesson.

2011-04-18T17:59:00.002+01:00

A Church of England school in Exeter, St Peter's, has come under fire for allowing Philip Bell of Creation Ministries International to speak in an RE setting Anger after controversial creationist is invited to talk at school

The question I wish to raise is whether there is room for respectful dialogue on the question of origins in schools. The British Centre for Science Education wishes to remove all such discussion from the classroom, apparently even from RE lessons. But there are still many religious believers including Christians, Jews, Muslim and others who do not accept Darwinism believing it to be an ideology that goes against the core values of their faith. I believe the education system needs to come to terms with such plurality and accommodate dissent and respectful dialogue in this area. There needs to be greater respect for other's beliefs. The irony is that secularists are showing a degree of intolerance that they accuse fundamentalist religious believers of displaying.

The BCSE claim that "It believes in the tools for everyone to think for themselves - Science, Education and Reason - and the outcome – Democracy, Pluralism and Liberty." and that its "...campaign is dedicated to keeping all forms of creationism including Intelligent Design out of the science classroom in the UK." but then asserts that "The BCSE is open to all, irrespective of religious or political affiliations, who wish to oppose the tide of creationism in the United Kingdom." In other words, it is opposed to all forms of creationism in the UK, not just in the science classroom, and it is not committed to respecting all religious beliefs, only those that are similar to its own position. One wonders how this ties in with their desire to uphold "Democracy, Pluralism and Liberty?" I would suggest their very basis for existence is muddled and confused.

The Christian message advanced in the first century AD through dialogue, not through human compulsion, and there must continue to be room for dialogue in this area. Christianity has never had anything to fear from such dialogue with people of other faiths and none.

Andrew S

Is Nuclear Power Safe?

2011-04-13T15:13:00.002+01:00

A fierce debate has started over on the Guardian blogs concerning the safety of nuclear power. Helen Caldicott responds to George Monbiot's claim that nuclear power is safe.

Caldicott writes that nuclear apologists, such as George Monbiot, have misled and misinformed us over the risks of radiation, and 'at worst distort evidence of the dangers of atomic energy.' (11/4/2011).

Monbiot has asserted that the Fukushima emergency enabled him to 'stop worrying' and come to 'love nuclear power'. He believes that the fallout from the Japanese disaster needs to be set in the context of other harmful alternatives to energy production, and that atomic power must remain 'part of the mix.'

One of the main problems with nuclear power is that when it goes wrong it does so much harm to organic life and disrupts agriculture and fisheries over decades, or longer. Carbon based fuels, even though they may cause serious problems for human communities around the world, at least run with the grain of creation in that carbon dioxide is a natural part of the eco-system. I don't think nuclear is really the sustainable solution to a low carbon energy mix.

Have we forgotten Chernobyl ?

2011-04-01T20:52:00.000+01:00

Have we forgotten the long-tern health problems of Chernobyl? John Vidal is critical of environmentalists who have downplayed the seriousness of the Fukushima incident.

Nuclear's green cheerleaders forget Chernobyl at our peril - Pundits who downplay the risks of radiation are ignoring the casualities of the past. Fukushima's meltdown may be worse

British Humanist Association is abusing the census

2011-03-21T13:12:00.005Z

I believe the British Humanist Association is abusing the integrity and therefore the quality of the census by campaigning for people to say they are not religious when given a choice of options. Clearly they don't have much confidence in people to answer as they see fit, but believe they need encouragement to fill it in 'accurately', but also in a way that suits the BHA. (See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12799801). As a result the BHA risks undermining the quality of an important survey.

I would go further and argue that such campaigning around the census should be illegal because it puts pressure on people to answer in a way that is not necessarily in accord with their deep seated beliefs.

Andrew Sibley

William Paley and Theological Utilitarianism

2011-03-20T14:34:00.004Z

I have discovered that William Paley was a Theological Utilitarian. That is; that ethics begin with a belief that God wishes people to be happy. But for happiness to be ultimately possible we must accord our lives with the will of God. In other words it embraces deontology (that is an ethical systems involving rights and duties), but one that has a benefit in terms of personal and social happiness. We are often encouraged to think of religion as only embracing rules and regulations, but a true Christian approach to ethics involves happiness for people and benefit for society. This is also the message of John 15:9-17 where deontological ethics are bound up with love, peace and joy.

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other."

I disucssed some this in my book, Restoring the Ethics of Creation pp.126-129
Andrew Sibley

Response to Simon Barrow of Ekklesia

2011-03-14T09:53:00.007Z

Simon Barrow has responded to my article on legal matters and human rights Discriminating Christian Confusion. There is a sense I think in Barrow’s writing that suggests he has failed to understand the nuances of a Christian understanding of grace. I would like here then to offer my approach to these matters and to offer some further thoughts that might help to unlock his mind.

My own background is non-conformist and charismatic. I am socially conservative it is true, but some would say more left wing than right wing. I believe in social morality as much as personal morality. I share for instance a frustration at what I see as right wing fundamentalism in the church because it fails to display the love of God and tends to be very fearful of the world, which can lead to wrong thinking and action. One example is over such strong support for the State of Israel that it leads to lack of concern for Palestinians, and I have written a book Zion’s New Name to try and redress the balance. I share Jim Wallis' sentiment about some Christian approaches to politics that the ’right gets it wrong and the left doesn’t get it’. For instance, one irony is that although many evangelical Christians are opposed to Darwinism in America, they are willing to uphold a sort of belief in economic social Darwinism through support of weak social legislation. It is also too easy to think that being strong on law and order is a Christian ideal, but fail to see that mercy has triumphed over judgement (James 2:13). I don’t really support the idea of Christians going to court to force legal judgments because it is a hiding to nothing and it risks legal judgments that may restrict freedoms further, as has happened with the various American creationist court cases.

However, I can’t help thinking that Ekklesia are throwing the baby out with the bath-water in their work. They say they want a more humble Christian church that has a servant heart, and I share that ideal. A bottom up Christian faith that serves and loves instead of overbears. But I can’t help thinking that there is a tendency towards an undermining, evolutionary-socialist mindset in the work of Ekklesia, especially when they side with the British Humanist Association that perhaps reflects an approach similar to Daniel Dennett's observation that evolution as really a ‘universal acid.’ This approach risks undermining the good in the church as well as questioning the abuses of power. Yes by all means question abuses of power, but to undermine all forms of Christian authority and power will render the church power-less to work for social justice. I am not an Anglican, but do not for instance wish to remove Anglican Bishops from the House of Lords on the basis that Christians shouldn’t have any elevated positions in society. We need to regain an understanding of meekness; to be guardians of power, but to exercise it lovingly and responsibly – as we are told the meek shall inherit the earth.

Secondly, the argument that the New Testament interpretation of the Law of Moses provides a sound basis for law is not to claim ascendancy of my beliefs over others for the sake of pride or prejudice. It is instead I believe Christian values that most respect the lives and freedoms of others who are not Christian, and historically has informed British laws and values, at least in part. People of other faiths have rights in the West; but such rights are often not reciprocated where those other faith systems are dominant. Secular humanism offers subjectivity based on human sentiment, and this risks leading to relativism in ethics, a relativism that can lead to the rise of nationalism or fascism where the state or race is idolised. Secular humanism risks creating a vacuum that may be filled by those who have a much more legalistic or dictatorial mindset, whether it is militant Islamists seeking to impose Sharia Law, or secularists who idolise the law. It is noteworthy that the last Labour government, that didn’t ‘do God,’ imposed an increasing number of laws to control social behaviour and allowed economic inequality to increase. If you otherthrow the Christian basis for law and values you will find that you are on a road to greater legalism and less equality.

Barrow though questions whether I am committed to equality and justice. Yes I am, but on a rational basis that seeks to understand the real nature of humanity. Today what we call human rights is really based on utilitarian philosophy and is different from historical forms of human rights. It is an Epicurean and Hume’an based approach to rights and not classical deontological human rights. The ideals of utilitarianism can tend towards hedonism and selfishness where we want our rights to ‘do-as-we-like’ protected without considering our duties towards others. We need to be able to discuss this honestly. It is not deontological, i.e. based upon the logic of duties as well as rights, an approach Aquinas saw in terms of teleology and natural law. Today pressure groups of various forms often campaign for their rights without consideration of duties and have no comprehension of duties towards God and others. Of course a society can emphasise duties to the exclusion of rights, but we have swung a long way the other way in our post-modern society where pressure groups campaign for rights that go beyond an understanding of humanity's instrinsic nature. Post modernism is the unwanted child of modernism. Secular humanists don’t really want it, but it is their offspring nonetheless because secular humanism leads to a rootless, purposeless existence for many, and this risks a loss of respect for others.

If human beings are created in the image of God, as I believe, then that includes the rational, the relational, the emotional and the volitional (as Selwyn Hughes noted). I fear though that some of the modern thinking about rights seeks to deny the volitional, especially in sexual ethics. Modern society has taken something that is really I believe a lifestyle choice, and then seeks to deny the capacity for choice by asserting that it is an intrinsic part of who people are. Then modern society seeks to protect it through human rights legislation and use it as a wedge to discriminate against those who hold to a more traditional Christian understanding of rights and values. Of course it may be claimed that Christian belief is also a choice, but is it appropriate to elevate one set of choices above another in human rights legislation? I don't think it is. This denial of the volitional capacity I believe leads to a loss of freedom for many individuals because there is loss of clarity towards understanding the true human nature and a disjunction between physical reality and emotions and mental thoughts. It is this confusion and loss of freedom for an individual that needs to be questioned in a loving Christian society. It is the truth about who we really are as human beings in an intrinsic sense that will enable people to recover an understanding of the volitional capacity and allow freedom to be regained. This is not at all an unloving approach; many of those Christians taken to court for their beliefs in this area have demonstrated a life time of service towards others irrespective of lifestyle choices. So there is nothing unloving in seeking to recapture a deontological approach to human rights where we develop a true understanding of humanity including the volitional capacity, even in sexual ethics. However, such understanding also needs to be held within a doctrine of grace where Christ comes and indwells the new believer, and then heals the eyes of the heart of the person so that they are able to see their true Christ-like humanity more clearly.

Socially conservative Christianity offers a vision for society as the City of God, based upon love, equality and justice, where power is exercised in humility, and on the basis of understanding the intrinsic nature of human beings in terms of belief that we are created in God’s image; that is volitionally, relationally, emotionally and rationally created. At the same time a Christian vision for society is one that gives freedom and liberty in areas where activities do no harm to others, and I am opposed to the type of Dominionist thinking that seeks exclusivity and control in these matters. A socially conservative Christian vision upholds the family, not as perfect units with 2.4 children, but as the best foundation for society even in brokenness, remembering also that Christ established a bigger family that is the Church community. Alternatives for society, for instance Plato’s city republic of Polis, are much more class-based, where a few Philosophers-Kings rule over the masses. Family ties are broken and people reduced to mere economic units, kept in place by a higher-class military or Polis force. Sadly, aspects of the politics of Plato often have a superficial appeal from both the left and right and have influenced Marxism, socialism and economic social Darwinism and even some forms of Christian fundamentalism that strongly support unregulated capitalism or over-emphasise law and order and control in a legalistic sense. But which vision does Ekklesia share for society, one based upon the rigid, legalistic class-based worldly city of Polis, or freedom, equality, grace and love that comes through Jesus Christ in the Civitas Dei?
Andrew Sibley

Barbara Forrest - Attacking the Wrong Guy for the Wrong Reasons

2011-03-09T18:15:00.000Z

Well known Darwin defender Barbara Forrest has got into trouble for attacking the wrong guy for the wrong reasons. She wrote an article in Synthase Journal against Francis Beckwith, but left out a lot of useful information, such as the fact that Beckwith is himself a critic of intelligent design. Read about it here, here, and here.

There is a bigger issue here about trust in the science and religion debate. Is the debate between those for and against evolution so heated now that anything goes, or do some 'see red' to the point where they can't think clearly?

More Double Standards from Ekklesia?

2011-03-05T13:25:00.001Z

Ekklesia seem to prefer minority groups if they are of the right sort; that is if they appeal to their liberal-socialist mindset. But for other minorities they are dismissive of people's concerns. For instance Simon Barrow writes that claims of discrimination against Christians in Britain is misleading Misleading claims about discrimination against Christians

He writes further "The argument of the socially conservative Christians who are pursuing these cases to seek to demonstrate 'discrimination' or 'persecution' against Christians in the UK appears to rest on two false premises. The first is that theirs is the only Christian view and should be backed up by law, irrespective of the dignity and rights of others." But I would respond by asking whether traditional Christian views are of such a wicked character that they should not be respected by the law? Should only one view prevail? And if not on what basis except that it does not seem to agree with the present day liberal agenda? When laws are supported only by the majority or popular mandate then we are on the slope to tyranny. The interpretation that Jesus placed upon the Law of Moses, and as outlined by St Paul, have historically provided a firm and loving foundation on which to build a solid legal code. This solid basis is now being lost thanks to the liberal agenda, and it is only replaced by popularism.

Barrow's second point is that "...discriminatory actions justified on religious grounds should provide immunity from fulfilling legal requirements over equality and justice towards others in the public sphere. That cannot be right." What does he mean by equality and justice? We are living in an age where we have invented rights that go beyond a true understanding of the human condition, mankind created in the image of God with both the capacity for suffering, pain and emotions, but also with the capacity for free will - the capacity to make choices. Today people are encouraged to think of their transitory emotions and feelings as being an intrinsic part of who they are, fixed for all time. This takes away from people's ability to see themselves in that volitional capacity. i.e. it is a message that really enslaves people because it seeks to deny freedom to make choices over and above our feelings. We need to move away from seeing people as either gay or straight and to see all instead as volitional beings created in the Imago Dei.

So this liberal-socialist message that Ekklesia promotes takes away from a true understanding of the human condition. It also places a belief in human social progress against a belief in divine grace; a grace that can transform people and bring them into a spiritual place of new birth in Jesus Christ. We reject the claim that those who hold to traditional Christian beliefs are unloving and instead believe in the transforming love of God in Christ that seeks to reach out to all.
Andrew Sibley

Richard Dawkins - why he is a Protestant Atheist

2011-02-08T17:03:00.001Z

Thomas Jackson observes that Richard Dawkins's view of science is really one born out of Protestant principles. Richard Dawkins, the Protestant atheistDawkins does not recognise that experimental science is not value-free but deeply enmeshed with a Protestant myth

This article is worth reading, although it raises further questions about how we understand God's interaction with the world.

Nick Spencer on Christianity, Simplicity and Learning

2011-01-31T22:34:00.002Z

Nick Spencer writes an interesting piece in the Guardian Comment is Free section. "Christianity: a faith for the simple" . He believes that "Christianity's founding ideals are anti-elitist" and asks whether we "should...be surprised if its followers are less educated than average?"

There are some interesting points in this piece. But I would raise a couple of points.

Firstly, the question of whether Christians suffer discrimination in educational establishments because of their beliefs is an important one. Those who do not hold to the beliefs of the Enlightenment often find their faith marginalised; perhaps it is just subtle, for instance by receiving lower marks for work than someone who holds to the prevailing orthodoxy of secular humanism. But sometimes it is overt.

Secondly, Christians should not reject or despise good education. Many of the early Christian missionaries and saints founded schools of learning and we are instructed in Scripture to study and work hard. What is I think important is to have a humble approach to learning.

Geoffrey Lean asks - do we need GM?

2011-01-26T22:49:00.002Z

Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph asks whether we need GM crops. Do we need GM to feed the world? It's not as simple as it seems

He raises the question of whether we need to utilise GM technology in order to feed the world and references studies that suggest that GM may actually damage crop yields.

He writes that the "world’s biggest ever agricultural study – the work of 400 scientists and 60 governments, headed by Dr Bob Watson, now Chief Scientist at Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture – concluded that GM was not the simple answer to poverty. In truth, it could even do more harm than good." Lean suggests there are several problems with the belief that GM crops will be a solution to the growing pressure to increase crop yields in order to feed the worlds growing population.

1. GM takes such a long time to develop that advances with non GM crops through selective breeding programmes are often found to be more productive.

2. GM is focused upon making profit for companies and such companies are not very interested in providing food for the world's poorest farmers who cannot afford the technology. Lean writes that there is a tendency for GM to enhance the power of those wealthy enough to afford the technology, and even if it is successful it may only force the poor farming communities off the land. Poverty then is increased even if yields are increased overall and the poor may not be able to afford to buy food they once produced for themselves more cheaply.

3. GM may actually decrease the yield because the crops are not selected for yield, but for resistance to certain diseases. This may weaken the crops overall. GM crops may also lead to 'superweeds' in the struggle for life.

Law and Religion - Jonathan Chaplin offers his insights

2011-01-23T14:33:00.009Z

Jonathan Chaplin offers his insights into the recent legal case against the Bulls and legal opinion established by the Lord Justice Laws Law can be influenced by religion - We need a lot more clarity on the subtle relationship between law and religion

Chaplin recognises two problems with Laws' opinion "One is that the state can only justify a law on the grounds that it can be seen rationally and objectively to advance the general good (I paraphrase)." Chaplin believes rightly that this is subjective and therefore not a proper foundation, and that "Laws' other claim is that religious belief is, for all except the holder, "incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence", and that the truth of it "lies only in the heart of the believer"."

Quite clearly many religious believers hold their faith publicly and not only in their hearts, and therefore seek to work it out in the public square exercised with a deep seated conscience. But Laws opinion will lead to the privatisation of faith, where Christians will be barred from certain occupations because of their conscience. The Bulls B&B is closed and the news reports suggest will be sold. So Christians now face discrimination in the work place because of their faith with no legal right to conscientiously uphold their faith. The justification for legal rights within a secular system is one based on democratic legitimacy, but as we know the last government held onto power with less than 40% of the vote and exercised an antipathy or indifference towards the Christian conscience. There is confusion today over the difference between traditionally understood inherent rights and Epicurean pleasure seeking that is justified on the basis of a claimed genetic disposition. Today we have Hume'an Rights not necessarily Human Rights.

It is also evident that there is less legal scrutiny of Islamic conscience in these matters. Lady Warsi claims that there is anti-Muslim discrimination in Britain, and perhaps there is to some extent, but discrimination against Christians is more open in law. Has any Muslim hotelier been brought to book for these same matters for instance? What is needed is a way of balancing the freedom of the individual with the rights of traditional faith communities to practice their faith without the fear of discrimination and persecution at the hands of an increasingly secular state legal apparatus.

Bullying and Intimidation at the hands of other Christians?

2011-01-20T09:04:00.011Z

I want to raise a serious issue here, and it is this; why do some Christians who in many ways seem tolerant and respectful to others think it acceptable to bully and intimidate Christians who are creationists ?

Stephen Tomkins of ShipofFools website (and deputy editor of Third Way magazine) writes that 'Civility Works - mostly'. Although he calls for civil discourse he argues that "we also at other times need to give vent to anger at ugly and harmful ideas. At times we need to bolster and unify the opposition of right-thinking people to them. At times we need every rhetorical trick up our mucky sleeves to convince waverers that horrid and stupid ideas are horrid and stupid." He is here referring to creationists because he first writes that he thinks creationism is "a bottomless pit of deliberate stupidity."

But why is it acceptable to use 'rhetorical tricks' to 'bolster and unify right thinking people' and so silence those who hold to ideas that are "horrid and stupid" ? If people are right thinking won't they accept an idea on the basis of reason alone? There are of course some beliefs that will look odd to outsiders, such as the Hindu belief in reincarnation, but our response should be one of respectful dialogue.

There are other occasions I have found when admission that I am a creationist attracts accusations of being stupid and a deliberate liar. But what does this really reveal? That perhaps some Christians are cowardly and unable to stand out from the crowd in support of ideas that are not mainstream. Perhaps it is thought that being cool, or a joker, or fitting with the 'in crowd' will somehow lead people to Christ?

In fact if I wasn't a creationist I think I would become one just to expose the weakness of character that such attacks reveal. Such comments I believe reflect the attitude of the playground bully and need to be challenged. Surely we can extend respect to those who hold ideas that may differ from our own.

Andrew Sibley

Are Christians being persecuted for their beliefs? - Ekklesia again

2011-01-18T18:00:00.003Z

We have two 'gay' stories in the press at the moment. A Christian couple in Cornwall have been fined for refusing a gay couple a double room. Perhaps they really did break the law as it now stands, but I don't see how these cases against ordinary hard working people benefit the gay community in the long run because it looks vindictive and mean spirited. And it doesn't address persecution from those who are really antagonistic towards gay people. Christians are easy targets.

Another story concerns Mrs Lesley Pilkington, a respected long standing psychotherapist who has offered to counsel people to be healed of their sexual orientation. The British Association of Psychology and Counselling is holding a hearing after an undercover reporter recorded her comments. Ekklesia, with quotes from the Bristish Humanist Association, are getting hot-under-the-collar and reporting this as 'objectionable' and 'wrong.' See Biblically inspired gay conversion ‘therapy’ is objectionable and wrong

I do wonder about Ekklesia. The word is Greek and used for 'church' as the congregation of Israel in the LXX version of the Old Testament. The 'Think Tank' Ekklesia though spend much of their effort attacking a large section of the Christian Church. Are they a cause of division?

There is a division in the church between those who hold to a liberal, perhaps socialist or humanistic agenda and those who are more conservative and traditionalist in their outlook. But there are others who seek spiritual revival and the outworking of God's grace in the present time while remaining committed to traditional beliefs. But many liberal Christians seem to have little comprehension of the concept of 'grace' and believe instead in human centred social progress. This is where the real clash of ideas lies, between those who hold to a theo-centric faith directed by God's grace and those who seek an anthropocentric faith driven by a belief in human progress.

The gay question is complex and I don't have time to discuss it here, but there are many young people confused by popular messages in the media about their sexuality. It isn't good enough to say to such confused people that they were born a certain way because it may lead to a disjunction between confused mental thoughts and deep seated emotional needs to relate to the opposite sex. Christians should have the freedom to counsel young people in this area and offer healing to those who are confused and so bring harmony to thoughts and emotions. There may be others who are genuinely disinterested in the opposite sex, and people should have the freedom to choose their lifestyle, but we shouldn't pretend that all are mentally at ease with the confusing messages they receive via the media. I believe there is divine grace to heal through the dynamis (power) of the Holy Spirit.

Intrusive science is killing penguins

2011-01-16T14:19:00.006Z

A report in Nature suggests that the tagging of king penguins damages their survival chances. Tagging kills penguins

The write up in the Guardian comments that "The researchers found that the survival rates for king penguins with flipper bands dropped by 16% and the birds produced 39% fewer chicks. The finding raises serious questions about the ethics of banding penguins for research and casts doubt on years of data produced by tagging the birds in this way."

This research highlights some of the distress that excessive scientific intrusion into the life of animals can cause them. Perhaps there is a lesson here that much greater care needs to be taken in gathering data on animals and birds.

Evangelical Alliance and Attitudes to Evolution

2011-01-13T13:17:00.006Z

There is a new report by the Evangelical Alliance that includes attitudes to evolution amongst evangelicals. The Church of England newsletter suggests it reveals that attitudes are changing to evolution with 6 out of 10 evangelicals now believing that evolution is compatible with Christianity.
http://www.eauk.org/snapshot/upload/21st-Century-Evangelicals-Data-Report.pdf
http://eauk.org/snapshot/upload/21st-Century-Evangelicals-PDF.pdf

Although it is a large sample of more than 17,000 church members and conference goes, the question on evolution is suitably vague and in two parts. Why do experts in this field insist on asking people two questions and allow only one response? Also it is not very well qualified because it doesn't specify clearly what is meant by evolution; even young earth creationist Henry Morris accepted the possibility of fairly rapid micro-evolution for instance. So I don't think it is a particularly meaningful result.

The question; "I believe that evolution and Christianity are incompatible: you cannot believe both"

Personally speaking, if asked this I would want to answer; 'what do you mean by evolution?' If micro-evolution I would disagree with the first part; if macro-evolution I would agree with the first part. And I would want to answer that you can be a Christian and believe in macro-evolution, even though I believe macro-evolution is untrue.

Responses are as follows.
Agree a lot; Agree a little; Unsure; Disagree a little; Disagree a lot.
Evangelical Christian (festival sample)
18% - 8% - 14% - 20% - 39%
Evangelical Christian (church sample)
30% - 9% - 18% - 16% - 27%

Can BCSE only think in Black and White?

2011-01-10T16:53:00.010Z

The British Centre for Science Education fails to see shades of opinion in creationist thought. From evidence on their blog they seem unable to put together nuanced arguments and dissect people's positions carefully. Instead if you read the BCSE blog you will be left with the impression that all creationists and intelligent design supporters are anti-science and now apparently anti the environment as well. For an organisation that has set itself up as a guardian for good standards in education it is a shame they can't do better than this and look at the picture in a wider context.

For the record, at the Science and Values blog we are concerned with both science and the environment.

Tony Jordan and the Nativity

2010-12-23T16:01:00.004Z

Tony Jordan has been interviewed in the Telegraph about his belief in the truth of the Nativity, and the BBC drama he has written. Tony Jordan interview - The Nativity has changed me and thats the gospel truth

The 4 part drama is presently on the BBC i Player and worthy watching.
Season's Greetings to All

Giles Fraser finds the Christmas message embarassing

2010-12-12T14:16:00.005Z

He writes that he finds "The idea of God as a little baby...one of the most disruptive theological suggestions ever made." Giles Fraser - why the Christmas message makes me cringe

I wonder why this may be? There seems to be, I would suggest, a rather superior, perhaps rather arrogant attitude amongst some clerics and theologians that reflects a high church, heirarchical mentality where ordinary people must approach God through a priesthood. There are perhaps three things that cause distress for such thinkers.

1. That ordinary people can have evidence of a personal relationship with God when for the elite God seems so distant and far away.

2. That for all their elevated status and study, God actually shows himself to the weak, the uneducated, the poor, the downtrodden - basically the humble over the proud.

3. That God may give a certainty of faith to the uneducated, whereas the educated are full of doubt.

All of these offences appear in the Christmas story. That God chose Mary to give birth to Jesus as Son of Almighty God; that a teenage girl could hear the voice of God and believe simply, and that God would implant his presence in her. God chose to announce the birth to shepherds, and in the same way he called a fisherman to replace the temple priests as leader of Judah.

All across the world God's Holy Spirit is moving bringing people into knowledge of who Jesus is, but the educated clerics in all their learning simply cannot hear the voice of God. Isaiah 9:6-7 says this;

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever."

Thoughts on Evolution, Extinction and Environmentalism

2010-11-29T13:02:00.001Z

Thoughts on Evolution, Extinction and Environmentalism - an article by Dr Stephen Hayes over at CSM

Carbon out - Nuclear in - how times change !

2010-10-18T16:34:00.004+01:00

Has any one else spotted the irony. Eight new nuclear power stations are announced without a whisper of complaint from the Greens. They are busy blocking an oil depot. The irony is that when I was a lad there was a major campaign against nuclear, and no one cared too much about oil. How times change.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11564152

Also it is a shame to delay the Severn Barrage for another generation, but such is life.

Is this the Sickest Green Video Yet ?

2010-10-02T10:02:00.002+01:00

James Delingpole Telegraph blog - Eco-fascism jumps the shark: massive, epic fail!

Centre for Intelligent Design

2010-10-01T18:59:00.003+01:00

A new organisation has emerged in the UK - Centre for Intelligent Design . Its objectives are stated to be as follows:

•promote the professional investigation and public debate of Intelligent Design
•challenge, on the scientific evidence, the neo-Darwinian claim that the development of life is purely the result of undirected forces
•encourage consideration of the wider implications of Intelligent Design.

Michael Behe tour of the UK

2010-10-01T18:52:00.003+01:00

Michael Behe will be touring the UK this Autumn 10th-27th November. Check out the website at http://www.darwinordesign.org.uk/
Darwin or Design? - evening meeting 22nd Nov at Westminster Chapel - supported by Premier Radio

And a day Conference in Oxford Brookes University 27th Nov.

Hawking's book fails to disprove God

2010-09-06T09:20:00.003+01:00

Back on 11 August I wrote on this blog about Stephen Hawking’s forthcoming book and how it was going to challenge God as an explanation for the universe. The national secular media have now caught up. On Saturday (2 September), the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph both carried exactly the same headline: ‘Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe’, and the rest were similar, e.g. ‘Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God’ (the Guardian).

The reason for all the publicity? The launch of the physicist’s book was only a week away. In the somewhat ironically titled ‘The Grand Design’ (doesn’t a grand design suggest a Designer, Stephen?), Hawking says: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist… It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

In his most famous previous tome, ‘A Brief History of Time’ (1988), the professor had left open the possibility of a divine plan behind the universe by saying: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.”

But now that he claims to have discovered that ‘complete theory’ of how everything works, he’s changed his tune. Perhaps he’s been listening to Richard Dawkins too much. However, only a day after the fanfare in the major papers, commentators in many of the same newspapers reacted with some scepticism of Hawking’s claim to have made God irrelevant.

The Daily Telegraph’s Graham Farmelo hit the nail on the head. Pointing out that Hawking’s ‘M-theory’ basically says that “our universe followed inevitably from the laws of nature”, Farmelo retorted: “But, we might ask, where did they come from?” And even if Hawking’s M-theory stands up to experimental testing in the future, “the reasons for the mathematical order at the heart of the universe's order would remain an unsolvable mystery.”

The Arcbhishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, told the press: “Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe. It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence." "Physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing."

But the best reply came from Oxford mathematics professor, John Lennox. Writing in the Daily Mail, Lennox simply stated: “As a scientist I'm certain Stephen Hawking is wrong. You can't explain the universe without God.” While explaining that Hawking’s belief that the universe created itself is hardly new, Lennox believes it is a “simplistic approach” that has no logical foundation in science.

The mathematician points out that there is no fundamental conflict between the laws of physics and God, because “laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions. What Hawking appears to have done is to confuse law with agency. His call on us to choose between God and physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle and the laws of physics to explain the jet engine. “That is a confusion of category. The laws of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but someone had to build the thing, put in the fuel and start it up.”

Lennox describes only what any sensible believer in God, and any decent philosopher, has known for years, yet somehow the blind determination of atheistic scientists to find a scientific explanation that rules out God continues, regardless. I think it demonstrates their refusal to admit that logic is not on their side.

Hawking is no different. The existence of the law of gravity does not make the universe inevitable, because the law of gravity did not exist until the universe itself appeared. As Lennox says: “How did gravity exist in the first place? Who put it there? And what was the creative force behind its birth?”

For Lennox, the amazing design of the universe is something that boosts his faith rather than challenging it: “For me, as a Christian believer, the beauty of the scientific laws only reinforces my faith in an intelligent, divine creative force at work. The more I understand science, the more I believe in God because of my wonder at the breadth, sophistication and integrity of his creation. “The very reason science flourished so vigorously in the 16th and 17th centuries was precisely because of the belief that the laws of nature… reflected the influence of a divine law-giver." “One of the fundamental themes of Christianity is that the universe was built according to a rational, intelligent design. Far from being at odds with science, the Christian faith actually makes perfect scientific sense.”

Pointing to biology as well as physics as evidence for God, Lennox continues: “When we see a few letters of the alphabet spelling our name in the sand, our immediate response is to recognise the work of an intelligent agent. How much more likely, then, is an intelligent creator behind the human DNA, the colossal biological database that contains no fewer than 3.5 billion 'letters'?”

Finally, Lennox is convinced of Christianity not just by science but by the evidence of history, personal experience and human morality: “Support for the existence of God moves far beyond the realm of science. Within the Christian faith, there is also the powerful evidence that God revealed himself to mankind through Jesus Christ two millennia ago. This is well-documented not just in the scriptures and other testimony but also in a wealth of archaeological findings.

“Moreover, the religious experiences of millions of believers cannot lightly be dismissed. I myself and my own family can testify to the uplifting influence faith has had on our lives, something which defies the idea we are nothing more than a random collection of molecules.

“Just as strong is the obvious reality that we are moral beings, capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong… The existence of a common pool of moral values points to the existence of transcendent force beyond mere scientific laws.” The fact is that, in tackling the God question, Hawking has inevitably moved from hard, experimental science to conjecture and philosophical supposition.

As science author Antony Latham says: “M-theory… is very much a conjectural theory and other physicists are not happy with it… Even Hawking says: ‘People are trying to decipher the nature of M-theory but that may not be possible.’ None of it is based on observation and it is thus unproven.”

Latham adds: “Hawking does not seem to tackle the very important question of the 'First Cause'. The only recourse he and others might have is an infinite regress of causes into the infinite past. However it is easily proven (by mathematicians such as Hilbert) that there is no such thing as an infinite series of anything.” A mathematician of Hawking’s undoubted quality should have remembered that.

At the end of the day (or the universe), science can never be used to finally prove or disprove God, as even Dawkins has admitted. Science is the study of the natural, not the supernatural. It has the wrong tools for the job.
Andrew Halloway

Stephen Hawking needs God: pray for him

2010-09-02T18:39:00.005+01:00

Stephen Hawking seems to have backtracked on his previous suggestion in 'A Brief History of Time' that the order of the universe needs to be explained in terms of a divine mind. However, he seems now to believe that creation arose out of nothing and provides its own order. BBC - Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

He is reported to have said that "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing....Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist...It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

What is wrong with this? Well it doesn't explain the temporal order of the universe, or why there is a law of gravity in the first place. The statement 'Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something...' is also circular and not explanatory because he is trying to explain the origin of the universe from something within the universe. It doesn't explain where the law of gravity came from and it is really no different than an appeal to magic in that it seeks to give creation creative power over itself. This is a classic pagan claim.

Hawking also needs to explain his own mind and intellect if we are to consider it trustworthy. If we reduce our minds to atoms then our thoughts become meaningless. Perhaps Hawking is shaking a metaphorical fist at God by trying to prove he doesn't exist, but Hawking has spiritual needs as well. We need to pray for him. Also see this blog entry by Andrew Halloway

Review of Richard Dawkins on The God Delusion

2010-08-31T13:42:00.002+01:00

On Wednesday 25th August (More4, 9-11pm) I watched the second of Richard Dawkins' new series ('Age of Reason') The God Delusion.

If you missed it, don't worry: there really was nothing new. It transpired that the two-hour programme was not new, but put together from his two-part The Root of Evil? series (Channel 4, January 2006 – for an article by Dawkins on its theme see Dawkins, 2006). He did not take the opportunity to alter anything. All his crass statements were left intact: faith is 'belief without reason', a 'brain virus', 'process of non-thinking', 'strange distorted mindset', 'elephant in the room' 'profound contradiction of science', 'discourages independent thought, is divisive and dangerous', 'slippery slope that leads to young men with knapsacks on the Tube', 'a delusion', 'a crutch', 'betrayal of the Enlightenment', 'suspension of critical faculties'. And so it goes on and on.

Intelligent Design (ID) is defined and dismissed as "God helped evolution along". He still believes that a gradual grassy slope is to be found on the other side of the sheer cliffs of every Mount Improbable. For him, rejection of evolution = rejection of science.

In the programme Roman Catholicism is represented by pilgrims and church leaders at Lourdes, Judaism and Islam are represented by scenes of worhippers and by individuals who are interviewed, and Evangelical Christianity is represented by Ted Haggard of the New Life Church, Colorado Springs, USA. There was certainly footage here to make many Christians cringe, but, if you look for it, you can find such examples to use against any tradition, secular as well as religious. That kind of implicit ad hominem attack should have no place in serious scholarship – or programming. What a state we have come to when all the main Channels broadcast such insults to intelligence – and to common sense.

A freethinkers group in the US was interviewed. They feel on the defensive, saying that their jobs are under threat from Christian fascism. It is they who are the beleaguered minority. Many Christian academics will be very surprised (see Bergman, 2008)

As in the source series, there was no engagement with serious critics. For those programmes, professor Alister McGrath was interviewed by Dawkins about his book Dawkins' God and about faith in general. However the interview was not included in the final cut. After this was pointed out by McGrath, Dawkins, to his credit, did make the unedited footage available (Dawkins & McGrath, 2006)

In an article well worth reading in its entirety, Madeleine Bunting (2006) summed up the source series well: “By all means, let's have a serious debate about religious belief, one of the most complex and fascinating phenomena on the planet, but the suspicion is that it's not what this chorus wants. Behind unsubstantiated assertions, sweeping generalisations and random anecdotal evidence, there's the unmistakable whiff of panic; they fear religion is on the march again. …a piece of intellectually lazy polemic which is not worthy of a great scientist.”

As Bunting noted, “Sadly, there is no evolution of thought in Dawkins's position; he has been saying much the same thing about religion for a long time.” I really do not understand how he can be repeating the same tired old arguments in exactly the same terms over so many years. It is so contrary to my own experience and surely to that of any serious scholar? Your experience grows all the time, criticisms cause you to reframe arguments, revise them, or even give them up, because you are forced to conclude that you got the particular matter wrong. Your world view changes and develops, altering the way you present material. When it comes to science and religion, I see no such process with Dawkins. In particular, he just seems to completely ignore scholarly criticism.

Once you have decided that there is no God, and that all real knowledge is obtained through reason and science, then Dawkins’ conclusions are inevitable. This highlights that the debate is not simply a debate over logic or evidence, but rather much more over worldviews and presuppositions. It is therefore important to turn the tables, to hold Dawkins' feet to the fire, to put his materialism under the critical spotlight. (In this regard I would highly recommend Wilson, 2007 – actually a response to Sam Harris, but it applies to all the new atheists). If you reflect on the question, "If we are just complicated, deterministic, chemical machines in a godless universe, then what do we teach the children in school?", it puts the issue of faith schools in a very different light.

The naive worldview commitments of the ruling materialists in science should be exposed to critical scrutiny, as should the scientific absurdities of the arguments for materialistic evolution – especially the real ‘elephant in the room’, the origin of the specified information and the nano-machines that utilise it, which are so crucial to all biological functioning.

The ID movement has it precisely right when it follows that two-pronged strategy. Constructive debate is impossible unless all participants are willing to put their worldview commitments on the table and allow them, as well as their scientific arguments, to be exposed to rigorous critique.
References
Jerry Bergman, Slaughter of the Dissidents, Leafcutter Press, 2008
Madeleine Bunting, No wonder atheists are angry: they seem ready to believe anything, Guardian, Saturday 07 January 2006
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1681002,00.html

accessed 29 August 2010)
Richard Dawkins, Is religion the root of all evil?, Belfast Telegraph, 06 January 2006
(http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://news.exchristian.net/2006/01/is-religion-root-of-all-evil.html

accessed 29 August 2010)
Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath, 2006, Root of All Evil? Uncut Interviews:
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/1212-richard-dawkins-and-alister-mcgrath

accessed 29 August 2010 (takes you to the google video listed below)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6474278760369344626#

accessed 29 August 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxc0NpTZE18 , accessed 29 August 2010
Douglas Wilson, Letter from a Christian Citizen, American Vision, 2007

By Dr Arthur Jones

Review of Richard Dawkins on Faith School Menace?

2010-08-31T13:29:00.004+01:00

On Wednesday 18th August (More4, 9-10pm) I watched the first of Richard Dawkins' new series ('Age of Reason' - what a cheek!). The programme was titled 'Faith School Menace?' For an earlier article on the same theme see Dawkins, 2001.

The programme contained nothing new – we have heard it all in previous Dawkins' programmes. It has the look and feel of a party political election broadcast. It entirely lacked balance or objectivity, whether historical or contemporary. Isn't it amazing (well, not really!) that he has seemingly endless TV programmes to promote his atheist faith. If Christians were allowed even one such programme today, all hell would break loose. It will be a test of liberal commentators to see how they review it.

We were treated to the arch-apostle of science making numerous statements for which he cited no scientific evidence. What ‘evidence’ he gave was anecdotal, selective and biased. “The programme was more interested in scaremongering than in what actually happens.” (Ainsworth, 2010) For example, Dawkins started by telling us how terrible it was that 1 in 3 British schools is now a faith school. Really? Clearly, like any good scientist, he needs to start by defining his terms – which he never does. What he should have said was 'schools with a church link' which is not at all the same thing as schools that really allow Christian faith (in particular a Christian worldview) to control what they do in education. Relatively, very few Church schools do the latter. Indeed Leslie Francis' research has shown that the majority of Church schools have no influence on a child's faith or even have a negative influence – i.e. compared to non-church schools (Francis, 1995; Kay and Francis, 1996). But throughout the programme Dawkins showed no interest in scientific evidence for his assertions.

Of course, for Dawkins, anything to do with (Christian) faith in schools is indoctrination and faith should be excluded from all schools (except Dawkins' faith of course). Evolution (undefined, but most will understand it as universal common descent) is a FACT. It is a FACT that we evolved from apes. In fact we ARE apes. He told a (state-funded) Muslim school that they can't win by questioning evolution, but must interpret the Koran to fit with evolution, just as Christians have done with their Bible. (He found that all of the Muslim year 10 pupils rejected evolution.)

He asserted that Faith schools prevent social cohesion (again contrary to the research evidence as regards most of them). We were shown Dawkins speaking to children in a (non church) primary school, telling them not to believe anything on the basis of tradition, authority or revelation, but only on the basis of reason and evidence. He is clearly inexperienced in engaging young children and they were visibly disinterested. But imagine the media reaction if a Christian was filmed doing that kind of assembly!

There's is lots more I could report, but hopefully that gives the flavour. If you have watched previous Dawkins' programmes then you have seen it all before. Only one person, an Irish educationist, was included putting the pressure on Dawkins and asking him to admit his illiberal position. However at least one commentator, Keith Watson in the Metro, regarded the Irishman’s persistence as evidence of a closed mind! Knowing what happened in his previous programmes (serious critique either not sought, or left on the cutting room floor – see blog on the second programme in this series) I wonder who else was filmed, but not included?

On the widespread practice of pretending to find God – which many parents do every year in order to secure their child a place in faith schools, which are often educationally outstanding – Dawkins (in an interview with The Times, available, at a price, at: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article2690948.ece - see Sefton, 2010), has shown “an unsurprisingly evolutionarily adaptive attitude” (Sefton, ibid):

"I don't want to cast any blame on them," he said. "It's hypocrisy that is imposed on them by a ridiculous and unjust system."

Dawkins even said that if he were in the same situation, he might do the same. "Since I have absolutely no belief at all, I wouldn't be betraying anything." Commenters (at Sefton, 2010) rightly noted that this was a charter for unethical behaviour that could be used to justify just about anything (emphasis added). Dawkins is constantly going on about 'reason' and 'evidence', but when it comes to religion and faith, he ignores the evidence and abandons reason.

References
Janina Ainsworth, Faith School Menace? Church Mouse Blog, posted 20 August 2010 (http://churchmousepublishing.blogspot.com/2010/08/exclusive-faith-school-menace-by-revd.html#comments , accessed 27/8/2010)
Richard Dawkins, No Faith in the Absurd, Times Education Supplement (London) 23/02/2001, page 17, http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=343917 , accessed 29 August 2010)
Leslie Francis, Church schools and pupil attitudes towards Christianity: a response to Mairi Levitt, British Journal of Religious Education, 17 (3), 1995, pp 133-139.
William Kay & Leslie Francis, Drift from the Churches: Attitude toward Christianity during Childhood and Adolescence, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996, 266 pp.
Eliot Sefton, Dawkins: faith schools should teach all religion, The First Post [The Week], 18 August 2010
(http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/67378,people,news,richard-dawkins-force-faith-schools-to-teach-all-religion-education-atheism , accessed 28 August 2010
Keith Watson, Inside the Box: What Keith Watson Saw Last Night, Metro, 19/08/2010, page 36 (http://e-edition.metro.co.uk/2010/08/19/ , page 40, accessed 19 August 2010)

For other commentary on the programme or on Dawkins’ views on education, see:
Christian Institute, Dawkins calls for more interference in faith schools, christian.org.uk, posted 27 August 2010 (http://www.christian.org.uk/news/dawkins-calls-for-more-interference-in-faith-schools/?e270810 , accessed 27/08/2010
Huw Clayton (Doctor Huw), Dawkins, Myths and Dangers, Doctor Huw blog, posted 21 August 2010 (http://doctorhuw.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/dawkins-myths-and-dangers/ , accessed 27/8/2010)
Brian Hutt, Church educationalist rejects Dawkins’ ‘scaremongering’ over faith schools, Christian Today, posted 20 August 2010

(http://www.christiantoday.com/article/church.educationalist.rejects.dawkins.scaremongering.over.faith.schools/26547.htm, accessed 27 August 2010)
Phillip Johnson, Darwinism is Materialist Mythology, Not Science, Direction Magazine (Elim, UK), October 2004
Ben Leach, Richard Dawkins: 'faith schools should not be allowed to opt out of religious education', Daily Telegraph, posted 18 August 2010

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7951358/Richard-Dawkins-faith-schools-should-not-be-allowed-to-opt-out-of-religious-education.html , accessed 27 August 2010)
Paul Melanson, Richard Dawkins and the Battle for Humankind’s Future, Dallas Blog, posted 19 August 2010 (http://www.dallasblog.com/201008191006959/guest-viewpoint/richard-dawkins-and-the-battle-for-humankind-s-future.html , accessed 27/08/2010)
David Robertson, David Robertson responds to Richard Dawkins – Faith Schools Menace?, You Tube, posted 26 August 2010 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIZdYgvah0Y )

By Dr Arthur Jones

Dawkins - the New Spanish Inquisitor ?

2010-08-23T11:18:00.008+01:00

Apparently Richard Dawkins has been presenting his new series 'Age of Reason' on the fringe More4 Channel (Wednesday 18th August, 9-10pm), and has again been filming in the classroom to challenge school children about their beliefs. His zeal and desire to root out Darwin heretics in schools reminds me of that of a Spanish inquisitor. Although, he says that he wishes faith schools to teach about all religion in the classroom there would seem to be little room for respect for other's beliefs in Dawkins a-theology.

Dawkins in fact wishes to bring faith schools to an end even though he acknowledges that their teaching standards are often better than secular schools. So good in fact that he would be willing to lie to get his children into one. He comments that he does not blame those atheists who pretend to be religious in order to get their children into the best faith schools, and comments that as he has 'absolutely no belief at all, I wouldn't be betraying anything' by lying and pretending to be religious The First Post on Dawkins

But what he does not seem to understand is that the quality of the education in faith schools is to do with their ethos. Dawkins own words reveal that he is willing to destroy the very thing, the values, that make faith schools so good and to offer a set of values instead that allow children and adults to tell lies. I can't believe that Dawkins is so naive that he cannot see the sad irony here. If he can tell lies to get children into a good school, then why not also 'tell lies for Darwin.' His admission of a willingness to lie also does not lend itself to trust, nor does it give good reasons to listen to him about education or Darwin.

Stephen Hawking Takes on God

2010-08-11T07:52:00.001+01:00

Next month will see the publication of the latest books by two heavyweights in science: Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose. One claims to be an “extraordinary new view of the universe” and the other claims to give “new answers to the questions of life”.

Stephen Hawking needs no introduction. The disabled theoretical physicist who held the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for 30 years is known worldwide for his bestselling book ‘A Brief History of Time’. Outside of scientific circles, Professor Sir Roger Penrose may not be quite as well known, but he is another top theoretical physicist and the bestselling author of ‘The Road to Reality’. He is currently Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their joint contribution to our understanding of the universe.

In a curious coincidence, on 23 September The Bodley Head Ltd will publish ‘Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe’ by Sir Roger, and on 9 September Bantam Press publish Stephen Hawking’s ‘The Grand Design: New Answers to the Questions of Life’.

Because of his fame in the wider world, Stephen Hawking’s book will probably receive the greater publicity, especially as it is his first major book in nearly a decade. But both books attempt to do the same thing in different ways: solve the mysteries of the universe.

In Hawking’s case, the title of the book has clear religious overtones. And from the publisher’s blurb, it is clear that Hawking is intent on offering science as an alternative to religious belief about the origins of the universe. Not content with answering the purely physical question of “When and how did the universe begin?”, Hawking goes further and enters metaphysical territory: “Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent ‘grand design’ of our universe evidence for a benevolent creator who set things in motion? Or does science offer another explanation?” Hawking is our “guide to discoveries that are altering our understanding and threatening some of our most cherished belief systems”. ‘The Grand Design’ “will inform – and provoke – like no other.”

Hawking seems intent on using science to supersede religion. But as he wanders into the minefield of religious and philosophical questions, it is increasingly clear that science comes up short. His book “explains the latest thoughts about model-dependent realism (the idea that there is no one version of reality), and about the multiverse concept of reality in which there are many universes. There are new ideas about the top-down theory of cosmology (the idea that there is no one history of the universe, but that every possible history exists).”

If science accepts that there are many versions of reality and a multiplicity of histories of the universe, science actually loses its ability to tell us anything useful about the world. Science has been successful because, in the main, it is able to tell us the truth about the world we live in. It tells us how things work, what they’re made of, and why things happen as they do, and to a certain extent how things got to be how they are today. But if there is no definite reality and no definite history, then science can no longer be a guide to truth. At this point it departs into speculation, and so has no more claim to truth than religion or philosophy.

Unfortunately, possibly because of his own difficult life experiences, it would seem that Hawking wants to challenge belief in a divine Creator by bending science to the task. In that respect, he follows another great name in science. Charles Darwin also lost belief in a God who personally interacts with people due to the suffering he experienced in life, and set out to devise a theory that would explain that suffering – a dog-eat-dog world of ‘survival of the fittest’. In Darwin’s view, God didn’t intervene in the world to prevent suffering so he can’t have been involved in the world at all – except as perhaps the one who lit the blue touchpaper to set the world in motion at the beginning.

Hawking, it seems, wants to take even that involvement away from God. Perhaps he has been influenced by Richard Dawkins, who has praised Darwin for explaining life without God, and is longing for someone to explain the universe without God.

Prof Penrose comes to the cosmic table from a slightly different direction to Hawking, but also seeks to explain the universe. His new book attempts to answer what came before the Big Bang. Hitherto that’s been acknowledged by most scientists as one arena that’s best left to God, since science has been unable to look behind that curtain. But Penrose aims to “show how the expected ultimate fate of our accelerating, expanding universe can actually be reinterpreted as the 'Big Bang' of a new one”. In other words, his theory is that time – and the universe – recycles itself.

It’s a very green-friendly sounding proposal, appropriate for the environmentally-aware times we live in. But I guess we would have to wait billions of years to find out if his theory is proved correct – until our universe itself ends – to find out if it has, in the process, created a new one all by itself!

It seems from the anticipated content of the book that Penrose is proposing something that approximates more to the Hindu view of the universe. The Hindu cosmology proposes that the big bang is not the beginning of everything but just the start of the present cycle, preceded by an infinite number of universes and to be followed by another infinite number of universes. Perhaps Penrose was reading his Rig Veda (Hindu scripture) before he came up with his idea.

Hawking’s rather loose view on reality might also accord more with Buddhism than atheism: Buddhists posit neither an ultimate beginning nor a final end to the universe, but see the universe as something in flux, passing in and out of existence, parallel to an infinite number of other universes doing the same thing.

Perhaps we should look not at highly speculative theories for a better understanding of the universe but at the hard facts that are more scientifically testable. What we do know is that the universe is incredibly precise and ‘fine-tuned’ for life on earth to exist. If the forces in the universe had been set up just a tiny bit wrong, there would be no “life as we know it, Jim” (apologies to non-Star Trek fans). The list of physical constants that are finely balanced in this way is as long as your arm. As Hawking says in his earlier book ‘A Brief History of Time’: “The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”

Leading theoretical physics professor Paul Davies – another best-selling science writer – is more open about this. He states: “The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly. You see, even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life – almost contrived – you might say a ‘put-up job.’”

Michael Turner, astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab, describes the fine-tuning of the universe like this: “The precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bullseye one millimetre in diameter on the other side.”

This incredible accuracy speaks of an Intelligent Designer behind the universe. Penrose holds no religious beliefs and is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, yet he himself has to admit that both human consciousness and the fine-tuning of the universe are mysterious. In The Emperor's New Mind (1989), he argued that known laws of physics are inadequate to explain the phenomenon of consciousness, and in the film version of ‘A Brief History of Time’, he said: "There is a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance. Some people take the view that the universe is simply there and it runs along… and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it, about its existence, which we have very little inkling of at the moment.”

Physicist Tony Rothman says: "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."

I’ll leave the last word to mathematical physics professor Frank Tipler: “When I began my career as a cosmologist some 20 years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.”
Andrew Halloway

Discrimination of Christians in the Classroom ?

2010-08-04T12:36:00.002+01:00

There is an interesting piece on Education and Christian belief in the Times Higher Education Supplement.
Stop Turning the Other Cheek - Times Higher Education Supplement

The British Humanist Association and their Fundamentalism

2010-07-28T20:59:00.003+01:00

The British Humanist Association has been hard at work writing to the Government seeking to deny religious groups a voice in education, while pretending to be a voice of reason. This is hypocritical

The BHA has lobbied the Education Secretary Michael Gove and reports suggest that the policy developed will seek to exclude 'extremist groups' from taking over schools, and furthermore there would be no creationism taught in science classes.

Andrew Copson of the BHA is concerned about the 'dangers of the influences of fundamentalist groups in our school system.' Presumably he doesn't mean to imply that the BHA owns the school system by use of the word ‘our’, but the faux pas is evident nonetheless. He is perhaps too blinkered to know that true pluralism must respect those who have different religious beliefs to his own and allow them to have an equal voice in education.

The BHA wants us to believe that secular humanism is religiously neutral, but it is not. It is instead biased in favour of atheism. So the claim of the BHA that it seeks to develop 'totally inclusive schools for children of all faiths and none' is entirely bogus. The BHA wants atheistic humanism to have a dominant position in schools and by its actions wishes to treat those who have religious and scientific convictions about creation as second-class citizens.

It would be a tragedy if the new coalition Government were to listen to the BHA and allow restrictions to freedom and human rights in schools and so deny children their freedom of conscience, and to prevent the opportunity for children to learn skills in the critical analysis of complex arguments and data; skills that are the hallmarks of true education. We would ask that children and students be allowed to learn skills in critical thinking within the science class and be allowed to question the problems with evolution while respecting their faith. Anything less is not science, but humanistic, religious dogma of a fundamentalist nature.

Andrew Halloway has written a more extensive piece here

Ekklesia and Relative Truth ?

2010-07-21T12:32:00.006+01:00

An article by Ekklesia's Symon Hill blames fundamentalism for getting its view of truth wrong (Truth is a political issue). He [or they] appear to be equally dismissive of creationists and intelligent design supporters and the 'new atheists' because they have too strong a view of truth. At least atheists and creationists are agreed that truth is an objective concept, and must be held as such to make sense of the world. Ekklesia's Symon Hill though seems to be arguing that truth must be placed within the context of politics and culture. Karl Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies instead saw that loss of an objective approach to truth can lead to tyranny because objective values are lost as well when truth is made subjective. Perhaps Ekklesia might wish to clarify their position on whether they believe truth to be an objective concept.

Symon also believes that creationists are generally well financed and right wing, but the truth is more complex than this - (irony intended). Most creationist groups are not well financed and are concerned about how we value human beings and creation in light of the claims of Darwinism. Darwinism seems to give us less reasons to value those things that Christianity shows to be valuable and this is of major concern to us. The Evolution Protest Movement started out with concern over questions of morality in the 1930s at the time Hitler was gaining power; even then the voice of creationists were being silenced while the Nazis were planning the holocaust under the influence of an evolutionary mindset.

There is a place for respectful dialogue between faiths, but not for a pluralism that respects no one's belief by making truth a subjective concept.

Atheists Lobby for Evolution in Primary Schools

2010-07-17T08:18:00.004+01:00

Before the general election, the British Humanist Association (BHA) was lobbying the Government to include evolution in primary school teaching. It hasn’t given up. Last month the BHA wrote to Michael Gove, the new Secretary of State for Education, pushing the same agenda under the guise of improving standards of science in primary schools.

Now, it should be obvious that an organisation that exists to promote atheism would have an ulterior motive for campaigning to promote science in schools. It is this: evolution has become the rock on which atheism is built, and all secularists and humanists fear that loss of faith in evolution would lead to loss of faith in atheism. I just hope Michael Gove can see that.

The BHA are really not concerned about science – but they are desperate to ensure that children are steeped in evolutionary thinking before they have developed the more critical faculties of a secondary school child. That way, they are less likely to reject it when they grow older.

Why are they desperate? Because survey after survey has shown that, despite decades of indoctrination of evolution through both education and the media, the British public are still resistant to its overblown claims.

Sadly for the standard of science in this country, the BHA’s letter to Michael Gove managed to gather the support not only of atheist scientists like their own Richard Dawkins (predictably), but Rev Professor Michael Reiss, An Anglican priest and science education expert. He has obviously been roped in to give the impression that it’s not just atheists who want evolution in primary schools, but mainstream churches as well.

Professor Reiss would do well to remember that it was only a couple of years ago that he was sacked from his job at the Royal Society after a concerted effort by leading atheists to silence his more common sense approach to teaching science. He was open to the discussion of creationism in science classrooms – if the aim was to explain why evolution was superior science. But even that was too much for Dawkins et al. Even a whiff of God in science classes was too much for them to stomach. Dawkins even suggested that Reiss should never have been given the post in the first place – simply because he was a clergyman. I think Reiss, whose scientific credentials are impeccable, would have had a case for religious discrimination.

But back to the letter. Liberal Christian news agency Ekklesia reported that “good teaching of evolutionary theory and biology is something that people of all beliefs and backgrounds can and should get behind – despite the well-funded attempts of some from fundamentalist religious backgrounds to inhibit evidence-based teaching or get their own ideology on the school agenda.”

There is so much wrong with this statement I hardly know where to start! First, people of all beliefs should get behind good teaching of evolution – because good teaching includes explaining the evidence for and against a theory. But this is the furthest thing from the mind of the BHA and pro-evolution Ekklesia. Their idea of good teaching would be if evolution was promoted as fact, and all criticism of it was excluded – tantamount to brainwashing.

Second, the creationist “ideology” they refer to is about as far from being “well-funded” as it is possible to get. There is only a handful of small creationist organisations in the UK, each struggling to exist on donations from supporters that add up to a few thousand pounds per year. In contrast, evolution has the full weight of government funding in schools, colleges and universities, plus millions spent by broadcasters on TV programmes, like David Attenborough’s documentaries, every year.

Third, scientists who believe in alternatives to evolution like creationism and Intelligent Design Theory do not “inhibit evidence-based teaching” at all. On the contrary, it is they who are constantly campaigning for educators to open up the evidence, to make students and the public aware that there is evidence against evolution as well as for it. They support evidence-based teaching. It is evolutionists who want to restrict teaching to just the evidence in favour of evolution.

And as for trying to get “their own ideology on the school agenda” – that’s exactly what the BHA is doing by writing to Michael Gove!

Andrew Copson, BHA Chief Executive, says: "The teaching of science equips young people with the skills they need to understand the world around them in a critical way, and opens up the natural environment for inquiry.” If only that’s what the BHA wanted. Instead, they want no criticism of evolution and to restrict enquiry about the natural world so that alternatives cannot be considered.

Mr Gove has previously made it clear that he does not regard creationism as having any place in science teaching, a point also made under the previous Labour administration. But when I wrote to Mr Gove before the election, I made it clear that I was not campaigning for creationism to be included in science teaching, but for evolution to be taught in a truly scientific way – where all the evidence, and arguments for and against, are considered.

In an interview Michael Gove gave to the BBC, he referred to evolution as “scientific fact” and said: “The problem that we have in state education at the moment, and the problem which our reforms will directly address, is the fact that parents aren't getting what they want.”

I told him: “One of the things I, as a parent, want for my children is that they are taught how to think for themselves, how to critique theories and concepts, and how to decide logically what is a convincing argument and what is not.

“Sadly, this ideal seems to conflict with your desire for only ‘scientific fact’ to be taught in schools, because for science to pursue the facts, it must be free to question the currently accepted understandings and theories. The philosophy of science shows that there are no absolute ‘scientific facts’. Science only progresses by questioning, by cultivating an enquiring mind. If no one questioned the idea that the earth was flat, we would not have discovered that the earth is round.

“In the interview, you said ‘you cannot have a school which teaches creationism’. I am not asking that you should, but I am asking that children should be allowed to question every reigning scientific paradigm, and that includes evolution. If you believe… that evolution is another one of those ‘scientific facts’, then you have swallowed the line that Richard Dawkins and his ‘new atheist’ friends want you to swallow. I don’t know what your personal views on religion are, but Dawkins has an obvious vested interest in claiming that evolution is a fact, because it is vital to his philosophy. As he says himself, evolution made it possible for him to be an intellectually-fulfilled atheist. In short, he is completely biased on evolution.

“The true scientific position on the study of biological origins is to assert that evolution is a theory. As such, it deserves to be questioned. In fact, if it isn’t, it will never improve and never come closer to the truth. If protected from criticism, as Dawkins would have it, evolution will in fact move further and further from the truth.

“Coming back to education – children should be taught that most scientists believe in evolution, but there is a sizeable minority who do not. This is a fact. They should then be given the evidence for and against evolution, and be taught how to evaluate the evidence for themselves. Only then will they be educated to think for themselves, instead of being effectively ‘brainwashed’ – which is what happens in biology today, because only the evidence in favour of evolution is allowed in the classroom.

“Dawkins and his ilk claim that no real scientists doubt evolution. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over 700 PhD-level scientists and professors have signed a document expressing their doubts. The Scientific Dissent From Darwinism is a short public statement by scientists expressing their scepticism of neo-Darwinism.
“The full statement reads: ‘We are sceptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.’ Prominent scientists who have signed the statement include evolutionary biologist and textbook author Dr. Stanley Salthe; quantum chemist Henry Schaefer at the University of Georgia; U.S. National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell; American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow Lyle Jensen; Russian Academy of Natural Sciences embryologist Lev Beloussov.

“This is not a bunch of ‘fundamentalists’. Many of these are leading scientists in their fields. Dr. Russell Carlson, Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at University of Georgia, comments: ‘To limit teaching to only one idea is a disservice to students because it is unnecessarily restrictive, dishonest, and intellectually myopic.’ Dr. Vladimir L. Voeikov, Professor of Bioorganic, Moscow State University and member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences is even stronger: ‘The ideology and philosophy of neo-Darwinism which is sold by its adepts as a scientific theoretical foundation of biology seriously hampers the development of science and hides from students the field’s real problems.’

“I therefore appeal to you to make biological education an open-minded pursuit of the truth, like the rest of science, rather than the mind-closing myopia that Darwinian fanatics subscribe to.

“Again, I am not asking for the teaching of creationism, but for teachers and students alike to be able to assess the evidence both for and against evolution. But incidentally, I’d also be very interested to know why you think that teaching creationism is teaching ‘in a way which undermines our democratic values’, as you said in the interview, and could be ‘closed down’. How would banning creationism improve democracy? I can see no relation whatsoever. Surely democracy is about freedom of opinion, and science is about freedom of enquiry. Censorship in education and science sounds closer to totalitarianism than democracy.”

The response from Michael Gove’s office indicated he did not understand the point I was making – or was unwilling to follow its logic: “We very much agree that we want children to learn to think and reason, be presented with different arguments and be able to use critical reasoning to make their own judgements. However, we do not believe that in state schools, Religion should be taught as Science. That is the delineation we want to make.”

But the BHA and Ekklesia need to explain why they are promoting evolution as proven fact when it is not empirical science – it is not repeatable in the present, contradicts the laws of thermodynamics and is difficult to falsify. I suspect the reason is that they both have a vested interest in shoring up the creaking edifice of evolution – one to justify their atheism, and one to gain intellectual credibility and political influence.

Andrew Halloway An earlier draft of this article is posted here

Polkinghorne and causal gaps

2010-07-15T13:02:00.002+01:00

A recent Oxford conference has celebrated the long service to science and religion by John Polkinghorne. This Guardian 'Comment is Free' blog post by Mark Vernon is of interest because it discusses Polkinghorne's belief about causal gaps with top down intentional causality.
Chaos Theory Polkinghorne and God
Vernon comments that "it's not an epistemological gap that's being appealed to in John Polkinghorne's work, but rather an ontological causal openness. Hence the possibility, at least, of making the link with divine action."

Football and Cheating - Poetic Justice?

2010-07-08T17:41:00.003+01:00

OK this is not a science post, unless you consider the technology of the new ball - a ball the German team had longer to practice with than all the other teams. But is there such a thing as poetic justice after Uruguay and Germany are now out of the World Cup?

The Uruguay player deliberate handball incident stopped Ghana from scoring a last minute goal that would have put Ghana through, and the German goalkeeper admitting that he deliberately pretended the ball had not crossed the line even though he knew it had, in order to fool the referee. Both players later boasted about it.

Now both teams are out. But are these types of incidents good for football?

Can unborn babies feel pain - and does it make a difference ?

2010-06-25T15:47:00.006+01:00

I was going to blog about this news item but Calvin Smith beat me to it, so I'll pass on the link to his blog here which gives a good overview of the issues.

Basically a government backed report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and commissioned by the Department of Health, concludes that the feotus at 24 weeks cannot feel pain. One does wonder whether this is really unbiased scientific evidence, or findings gathered to support a left wing social and political agenda.
Telegraph - Foetus 'cannot feel pain before 24 weeks'

And there is the more important matter of whether the unborn child has rights of his or her own. Many Christians believe that the feotus has intrinsic value whether or not it can feel pain, and should therefore be treated as a moral patient of equal dignity to infants, children and adults. It is the duty of adults to protect that life.

Downing Street reports that the Prime Minister will "continue to be guided by the science on the matter". The problem is that values cannot be reduced to science in this way. (Although later news stories suggest the Prime Minister is willing to reduce the time limit for abortions to 20 or 22 weeks).

Peter Singer attacks religion for being regressive

2010-06-09T15:26:00.004+01:00

Peter Singer, the environmentalist who wants to raise some animal rights above some human beings, has criticised religion for being regressive in a Guardian Comment is Free blog article.

Religion's regressive hold on animal rights issues

Although he acknowledges that some religious beliefs are progressive he is generally dismissive. He writes for instance that "some Christian theologians offer a kinder, more compassionate interpretation of the idea of our God-given dominion over the animals. They regard the grant of dominion as a kind of stewardship, with God wanting us to take care of his creatures and treat them well."

But he believes that religion has a generally regressive influence on ethical issues "whether they are concerned with the status of women, with sexuality, with end-of-life decisions in medicine, with the environment, or with animals. Although religions do change, they change slowly, and tend to preserve attitudes that have become obsolete and often are positively harmful."

Singer is really a product of the Enlightenment, where religion must be viewed through a negative tinted lens, and progress must be seen in purely secular humanistic terms. Singer's ethics though are subjective to human sentiment where a cute furry animal is to have more rights than an unborn child that is out of sight. The list he gives is the usual shallow liberal issues where there is a lack of depth of thought regarding who has rights and values. There is a lack of concern for responsibility towards others; except for animals. However, one wonders why Singer thinks he has the right to have a greater voice than others given a common rationality amongst human beings. Clearly for ethics to have real objective substance beyond human sentiment there is a need for a higher authority who seeks to bring equality.

I would also point out that there are many Christians who are concerned about environmental issues and animal suffering as well. Experimentation on animals is something that is great concern to many Christians who do see that they have value and should be protected from unnecessary harm.

Backward Retina or Good Design ?

2010-05-28T06:31:00.003+01:00

There is another excellent article by Jonathan Sarfati on the CMI website. This time concerning the importance of Mueller cells for good vision.
Backwardly wired retina “an optimal structure”: New eye discovery further demolishes Dawkins

A useful article on Venter's work

2010-05-25T21:37:00.001+01:00

Jonathan Sarfati has a useful article on the exagerated claims and work of Venter.
http://creation.com/synthetic-life-by-venter

Has a Scientist Created Artificial Life ?

2010-05-21T12:35:00.004+01:00

The Times - May 21, 2010 - Scientists create artificial life in laboratory

The press is full of stories that a scientist has created artificial life. But what has really happened? In fact all that has happened is that a group of scientists have put together a specific genetic code and then put it into an existing cell. In other words, there is not much difference to what is already going on with genetic engineering.

Ben Davis, from the University of Oxford, said that we are '...quite a long way away from artificial life. You could take this synthetic genome and write in new genes with known functions, but that is not so different from molecular biology at the moment.'

The ethical problems remain the same as with existing genetic engineering.

Judge's assault on 'irrational' religious freedom

2010-04-30T18:15:00.002+01:00

With all the election hype this news story about religious freedom may have been missed. The basis for English Law seems to have changed from one based on God's authority, to one based on subjective human sentiments. Legal rights are given to those who can gather the most sympathy. It is a utilitarian corruption of the concept of rights and duties and is a pathway to legal tyranny. So a Christian can lose his job with all the stress and real hardship to family, in order to save another person's feelings being hurt.

Telegrqaph - Gary McFarlane: judge's assault on 'irrational' religious freedom claims in sex therapist case

The problem is also one of relativism in ethics. Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies was concerned about dialectical reasoning because concepts can change through the dialogue. If ethics are relative, then there is nothing to stop tyranny from arising. And this is the problem with secularists, they do not really want pluralism in terms of respecting people's rights in a free society, but want to undermine Christian faith and tear up the Judeo-Christian foundations of our society. Far from leading to respect and understanding in a free society, the secularists are leading us to a closed society based on relative ethics where those in power decide who has rights and who does not. That is a dangerous road to take.

As Christians we should also uphold the rights of those who are not Christian allowing freedom of belief, but recognising that Judeo-Christian values provide the best basis for a loving and just society. I don't think anyone seriously is arguing for a strong theocratic Christian state in Britain where other's rights are denied - but that is the spectre that the judge raised.

The Telegraph is reporting the death of Anthony Flew

2010-04-14T15:03:00.003+01:00

The Daily Telegraph is reporting the death at the age of 87 of Anthony Flew who was a life long atheist, but converted to a vague theism near the end of his life. You can read the obituary here
Daily Telegraph 13/04/2010 - Professor Antony Flew, the rationalist philosopher who died on April 8 aged 87, spent much of his life denying the existence of God until, in 2004, he dramatically changed his mind.

Is Dawkins going to arrest the Pope?

2010-04-11T18:22:00.001+01:00

No its not April 1st.

The Sunday Telegraph reports this; Richard Dawkins planning to have Pope Benedict arrested over 'crimes against humanity'

I'm not going to get into the rights and wrong of recent events surrounding the Roman Catholic Church, but it seems to me that a bit of persecution from bullying, militant atheists is exactly what the Vatican needs to help restore its image and authority.

Christian Values and Intelligent Life at the BBC

2010-04-08T15:40:00.003+01:00

There were two significant programmes on BBC television on Easter Sunday night (4th April) that highlighted one of the major challenges we face as Christians in education

Nicky Campbell investigates whether Christians are being discriminated against Nicky Campbell, Are Christians being persecuted? BBC1, Sunday 04 April, 10.50 - 11.50 pm

In a BBC 2 Documentary Prof. Brian Cox explored how the search for aliens has followed the search for water. Last in the series (5/5) Prof Brian Cox, Wonders of the Solar System 5 Aliens, BBC2, Sunday 04 April, 9-10 pm.

In a two minute segment (05-22 to 07-24 minutes into the BBC1 programme on iplayer) Nicky Campbell looked at what is happening in schools. He mentioned a recent report that looked into the teaching of RE in schools (can anyone identify this report?) The report found that most Christian student teachers thought that sharing their beliefs in the classroom could be unprofessional. But it was a different story for agnostics and atheists – they believed that sharing their lack of beliefs or questions could be a positive contribution. Nicky then went and talked to education students at Canterbury Christ Church University (a Christian foundation!) and found this to be exactly true.

This highlights the most important thing that my colleague Mark Roques and I (www.realitybites.org.uk) always want to get across. There is no neutral position – everyone is thinking, speaking and acting out of a worldview position, even if (as in our world of a fundamentally uneducated populace, i.e. worldview ignorant) that worldview is eclectic, self-contradictory and unrecognised. The trouble with agnosticism, atheism and secularism is that they are essentially negative positions, whereas their proponents will actually all have positive beliefs that (aware or unaware) they are living out. They may deny (agnostically) that they have any worldview, but actually they cannot avoid living as if a particular worldview is true. Our worldview is what we live, not what we profess (these are often very different – another reflection of the lack of worldview education – of the ignorance of the relationship between beliefs and life) So the key question is: what is their worldview (their faith, their divinity belief à la Roy Clouser’s The Myth of Religious Neutrality)? Then let’s have that worldview on the table and open to the same searching critique that Christians are expected to face.

Secularists treat their position as a default starting point that doesn’t need to be scrutinised. We have seen this in almost all of the recent Darwin Year programmes. A Richard Dawkins or Colin Blakemore is given free reign to (negatively) critique religious beliefs, but their own materialism is not exposed to similar critique. Implicitly, the different varieties of secularism are positions of science and reason that don’t need to be critiqued.

Brian Cox’s BBC2 programme illustrated this. There was nothing new in his programme, but it was interesting to see key assumptions laid out unapologetically, but without any rational (never mind empirical) justification being offered.

In the first place he assumed that physicalism is true – that in the end there is only physics, that the universal laws of physics create everything.

He also assumed that life is just chemistry (we are 96% just four elements: C,H,O, and N, he noted). All we need for life to be possible is chemicals, an energy source (such as the sun) and a medium (water). However he did concede that, even on this view, the creation of life on Earth was probably due to “the rarest combination of chance and the laws of physics”.

Thirdly he assumed that because life can exist in the most extreme (‘alien’) environments on Earth, therefore life may exist in extreme environments elsewhere in the Solar system (such as in a possible ocean beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa). This is a proposition that requires a lot more justification: that organisms now live in such environments does not demonstrate that they could arise in such environments (granting, for the sake of the argument, that life can ‘emerge’ from purely chemical systems).

At no point (like Dawkins, Blakemore et al.) did he consider the materialism-busting problems of free will (agency), consciousness, intelligence (etc.). If we are just chemical machines, wholly governed by some combination of chance and the universal laws of physics, then from where do we get human free will (to follow the evidence, to follow an argument …), reason, science, morality ….? What, then, do we teach the children in school? At present it is actually still Christian assumptions that govern much of the teaching in citizenship, PSHE etc. We can’t allow that dishonesty and deception to continue can we? Are we ready for a truly Godless world?
Arthur Jones

Telegraph blogger finds Lovelock worrying and confusing

2010-04-03T08:11:00.003+01:00

'Only global fascist tyranny can save us now' says nice old man

Although Lovelock says some good things about science and climate change all is not so well under the surface. According to Delingpole he writes in The Vanishing Face of Gaia;

"We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.

But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that hen a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."

Perhaps under the hood of every nice liberal tree hugger is really just a lust for power and control, all in the name of the pagan idea of 'mother earth.'

James Lovelock on Science and Climate Scepticism

2010-03-30T12:43:00.005+01:00

James Lovelock believes that there is a place for scepticism in science, especially when it becomes overbearing and monolithic - although he doesn't have confidence that human beings will stop climate change from happening.
James Lovelock: 'humans too stupid to stop climate change', says maverick scientist

As reported in the Telegraph "that the recent events surrounding the topic had left his thoughts about climate change “sceptics” thawing. ...“What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek,” he said....“The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. ..."You need sceptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic." "

and in the Guardian - James Lovelock: 'Fudging data is a sin against science' he comments that "I don't know enough about carbon trading, but I suspect that it is basically a scam. The whole thing is not very sensible.

Science and uncertainty

2010-03-26T13:41:00.001Z

Scientists need the guts to say: I don’t know - From climate change to swine flu, we must rebuild trust by being honest about risk

David Spiegelhalter writes; "Acknowledgement of uncertainty may even increase public confidence in pronouncements. Recent events, whether the justification for the Iraq War or “Climategate”, have reinforced the fact that trust is the crucial factor — although this may be even more difficult to achieve than certainty. "

Jonathan Chaplin on the Equality BIll

2010-03-20T22:19:00.004Z

Chaplin of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics argues robustly that there is a need for Christian Churches and organisations to retain their freedom to hire people on the basis of their beliefs. This he believes is a matter of conscience and it is not for a secular state to prohibit such freedoms. He wonders why political ideology is not subject to the same campaign.

Chaplin also wonders why the liberal para-church 'think-tank' Ekklesia is campaigning for Christians to be denied their freedom in this way. He writes "But [Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia] is not entitled to call upon coercive law to force churches to conform to his views of sexual ethics – getting the state to succeed where he has failed. It's incredible that such a position should be advanced in pursuit of the principle of equal regard."

These amendments should stay: The equality bill must not be used to undermine the right of religious organisations to govern themselves

Is Michael Ruse flogging a Dead Moral Horse?

2010-03-18T16:48:00.005Z

Ruse asks us to believe that morality is subjective, a product of our genes. We only believe it is objective because our genes determine that is better for us. Let’s be frank, atheism kills morality, and any attempt to get it up and running in a godless system is futile. He writes in this article; God is dead. Long live morality: Morality is something fashioned by natural selection. That doesn’t diminish its usefulness, or its comfort

‘God is dead, so why should I be good? The answer is that there are no grounds whatsoever for being good….Morality then is not something handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai. It is something forged in the struggle for existence and reproduction, something fashioned by natural selection….Morality is just a matter of emotions…So morality has to come across as something that is more than emotion. It has to appear to be objective, even though really it is subjective.’

There a number of angles to respond to Ruse. Firstly, what is moral? It isn’t enough to say that evolution can make us moral, we have to ask what is good morality. Why should we consider murder to be wrong at a foundational level. As Ruse notes lion’s are often multiple murders so Darwinism doesn’t help us decide. Is morality just about social cooperation? In Hobbes state of nature every man is against every man, or with Darwinian filial affections, every tribe is against every tribe in a state of nature. But that doesn’t stop tribes fighting, whether they be football supporters, Africans or Caucasians. In a state of nature how do we determine what is moral? Darwinism could lead to family or tribal cooperation in exterminating a rival tribe, but not to good morality. Morality has to transcend human emotions to be at all real.

Secondly, what of truth? A commitment to tell the truth is good morality. But if our genes have evolved to lie to us, then how can we know anything moral with confidence, or trust that what our genes are telling us really is the good? This is an argument for relativism and confusion in ethics. Modernism opens the door to post-modernism. Ruse would do well to read Phillip Johnson’s article Nihilism and the End of Law

"Arthur Leff had a deeper understanding of what the death of God ultimately means for man. He saw modern intellectual history as a long, losing war against the nihilism implicit in modernism’s rejection of the unevaluated evaluator who is the only conceivable source for ultimate premises. Leff rejected the nihilism implicit in modernism, but he also rejected the supernaturalism that he had identified as the only escape from nihilism.”

Posted also at Uncommon Descent

Greens under attack

2010-03-17T11:21:00.003Z

Environmentalists have come under some unpleasant attacks in the press following some research that shows that they are meaner than others and more likely to break important social rules.

Liars, cheats, thieves: the terrible truth about the mean greens: The right-on brigade has been unmasked. About time too, says Iain Hollingshead

He writes "Do Green Products Make Us Better People?, a paper in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science, argues that those who wear what the authors call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. Faced with various moral choices – whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage – the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper's question, then, is: No. Greens are mean"

and

"We've always suspected they were bullies. In the Seventies British film Nuts in May, Mike Leigh hilariously skewered the sort of couple whose supposed love of the environment ... is really just a device to stop everyone else having fun."

Perhaps this is a bit over the top. But one thing I have noticed is that green campaigners often seem to have little interest in upholding rights and benefits for people and society, but instead over emphasise the need to protect some animal or plant that could live just as well somewhere else. Sometimes it seems that stopping a social benefit is more imortant than protecting nature. There can then be an anti-social lack of balance in their work.

I do wonder whether the need to be alternative and dictatorial towards others in this way is perhaps due to a repressed desire for recognition and acceptance in the community.

Dawkins gets it so wrong Down Under

2010-03-11T13:31:00.008Z

The Uncommon Descent blog is reporting Dawkins' activity in Australia. Dawkins down Under

Dawkins is up to his usual trick of attacking Christian belief with little substance and fore-thought. He makes out that a world full of atheists would be sweetness and light, while religion is responsible for all the bad things that happen. He carefully overlooks the fact that atheistic regimes top the league table for numbers killed. This is because a world without transcendent values must make up its own, and who is to decide? The Humanist society, or a new Hitler or Stalin, or is it everyman for himself in a Darwinian utopia? Dawkins adopts broadly Christian ethics, although he doesn't admit it, but that need not be the case for atheists. If Dawkins and friends manage to get rid of Christian belief, then what moral conscience is going to stop the new pagans from banning atheism? Atheism attacks rational faith and merely opens the door for all sorts of irrational beliefs where people pray to trees and idols made by a craftsman.

Are Government and Ekklesia using the law to bully faith communities?

2010-02-24T16:56:00.002Z

As if allegations against bullying in No.10 aren't bad enough, it might be seen that faith communities are now being bullied by an over bearing government machine, with vocal support from Ekklesia.

Of course bullying of all forms is wrong, faith communities understand that. But Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia launches an attack on faith schools, in an attempt to strengthen the law, that itself looks like bullying. Why they should attack their Christian brethren in this way is beyond me, they appear to me to have a liberalising social agenda that seeks to deconstruct and undermine Christian institutions and appear to have little belief in God's transforming love and grace for individuals and society. But Ed Balls makes the most telling statement where the only prescription about morality is to be from government dictat - the word of government is becoming god to us.

Balls writes "All schools will be required to cover in their teaching of personal, social and health education the full range of content prescribed in the statutory programme of study for secondary schools and in the relevant parts of the new primary curriculum."

While respect for those we disagree with is important, Labour is really advocating the secularisation of schools, which will ultimately lead to post-modern relativism in ethics because it is really treating religious beliefs in a pluralistic manner. Sadly, such relativism will only lead to tyranny in the long run because it destroys any objective basis for value (that was also Popper's argument against relativism in his book The Open Society and its Enemies). I would suggest that faith communities have a better understanding of morality than the secularising Labaour administration that is constantly undermining people's freedom to believe.

Of course there are claims and counter claims about what the new law will mean with the Daily Mail reporting a victory for faith schools in an amendment Victory for faith schools as Labour's new sex education laws are 'watered down'. However, I think that there will only be increased confusion.

Tory education policy -Buddhists In, Creationism Out

2010-02-16T13:00:00.006Z

I see the Conservative Party education spokesman Mike Gove wants to allow Buddhists to set up schools, but is adament creationism will not be allowed into schools.

Goldie Hawn talks to Tories about setting up schools

He is reported to have said that an independent body would manage schools "to make sure that extremist organisations, or people who have a dark agenda, are prevented from doing so. The other thing that we will make sure is that schools are inspected rigorously...To my mind you cannot have a school which teaches creationism and one thing that we will make absolutely clear is that you cannot have schools which are set up, which teach people things which are clearly at variance with what we know to be scientific fact."

Otherwse; "anyone who teaches in a way which undermines our democratic values can be brought to light, challenged and if necessary, closed down".

The BBC reports that the "Hawn Foundation teaches the Buddhist technique of Mindfulness training, which emphasises social and emotional progress over academic testing and the use of simple breathing exercises to boost learning power."

So a belief in a loving designer will not be allowed to be discussed in school science lessons, but a Buddhist group that doesn't like tests will be allowed in. It was belief in design that actually led to the growth of science in the first place, and there is a conflict between a rational belief in order and design on the one hand that informs science, and a belief in romantic naturalism on the other that will ultimately undermine science. Furthermore, the idea that creationism should be excluded for democratic reasons is offensive and counterproductive to education.

One wonders what has happened to the Conservative Party. The only choice at the next election will be which liberal party we want, the real liberals, the tory liberals or the socialist liberals.

A shame Ann Widdecombe is leaving parliamant.

Climate change graph shows modest increase over 30 years, but record January 2010

2010-02-13T20:11:00.006Z

A NASA researcher, Roy Spencer, has shown that January 2010 was actually a record warm month, despite the freezing conditions in many parts of the Europe, UK and America. Although the Winter Olympics were short of snow due to mild weather. This graph is taken from Satellite measurements of the lower troposhpere and is not subject to problems with surface data, such as the urban heat island effect that may be leading to higher measurements.
Read the report here - January-2010-UAH-Global-Temperature-update-0-72-deg-c/

I have also lined to the graphic below.

This graph though shows about a 0.2 deg C increase in global temperatures over 30 years in the lower troposphere. This is a more modest rate of increase than some alarmists would wish people to believe.

Peer Review vs Open Access Review

2010-02-09T17:44:00.000Z

Fred Pearce in the Guardian asks whether Climategate will lead to changes in the way science is reviewed, from peer review to open access review.

'Climategate' was PR disaster that could bring healthy reform of peer review - Peer-review was meant to be a safeguard against the publication of bad science but the balance is shifting towards open access

Is God being erased from public life?

2010-02-08T12:46:00.002Z

Ruth Gledhill has interviewed the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Tom Wright, in The Times

Labour has erased God from political life, warns Bishop of Durham

He is reported as saying; “We have lived as a Western society by a particular set of stories which are substantially Enlightenment stories, about science solving all our ills. The Enlightenment kicked God upstairs like the elderly relative in the attic...If you get rid of God you inflate yourself to be divine instead.”

Climate scepticism on the rise - BBC

2010-02-05T18:53:00.007Z

The BBCs new poll suggests climate change scepticism is on the rise. They blame the bad weather, suppression of evidence from the University of East Anglia, and flawed peer reviewed data claims that appeared in the IPCC reports.
Climate scepticism 'on the rise', BBC poll shows

Comment: It would a shame if the politicisation of climate change damages the real scientific research that is going on. There is increasing evidence that the climate is not warming as fast as once thought, and that other factors may come into play [1], but the levels of measured CO2 in the atmosphere are increasing. And it is very likely that this will have an impact upon the climate, even if a more modest one than some alarmists believe.

[1] Stratospheric water vapour may have a bigger impact than once thought on climate
.

Climate Change developments

2010-01-29T13:08:00.006Z

The UK Government's chief scientist has called for honest dialogue on climate change. Quoted from the Timesonline Science chief John Beddington calls for honesty on climate change 27/01/10

"" "The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.

John Beddington was speaking to The Times in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that it grossly overstated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding.

Professor Beddington said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. He condemned scientists who refused to publish the data underpinning their reports.

He said that public confidence in climate science would be improved if there were more openness about its uncertainties, even if that meant admitting that sceptics had been right on some hotly-disputed issues.

He said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”

He said that the false claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 had exposed a wider problem with the way that some evidence was presented.

“Certain unqualified statements have been unfortunate. We have a problem in communicating uncertainty. There’s definitely an issue there. If there wasn’t, there wouldn’t be the level of scepticism. All of these predictions have to be caveated by saying, ‘There’s a level of uncertainty about that’.” ""

Dawkins back from playing Father Christmas

2010-01-29T08:07:00.006Z

Dawkins is back from his Christmas break - a shame he didn't listen to the message of Christmas about peace and goodwill to all men but launches into another ill informed attack on religion.

Hear the rumble of Christian hypocrisy: The evangelist who says the Haiti earthquake is retribution for sin is at least true to his religion

Of course for Dawkins a world without religion would be a better one. But when ever atheism has been tried out it leads to great tyranny - a shame he doesn't mention Hitler, Stalin, Lennin, Pol Pot in his article.

But Dawkins is a man of doubt and depressing hopelessness for all mankind. Atheism destroys the basis on which to make value judgements about right and wrong and leads to the tyranny of relativism in ethics. Out of the frying pan into the fire perhaps Richard?

The Christian vision is instead a hopeful one that seeks to make the world a better place, where we protect against natural disasters, where we end poverty, disease, suffering etc.

Yes perhaps Pat Robertson's statement was ill conceived, but there is a spiritual war taking place upon the earth that few of us really understand. Suffering is a problem for theologians, but Dawkins approach makes our very existence meaningless, in which case how can he address it at all? Suffering becomes a useful stick to beat God and Christians with, but ultimately how can Dawkins say that suffering is even a bad thing? Unless of course he thinks he is the sole judge of good and bad and wishes to be seen as God himself.
Andrew S

Darwinism, Social Engineering and Lark Rise to Candleford

2010-01-19T20:25:00.003Z

Dr Stephen Hayes has an interesting article over at CSM on the BBC programme Lark Rise to Candleford, which he believes included a blatant piece of Darwin propaganda in a light entertainment drama. Social Engineering anyone?
https://www.csm.org.uk/news.php?viewmessage=153

The programme is available on i Player if anyone wants to watch it through.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gbbl0/episodes/player

Trench Warfare?

2010-01-09T08:57:00.001Z

Nick Spencer of the Theos 'Think Tank' considers that the last decade has been one of aggressive posturing and thinks those, like him, who occupy the middle ground have had a rough time. He asks Can we climb out of the trenches?

Yes – it would be lovely to have open dialogue in the middle ground, but I would gently suggest that Nick should have a look at his own writing first. He suggests for instance that his fellow believers who reject evolution are guilty of launching verbal explosives. Perhaps some are aggressive in their tone, but there are many of us who simply want an honest dialogue over the evidence. He writes.

“For the most part the explosives have been verbal [in comparison to real explosives]. On the one hand we have encountered placards telling us the Islam will dominate the world and freedom can go to hell, and Christian faith that is able to move mountains of evolutionary evidence. On the other, we have heard of how faith is a virus to be eradicated, and how the Muslim community should be subject to discrimination until it "gets its house in order".”

I would suggest that this is an offensive comparison to those many Christians who are not militant, but seek truth, value and integrity in science. Perhaps he does not understand that scientific finding are always provisional, especially in questions of origins, which are not directly testable. He seems blinded by the rhetoric of those philosopher leaders in science who want to keep the real philosophy of science hidden from the masses. So the productive units in society (you and me) are taught that science is more certain than it is and are thus kept in the dark about matters of philosophy.

Yes – let us end this endless wrangling over origins, but there seems resistance to open dialogue in this area from some leading theistic evolutionists despite many of us from the 'wicked creationist’ side appealing many times for such respectful dialogue. One can only live in hope.
Andrew S

Dignity and Bioethics

2010-01-06T16:43:00.004Z

Thanks to Barry Arrington over at Uncommon Descent for alerting me to this; Undignified Bioethics - uncommon descent

The abstract - Undignified Bioethics in the forthcoming issue of Bioethics says this;

"The concept of dignity is pervasive in bioethics. However, some bioethicists have argued that it is useless on three grounds: that it is indeterminate; that it is reactionary; and that it is redundant. In response, a number of defences of dignity have recently emerged. All of these defences claim that when dignity is suitably clarified, it can be of great use in helping us tackle bioethical controversies. This paper rejects such defences of dignity. It outlines the four most plausible conceptions of dignity: dignity as virtuous behaviour; dignity as inherent moral worth; Kantian dignity; and dignity as species integrity. It argues that while each conception is coherent, each is also fundamentally flawed. As such, the paper argues for a bioethics without dignity: an 'undignified bioethics.'

Alasdair Cochrane seems to be arguing that value comes from 'moral status' not from a God given inherent value for all humanity. This is similar to the ethics of Peter Stringer who argues that some animals have greater worth than some human beings. But there is though something worrying about this sort of argument in that it leads to a loss of value in society, as exemplified for instance by the horrors of Nazi Germany where Jews and others were denied their moral worth by a godless system. Perhaps it is logical for materialistic humanists, but even T.H.Huxley saw that there had to be a committment to ethical values despite the lack of scientific support for ethics. Clearly science isn't a good foundational basis on which to build ethics, and those who deny any higher authority are lost in a web of confusion. Humanity though is the loser.

Science and Public Trust

2010-01-02T12:19:00.007Z

There is a very significant paper by Mike Hulme and Jerome Ravetz on the BBC website about trust in science

Read it here - BBC 'Show Your Working'

(N.B. This is posted because of what it says about the process of science - not because of what it says about climate change).

A few snippets from the article

A revolution in science

"So we have a three-fold revolution in the demands that are placed on scientific knowledge claims as they apply to investigations such as climate change:

•To be warranted, knowledge must emerge from a respectful process in which science's own internal social norms and practices are adhered to
•To be validated, knowledge must also be subject to the scrutiny of an extended community of citizens who have legitimate stakes in the significance of what is being claimed
•And to be empowered for use in public deliberation and policy-making, knowledge must be fully exposed to the proliferating new communication media by which such extended peer scrutiny takes place.

The opportunity that lies at the centre of these more open practices of science is to secure the gold standard of trust."

"A more open and a better understood science process will mean more trusted science, and will increase the chances of both "good science" and "good policy". "Show your working" is the imperative given to scientists when preparing for publication to peers. There, it refers to techniques. Now, with the public as partner in the creation and implementation of scientific knowledge in the policy domain, the injunction has a new and enhanced meaning."

And a happy new year

Christianity in the UK

2009-12-18T17:00:00.002Z

I have often quoted the research finding of Prof David Voas (Manchester) that whereas non-religious parents have a near 100% chance of passing on their lack of religion to their children, religious parents have only roughly a 50/50 chance. I have used this data to help Christians appreciate the overwhelming secular indoctrination faced by our children through the media and in education. Adults of course are also strongly influenced! Preliminary analysis of more recent data has been made available by Prof Voas. So far I only have the report (17 December) from Ekklesia (a Christian thinktank sadly strongly pro-TE and anti-ID - not a rare situation today) at. Read Ekklesia article here

Here is a key extract:

"The study suggests that the decline in faith is largely attributable to children no longer being brought up in a particular religion.

Professor Voas commented: “The results suggest that institutional religion in Britain now has a half-life of one generation, to borrow the terminology of radioactive decay. Two non-religious parents successfully transmit their lack of religion. Two religious parents have roughly a 50/50 chance of passing on the faith. One religious parent does only half as well as two together.”

He believes that the population can be categorised as religious, non-religious or “fuzzy faithful” – the 36 per cent who “identify with a religion, believe in God or attend services, but not all three”.

Despite the survey showing falling belief in God, 65 per cent of those questioned still thought that religion helps people to find inner peace while 79 per cent thought it provided solace. An additional 44 per cent said it was a shame that the influence of religion on British life was declining, while 18 per cent claimed both that faith is becoming more influential and that this is a bad thing."
Arthur Jones

The Times names new ID bestseller as a Book of the Year

2009-12-04T18:22:00.000Z

By Andrew Halloway

Flying in the face of critics who say Intelligent Design (ID) is not real science, leading ID scientist Dr Stephen Meyer’s latest book has been named a Book of the Year by the Times Literary Supplement (TLS).
ID – the theory that says design explains life better than evolution – is usually most vociferously opposed by atheist evolutionists on the basis that it is religion not science. Yet the brave TLS reviewer who has chosen the book is an atheist himself.
The selection of Stephen Meyer's ‘Signature in the Cell’ for the prestigious award was made by prominent philosopher and noted atheist Thomas Nagel of New York University.
Nagel says: “Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin.
“The controversy over Intelligent Design has so far focused mainly on whether the evolution of life since its beginnings can be explained entirely by natural selection and other non-purposive causes. Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by natural selection because it makes natural selection possible, could have originated without an intentional cause.
“He examines the history and present state of research on non-purposive chemical explanations of the origin of life, and argues that the available evidence offers no prospect of a credible naturalistic alternative to the hypothesis of an intentional cause. Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.”
Last month, Signature in the Cell was also named one of the top ten bestselling science books on Amazon.com. Yet, in Darwinist-dominated Britain, the book hasn’t yet been published, and is only available from the USA.
Evidence of the irrational opposition of evolutionists to ID came this week in the overwhelmingly vicious and vitriolic flood of comments by Guardian readers on an article in support of ID. Arguing that ID should not be excluded from the study of origins, educational consultant Alastair Noble wrote in The Guardian on 1st December that complex biological systems have not been explained by neo-Darwinian processes.
Dr Noble was responding to the government move to put evolution on the primary curriculum for the first time. It is notable that the most ardent proponents of teaching evolution to primary children are atheists. Both the British Humanist Society and the British Council have been active in persuading the government to introduce evolution into primary schools. This is no coincidence, as atheists depend on evolution as one of the few scientific justifications for their beliefs.
Yet it is hypocritical, as they also say that children should be free to choose what they believe, rather than being indoctrinated. How can they choose, if they are not even offered a choice? Evolution is the only show in town as far as science teaching is currently concerned. No alternatives are allowed, and never will be, if atheists can help it.
But even the British Council’s own survey found that 54% of Britons agreed that evolution should not be taught in isolation, but science lessons should also include “other possible perspectives, such as Intelligent Design and creationism.”
Infuriated by the results of their own survey, the atheists are on the warpath.
As a former science teacher and schools inspector, Dr Noble is well-qualified to speak on the issue. He writes: “I am disturbed that proposals for science education are based on near-complete ignorance of Intelligent Design. I also think the views of most British people in this matter should not be so readily set aside.”
In addition, he says that ID “has a good pedigree. A universe intelligible by design principles was the conclusion of many of the great pioneers of modern science.”
In fact, even the co-discoverer of natural selection believed in an “overruling Intelligence”. Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin and the unsung scientist whose own work on natural selection propelled Darwin into publishing his ‘On the Origin of Species’, was opposed to Darwin’s purely materialistic (atheistic) version of evolution.
Michael A. Flannery, in his book ‘Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace's World of Life Challenged Darwinism’, shows that Darwin's exclusion of God from any involvement in the development of life was well entrenched in his mind long before he wrote ‘Origin of Species’. In other words, his belief that evolution could happen all by itself was not a product of his science but his philosophical position.
After many years of research, Wallace, second only to Charles Darwin as the 19th century's most noted English naturalist, came to the conclusion that evolution could not have happened without being guided by a higher intelligence, whereas Darwin held to the concept of randomness in evolution.
Writing in Forbes magazine, Flannery explained: "Darwin's own theory could hardly be called objectively scientific. Early influences on Darwin's youth established his predisposition to materialism and a dogmatic methodological naturalism [the exclusion of supernatural explanations] long before his voyage on the Beagle.
"In short, Darwin's metaphysic compelled his science. Wallace, on the other hand, was a tireless investigator who increasingly discerned design in nature. Unlike Darwin, Wallace's science compelled his metaphysics."
Dr Noble, continuing his argument in the Guardian, points out that discoveries in the 150 years since Darwin and Wallace have only increased the strength of Wallace’s case: “It is easily overlooked that the origin of life, the integrated complexity of biological systems and the vast information content of DNA have not been adequately explained by purely materialistic or neo-Darwinian processes. Indeed it is hard to see how they ever will.
“In an area such as this, where we cannot observe what happened directly, a legitimate scientific approach is to make an inference to the best explanation. In the case of the huge bank of functional information embedded in biological systems, the best explanation – based on the observation everywhere else that such information only arises from intelligence – is that it too has an intelligent source…
“There is a tendency in school science to present the evidence for evolution as uniformly convincing and all-encompassing, failing to distinguish between what is directly observable – such as change and adaptation over time through natural selection – and the more hypothetical elements, like the descent of all living things from a common ancestor. The evidence for these various strands is not of equal strength.
“If you insist that intelligent causation is to be excluded in the study of origins then you are teaching materialist philosophy, not science.
“I believe current government guidance is wrong in denying intelligent design the status of science. However, it does encourage teachers to handle it ‘positively and educationally’. That's a small step in the right direction.”

Doubting Darwin

2009-12-04T13:26:00.004Z

Theos have now published their final report on Darwinism in 2009. The report Doubting Darwin - Can be read here. It investigates the thinking of creationists and evolution sceptics in the UK, and is suprisingly balanced in its approach, although a bit dry at times.

There is also an interesting debate here Have we misunderstood Creationism

Paul Bickley writes; "The first myth is that there is such a thing as a movement which we can legitimately call ‘creationism’." Undoubtedly that is correct, although there are as many views amongst those who hold to evolution. Undoubtedly also there is some bitter disputes, but I would suggest mainly at the fringes. Most creationists I know seek dialogue in a respectful manner.

"The second myth is that evolution sceptics are, in the words of Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society, “…anti-science…" Again quite right, most creationists are not anti-science, as even Ron Numbers has pointed out.

"The third myth is that the way to take the wind out of creationist sails is fierce rebuttal and public derision in the mode of Richard Dawkins or Harry Kroto. On the contrary, if evolution scepticism could ever be moulded into a movement, it would be due in no small measure to the galvanising effects of Dawkins’ rhetoric:" Again a good point, although the report does note that many creationists feel like a minority under attack.

"Bickley finishes with this useful statement,"If the public debate on faith and evolution is to move beyond its stale polarities, we could do worse than starting with rigorous analyses of the protagonists’ respective positions. The evolution-sceptical community is not really what reputation would make it. Listening carefully – knowing who ‘creationists’ really are and what they really think – is a first step to understanding the roots of their antagonism. In time, this understanding could undergird strategies which improve public engagement with science."

Guardian 'Comment is Free' on ID

2009-12-03T17:01:00.002Z

A 'Comment is Free' item on the Guardian website has stoked a great deal of interest with over 1500 responses. Clearly the item, by former schools inspector Alistair Noble, has stirred up a hornets nest.

Intelligent design should not be excluded from the study of origins - Complex biological systems have not been explained by neo-Darwinian processes

From the blog profile "Dr Alastair Noble is an educational consultant and lay preacher, and a former teacher and research chemist."

Children in Dawkins' atheist ads are from Christian family

2009-11-26T13:07:00.004Z

The Times is reporting that the happy, smiling children on an atheist ad campaign are in fact from a Christian, evangelical family. An interesting irony perhaps.

Children who front Richard Dawkins' atheist ads are evangelicals

The ad calls for children to be brought up without having religious labels placed upon them by their parents. Of course while the humanists don't want parents to instill their values within their own children, they really want children to turn into humanists without any religious belief - why else would they fund these adverts?

It is an interesting question what right parents have to instill their beliefs upon their children (I would suggest it is in fact a duty to bring children up to love and respect others, and the best basis for that is within a Christian ethos) But I would ask, what right does Dawkins and friends think they have to force their beliefs upon other people's children? Absolutely none!

While they have a pretence to respect children's freedom to believe, the humanists are engaged in a campaign to remove traces of religion from public life in Britain and America. Secular education for instance has an undercurrent of humanist beliefs. Charles F. Potter wrote in 1930 (in Humanism: A New Religion), 'Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school's meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?'

The 'program' of Dawkins and friends is not about freedom and respect at all, but about control - their control.

But perhaps the message of the smiling children in the ads, is that if you want your children to grow up happy, then bring them up in a loving Christian environment where they learn about values. About their own values and the value of others.

Darwin and school shootings

2009-11-12T13:12:00.006Z

A friend has alerted me to this book and article in The Times online.

Charles Darwin and the children of the evolution

The headline makes the statement "The naturalist outraged the church, prompting a bitter debate that still sets creationists against evolutionists. Now a sinister link has emerged between his work and the recent spate of high-school killings by crazed, nihilistic teenagers."

Read the article here by Dennis Sewell

The book is available "The Political Gene: How Darwin’s Ideas Changed Politics" (Picador, £18.99) by Dennis Sewell is available at the BooksFirst price of £17.09, including p&p.
"The Political Gene: How Darwin’s Ideas Changed Politics" at www.amazon.co.uk

IVP book now advertised + some more news

2009-10-22T20:56:00.008+01:00

IVP have now published their latest catalogue advertising the book edited by Norman Nevin

Should Christians Embrace Evolution?

Andrew Halloway has a couple of news items of note on the Lifebite website. Firstly Andrew responds to the claim that the language of Genesis does not indicate God's direct creation from nothing, then he comments on Richard Dawkins refusal to debate intelligent design proponent Steve Meyer following the publication of his new book.

God not the Creator, Says theologian --- Dawkins Dodges Design Debate
.

Should Christians Embrace Evolution? – new book edited by leading geneticist

2009-10-13T16:42:00.002+01:00

There is a new book coming out in November Should Christians Embrace Evolution? published by IVP edited by Norman C Nevin

From Amazon.co.uk

I picked this link up from Pandas Thumb it may be a bit out of date – about Norman Nevin

“Professor Norman Nevin: Norman C. Nevin is Professor of Medical Genetics, Queen’s University of Belfast and Head of the Northern Regional Genetics Service. He has held the positions of secretary, vice-president and president of the UK Clinical Genetics Society as well as serving on various national and international committees notably the Human Genetics Advisory Commission. He is a member of the European Concerted Action for congenital abnormalities. Professor Nevin was a founder member of the UK Gene Therapy Advisory Committee (GTAC) and is currently its’ chairman. His research interests have resulted in over 300 peer reviewed publications on various aspects of genetics, especially single gene disorders and congenital abnormalities.”

David Anderson has posted the Preface online

“In the face of the new atheists’ claim that evolution has rendered faith utterly redundant there is a flood tide arising that demands that Christians must embrace evolution or acknowledge that they are opposed to science. This book believes that this is a false premise. It is written to set out a clear theological framework on the relevant issues and to confront the questions that this gives rise to. It is written with a compelling conviction that science and faith are not in opposition. It is written by theologians who are committed to the authority of Scripture and to the exercise of careful exegesis. It is written by scientists who are fully persuaded of the importance of rigorous scientific investigation but who are dissatisfied with the arbitrary exclusion of possible conclusions and the failure to follow the evidence wherever it leads. This is not written for a select readership that already has expert knowledge of the subjects. It is written for ordinary men and women, who have the capacity to weigh the information, seek further clarification and draw their own conclusions.”

‘God is not the Creator’, claims academic

2009-10-13T16:38:00.000+01:00

The Daily Telegraph has reported the work of a Dutch academic who claims the first verse of the Bible has been wrongly translated. Why we should believe a 21st century academic over traditional biblical teaching, where the writers were understood the Hebrew language much better than westerners do, I don’t know.

The paper reports Prof Ellen Van Wolde as claiming that the Hebrew verb "bara", does not mean "to create" but to "spatially separate". The first sentence should now read "in the beginning God separated the Heaven and the Earth" according to her.

There is incidentally a lot of harmony with this view and pagan beliefs, where Plato’s demiurge was for instance said to have created the world out of a pre existing chaos. Traditional scholars consider that Genesis was written in a style by Moses that was diametrically opposed to the beliefs of the pagan nations that surrounded Israel at the time, thus giving ‘clear blue water’ between the work of the one true God, and the gods the other nations considered to be divine. Genesis presents an ordered creation spoken into existence at God’s direct command.

Old Testament scholar Alistair McKitterick writes; “The word 'bara' certainly does mean create, if you read it in the context of the rest of the Bible. There is a perfectly good Hebrew word for 'to divide', namely the Hiphil form of the verb 'badal', which occurs a number of times in the first chapter of Genesis. What Professor Van Wolde seems to be doing is to take the Ancient Near Eastern myths and try to squeeze the Genesis account into conformity with them. But if the only way you can do this is to distort the Genesis account, then it is a pretty good sign that the endeavour is doomed to fail.

Genesis is different to the ANE accounts. God is certainly depicted as creating everything from nothing in the first verse, and that is the kind of thing that the Biblical God does. It is much better practice to read Genesis 1 in light of John 1, where we read that through God the Logos 'all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.'

If Prof Van Wolde were interested in the Biblical teaching about creation then she should have turned to the rest of the Bible to help her understand the meanings of such words, rather than to a collection of polytheistic texts. Polytheism will forever have a problem with creation because they will always have difficulty answering the important question 'which god came first?' and 'which god made the other gods?' The Bible has no such difficulties; it is the consistent teaching of the whole of Scripture that the one holy Lord God made all things.”

Source: Richard Alleyne, God is not the Creator, claims academic, Daily Telegraph, 8th October 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6274502/God-is-not-the-Creator-claims-academic.html

Mega-hyped 'Missing Link' quietly dropped

2009-09-15T18:07:00.003+01:00

Back in May the BBC trumpeted its ‘missing link’ fossil documentary as “the exclusive story behind a scientific discovery that could revolutionise our understanding of human evolution” – but already the ‘Ida’ fossil is being relegated to the backwaters of evolutionary discussion.

The flagship BBC1 60-minute documentary ‘Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link’, presented by David Attenborough, was shamelessly promoted as revealing a devastating discovery for evolution-doubters.

Dr Jørn Hurum, leader of the scientists analysing the lemur-like fossil, confidently asserted: “This is the first link to all humans.” The media jumped on the evolution bandwagon, proclaiming Ida as a ‘ground-breaking’ find.

Before even having seen the programme, I predicted in a report on Lifebite that once all the hoopla had died down, Ida may well turn out to be a lame duck. I said: “Be wary of the media when you see TV programmes or headlines that deal with evolution – someone might well be making a monkey out of you.”

On the eve of the broadcast, some commentators were even then beginning to have qualms about the claims for Ida. Times science writer Mark Henderson said: “I am baffled as to how they [the scientists] could stress the significance of this fossil without undertaking the requisite research to support their hypothesis.”

In July, only two months after the headline-hitting documentary, America’s leading science journal, Scientific American, let the cat out of the bag.

In ‘Weak Link: Fossil Darwinius has its 15 minutes: Skepticism about a fossil cast as a missing link in human ancestry’ (Scientific American, July 21, 2009), Kate Wong described the original hype: “In an elaborate public relations campaign in which the release of a website, a book and a documentary on the History Channel were timed to coincide with the publication of the scientific paper describing her… Ida’s significance was described in no uncertain terms as the missing link between us humans and our primate kin. In news reports, team members called her ‘the eighth wonder of the world,’ ‘the Holy Grail’ and ‘a Rosetta Stone’.

“The orchestration paid off, as Ida graced the front page of countless newspapers and made appearances on the morning (and evening) news programmes… And Google incorporated her image into its logo on the main search page for a day.”

Wong also described the subsequent scientific downgrading of Ida: “Critics concur that Ida is an adapiform, but they dispute the alleged ties to anthropoids [the line leading to humans]. Robert Martin of the Field Museum in Chicago charges that some of the traits used to align Ida with the anthropoids do not in fact support such a relationship. Fusion of the lower jaw, for instance, is not present in the earliest unequivocal anthropoids, suggesting that it was not an ancestral feature of this group…

“Martin further notes that Ida also lacks a defining feature of the anthropoids: a bony wall at the back of the eye socket. ‘I am utterly convinced that Darwinius [Ida] has nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of higher primates,’ he declares.”

In other words, the so-called great missing link in human evolution is no more. But will BBC1 be broadcasting an hour-long documentary to rectify their mistake and let the public know that what was proclaimed as evidence of human evolution is no such thing? Will they heck.

As I said in my article in May: “Anyone who keeps a critical eye on the overblown claims of evolutionists has been here before. It’s certainly not the first time that a so-called ‘missing link’ has been hyped to the media as the holy grail of evolution, only later to be quietly debunked in the back corridors of academia away from the media’s prying eyes.”

The real story that the media should be reporting is that scientists rushed prematurely into publicising a ‘missing link’ to humans because they are desperate for proof of evolution, and came a cropper – yet again. Perhaps they need the PR to keep their evolution research budget fed, and perhaps the TV channels and newspapers are just too eager for evidence to support their own liberal, atheistic opinions.

Meanwhile, truly ground-breaking evidence for the Intelligent Design (ID) behind life is ignored by both scientists and the media.
Leading ID theorist Dr Steve Meyer has a new book out called ‘Signature in the Cell’ which is described by a review in The American Spectator as “a defining work in the discussion of life’s origins and the question of whether life is a product of unthinking matter or of an intelligent mind. For those who disagree with ID, the powerful case Meyer presents cannot be ignored in any honest debate.”

The review explains that the chance of life arising by itself, with no input from a Designer, is less than the chance of accidentally finding one atom in the entire galaxy: “It has been calculated that the mathematical chance of producing a functional protein of a modest length of 150 amino acids long, is about one in 10⁷⁴. Since the number of atoms in our galaxy may be estimated to be 10⁶⁵, it would be a billion times easier to find a single marked atom in the Milky Way by a completely random search than to produce functional proteins 150 amino acids long by chance.

“Historically, those advocating that life could arise from random combinations of molecules typically have invoked lengthy time periods that would permit such unlikely results to occur. In the 1950s, a biochemist quoted by Meyer explained that, ‘Time is in fact the hero of the plot…Given so much time, the impossible becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain.’

“Well, no. Life on earth, according to most scientists, developed within the first billion years or so after earth’s formation. A billion years (nine zeros) seems like a long time, but any scenario relying on chance is hopelessly, pathetically, impossibly inadequate when confronted with probabilities such as 1 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (74 zeros for the modest protein just mentioned).”

And that’s just for one protein. There are many more needed for life to arise, and they must all work together in an extremely complex symphony to produce a cell with its own encoded information and mechanisms for reproducing itself. All by chance. All before evolution can even begin to have any influence on life.

What will it take for our media to begin to give an equal hearing to scientists who have a more plausible theory about life’s origin?

By Andrew Halloway - first published at www.lifebite.co.uk

Have we evolved to believe in God ?

2009-09-12T12:58:00.003+01:00

The Sunday Times, September 6, 2009, 'We are born to believe in God' by Jonathan Leake and Andrew Sniderman

Apparently: "The idea has emerged from studies of the way children’s brains develop and of the workings of the brain during religious experiences. They suggest that during evolution groups of humans with religious tendencies began to benefit from their beliefs, perhaps because they tended to work together better and so stood a greater chance of survival."

Similar arguments have been made for belief in design which seems hard wired into children, even those of atheistic parents. But there is a gapping hole in this argument for evolution. It is pertintent to ask. 'If I have evolved to believe I have not evolved, then does not evolution produce in me false beliefs? In which case how can I know I have evolved?

Science clearly works best in the context that there is a creator God who has brought order to nature.
Andrew Sibley

Realism and Climate Change

2009-09-10T22:12:00.000+01:00

Mike Hulme asks us to become more realistic about climate change. Instead of seeking to eradicate it we need to come to terms with it.

Mike Hulme in the New Scientist

"... they will not "solve" climate change. This does not imply passivity in the face of change, however. Nor does it allow us to deny that our actions on this planet are changing the climate. But it does suggest that making climate control our number one political priority might not be the most fruitful way of using the idea of climate change.

The world's climates will keep on changing, with human influences now inextricably entangled with those of nature. So too will the idea of climate change keep changing as we find new ways of using it to meet our needs. We will continue to create and tell new stories about climate change and mobilise these stories in support of our projects. Whereas a modernist reading of climate may once have regarded it as merely a physical condition for human action, we must now come to terms with climate change operating simultaneously as an overlying, but more fluid, imaginative condition of human existence."

Posted by Andrew Sibley

The Seen and Unseen in Science and Theology

2009-08-30T16:46:00.002+01:00

Another interesting paper I have come across recently was published by the American Scientific Affiliation. Hyung S. Choi , 'Knowledge of the Unseen: A New Vision for Science and Religion Dialogue', Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 53.2 (June 2001): 96-101.

http://www.asa3.org/asa/pscf/2001/pscf6-01choi.html

A few quotes:

"While contemporary physics and cosmology take seriously the knowledge of invisible realities, the discussion of the unseen in religion has been largely neglected in the recent science-and-religion discussion. Neglecting the issue in theology is ultimately self- defeating since God is considered the Unseen. In light of contemporary understanding of the unseen in science, we contend that that there are significant parallels between scientific and theological claims concerning the unseen. The epistemic distinction between the seen and the unseen does not necessarily imply the ontological demarcation between the natural and the supernatural. New heuristic frameworks such as a multi- dimensional model are suggested for more holistic and dynamical understanding of reality that includes both the seen and the unseen."

"In hindsight, it is an irony that while modernity in its positivistic spirit started out with the notion that the reality perceived by our senses is the only knowable reality there is, we now end up with the idea that the true nature of physical reality is quite different from what we experience through our senses. The legend of the tangibility of matter, or what may be called "the matter myth," which served as the basis for the certainty of knowledge, was lost."

"Here, within science, were raised the problem of reality (an ontological problem), issues of the limits of human knowledge (an epistemological problem), and the problem of testability (a methodological problem). Relativity and quantum physics, which serve as the pillars of contemporary science, and more recently chaos theory, are now presenting us with a radically new physical view of the world in which positivistic, deterministic, and materialistic philosophies no longer have secure places. They present us with deeper, greater, and more mysterious aspects of nature."

Andrew Sibley

Humanists try to Close Christian Zoo

2009-08-28T07:46:00.002+01:00

It seems the British Humanist Association (BHA) has become a self-appointed arbiter of science. In criticising a Christian-owned zoo this week, it seems to be aping Richard Dawkins in not only promoting atheism but also pontificating on what is or is not good science.

Mind you, it’s got ‘previous’ on this issue, having waded into scientific arguments on many occasions. And, true to form, it is also trying to squash opposition to evolution, instead of standing for the ‘free thinking’ it claims to embrace.

The BHA says Noah's Ark Zoo Farm in Wraxhall, North Somerset, is bad for science, and has been urging tourism boards to boycott the zoo and the local authority to revoke its licence. Of course, the BHA’s concern for good science is a cloak for its opposition to creationism. When else do you ever see the BHA standing up for good science? Answer: only when creationism or Intelligent Design theory need a good kicking. Why? Because such unorthodox science threatens the atheistic view of life that the BHA espouses. It can stomach no opposition.

Signs at the zoo suggest that the "three great people groups" of the world may be descendants of Noah – which a literal reading of the Bible would certainly support. Another sign says animal predation occurred after "man rebelled against God". Now, such views might be typical of traditional Young Earth Creationism (YEC), but the website and two spokespeople for the zoo do say that they view “the natural world around us as a product of both God and evolution”.

A closer look at their website indicates they accept a limited form of evolution and believe that the world may be much older than the typical YEC position of less than 10,000 years. As a spokesperson says, "Although technically creationists, we do not hold the stereotypical creationist views that the world was created in 6,000 years and there is no evolution."

So we are not dealing here with the ultra-traditional creationism that the BHA seems to want to brand this zoo as espousing. But that is no matter to the BHA – any religious view on life must be suppressed. The BHA’s criticism is an attack not only on creationism but on freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

BHA education officer Paul Pettinger says, "We're very concerned because it will undermine education and the teaching of science." First, it’s ridiculous that one small zoo could undermine education as a whole, and second it certainly doesn’t undermine the teaching of science itself – only the teaching of a rigid Darwinian view of evolution. But of course, the BHA needs evolution to reign supreme in order to shore up its atheistic beliefs.

The zoo’s website says that scientists are afraid to talk about "design" in the natural world, and the zoo’s owner Anthony Bush says, "There's a lot of people who believe in Genesis who don't want to come out of the woodwork, but they don't want to come out of the closet because of the thought police."

Well, it’s clear why when the Inquisitors of the BHA come knocking on your door if you cast the slightest doubt on Darwinism.

Bush, a former Evangelical preacher, says his zoo actually presents a variety of views, only one of which is creationist. "I think God created life. I have no idea when," he adds.

One tourism group, Visit England, avoided the issue by pointing out that it only checks a zoo’s visitor satisfaction rating and has no opinion on content. On that score, Noah’s Ark Zoo is clearly a winner. Despite only having 100 animals, it is visited by 120,000 people every year, including members of school parties, yet only gets about ten complaints per year. As Noah's Ark research assistant Jon Woodwood says, "Clearly the public do not share the British Humanist viewpoint.''

BHA director of education and public affairs Andrew Copson also accuses the zoo of deceiving people about its creationist views: ''We believe Noah's Ark Farm Zoo misleads the public by not being open about its creationist agenda in its promotional activities.”

This is clearly untrue as the zoo website has a whole section on creationism and is completely open about its stance. And as Jon Woodwood points out, the zoo is actually named after the biblical Noah’s Ark – might that not be a big clue as to its viewpoint?!

As for undermining science education… ''Our education policy is purely based around the National Curriculum. We are offering our visitors the chance to look at the evolution/creation debate. As it is a free country, that is within our right. Contrary to a small minority of people's claims we do not teach false science.

''This is clearly shown within the zoo, with one exhibition talking about Darwin and another offering another point of view.”

Fortunately the director of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums, Miranda Stevenson, is perceptive: ''I find it extraordinary that an organisation that I thought promotes free thinking appears to want censorship.''
By Andrew Halloway

Theos and Mary Midgley

2009-08-18T23:02:00.001+01:00

Nick Spencer of Theos has interviewed Mary Midgley as part of their Rescuing Darwin project. This is written up in a report entitled Discussing Darwin. It would seem though that Midgley is closer to post-modernism and a multi-faith approach to truth, than the type of objective modernism that Darwinists believe underpins their science. Is she really the person to ask to defend science? Both Dawkins and scientific creationists have one point of agreement, that there is such a thing as objective truth.

http://campaigndirector.moodia.com/Client/Theos/Files/DiscussingDarwin.pdf

While she has a few good points to make, she believes for instance that Darwinism is the creation myth of our age, she seems in reality muddled by post-modern ideas. I am not convinced that Darwinists would really find such ideas of relative truth helpful to the advancement of objective science. She comments;

“Yes, we all have myths through which we explain the world. The word ‘myth’ is a bit awkward because it is sometimes used simply to mean ‘false’, but I find its other meaning very useful. I also talk about dreams and dramas and visions and so forth. Whichever way one talks about it, it’s about an imaginative background, a way of seeing a problem in the world which determines what questions you ask, how you select your questions.”(p. 13)

“I suppose it sounds less surprising if one refers to ‘visions’. It’s an imaginative framework within which one fits the different elements. (p.14)

“So if one asks what myth the term ‘evolution’ is propagating, it is rather a pernicious one in many ways, because whatever the right way to justify some policy may be, it never is that it is the only road to the future.” (p.16)

But while she believes in having one’s own ‘myth’, and recognizes the subjective and perhaps ‘pernicious’ nature of such beliefs; ‘revelation’ she thinks is dangerous. “You need to have an awareness that other people have views and that your position is just your position and not revelation. The idea of revelations is a dangerous one.” (p.15)

In this statement she is making the mistake of collapsing a belief in literal truth into militant fanaticism. That does not follow by necessity and is offensive to many people, but it is a prejudice of our age where liberals have an antithesis towards those who believe strongly in objective truth, whether it is suicide bombers, or those who uphold the absolute sanctity of life; but what of nihilism – and the darker side of Darwinism that comes out of ‘myth,’ isn't that potentially dangerous also?

So biblical literalism is apparently irrational and dangerous. That sounds to me like an argument that objective truth is irrational or relative truth is rational. As Mike Peter’s of the pop group the Alarm said, ‘The truth is the truth or the truth is surely a lie.’ Or as St Paul said, ‘let God be true and every man a liar.’

It is part of the muddled thinking of post-modernism where the only acceptable intolerance is towards those who are deemed intolerant because of their belief. I might ask on what basis and by whose authority should we reject objective truth - not on the basis of reason and logic I would guess. So why might I disagree with her article - perhaps for no other reason than it makes me feel good and it isn’t in accord with my ‘myth’, but that would be wholly unsatisfactory.

Midgley though thinks that creationists and intelligent design supporters are cutting themselves off from others. I would suggest the reverse is the case, that the liberals who accept Darwinism are expelling and ostracising those who want to believe that there is a truth and objectivity in the universe worth finding, a 'myth' that is ultimately true is the great hope of humanity.

Andrew Sibley

James Lovelock calls for mitigation strategies

2009-08-15T16:57:00.005+01:00

James Lovelock commented to an audience at the 'Ways With Words' literary festival at Dartington Hall, near Totnes in Devon that; "It's not going to take much of a sea-surge to knock out London. We should be spending money strengthening defences there rather than vain efforts to improve renewable energy."

Although he thinks renewables are a good idea, he is right to note that they are not very practical at present, instead more work needs to be done in developing mitigation strategies around the world to protect against sever weather. That would have a benefit to the world whether global warming is real or not.
Renewables are a waste of time, says James Lovelock Telegraph 14th July 2009

Andrew Sibley

So even God evolves now?

2009-07-24T20:05:00.002+01:00

A new book by an author of best-selling books about science, evolutionary psychology, history and religion attempts to unify conflicting religions into a one-world religion of niceness – thereby avoiding World War Three. How? By showing that belief in God has evolved and is evolving into a ‘tolerant’ God that all religions can share.

Breath-taking naivety or a subtle crusade for political correctness?

Both, if you ask me. But as usual this theme of unifying religions will be lapped up by the chattering classes. The author is Robert Wright – an American journalist and scholar who was born into a Southern Baptist family. He seems to have rejected faith as a young man – leaving Texas Christian University after only one year, switching to Princeton University.

If Richard Dawkins and the ‘new atheists’ have their way, religion will be eliminated. They claim this will be for the universal good because they believe that religion poses the greatest danger to world peace today. But more realistic atheists and agnostics, who recognise that God is too powerful a concept for people to give up, are instead trying to recreate him in their own liberal image so that ‘tolerance’ becomes the god of all religions. In this way, each religion’s own understanding of God will no longer be so unique that it’s worth fighting for, and consequently all religions will be emasculated and their attraction undermined.

This seems to be the secret campaign behind Robert Wright’s book. And to give the idea a veneer of scientific respectability, Wright has called his book ‘The Evolution of God’. Of course, to the so-called ‘fundamentalists’ who oppose his views, the word ‘evolution’ will be a red rag to a bull. But bending evolution to his cause will give Wright’s book an appeal to those more liberal believers who have already compromised their religion by accepting evolution instead of their own creation doctrines.

Indeed, it won praise in a Sunday Times’ review (10 May) by Andrew Sullivan, a liberal Christian: “My own view, as a struggling and doubting person of faith, is that truth matters in whatever mode we find it — but ultimate truth, because we are not ultimate beings, will always elude us. The search for this truth is the point, illuminated in my own faith by Jesus… Our consciousness asks questions to which there will never be a complete answer… And the challenge of our time is… a humble openness to history and science and revelation in the journey of faith… if we are to survive this era of technology with the potential of mass destruction, if we are to endure past the darkness of the Taliban and the religious right, this process of religious reform is not an option. It is a necessity.”

Note Sullivan’s readiness to equate the “religious right”, by which he means Bible-believing Christians, with the Taliban. In that respect, he’s already fallen for the atheist propaganda that sees all fervent believers – as opposed to “doubting persons” –as a bad thing, regardless of whether one group (fundamentalist Islam) promotes violence and the other (Bible believers) denounces it.

Then note Sullivan’s belief that ultimate truth will always elude us, in contrast to the uncompromising words of the Jesus he claims to be illuminated by: “I am the truth. No one comes to the Father except by me.” Note too his readiness to accept “history and science” as well as revelation in his “journey of faith” – as if God’s revelation in the Bible were not enough. In contrast, the Bible claims that all we need for salvation and truth is revealed by God in its pages – and condemns anyone who would seek to add to it.

But liberal Christians like Sullivan have already made themselves vulnerable to Wright’s kind of “religious reform” by losing faith in the authority of the Bible, so it’s not surprising that they should go along with his ideas. In fact, Sullivan is exactly the sort of believer that Wright aims to attract to his ultimately secularist cause. But Wright waits till nearly half way through his book to reveal the real aim of his argument: "Today globalisation has made the planet too small to peacefully accommodate large religions that are at odds. If the Abrahamic God—the God of Jews and the God of Christians and the God of Muslims—doesn't foster tolerance, then we're all in trouble. We need a god whose sympathies correspond to the scale of social organisation, the global scale" (p. 205).

Just like Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris, Wright believes that loyal Jews, Christians and Muslims threaten world peace because their religions give them non-negotiable beliefs. As another reviewer, Dr Benjamin Wiker, explains, “Rather than eliminate these intractable religions, Wright engages in a grand strategy of co-opting all three by vacuuming them up into a larger, comprehensive evolutionary-historical argument, wherein their particularities are magically being transformed into a deity he can countenance—[which is] more or less, Wright himself writ large, a god of universal niceness whose one command is ‘Thou shalt be tolerant of all gods before me, or no gods, or anything in between. Or whatever. Just don't fight.’ “This isn't a real god, as Wright himself admits: ‘The god I've been describing is a god in quotation marks, a god that exists in people's heads.’”

And how should this new god of tolerance be imposed on the world? Well, ironically for a liberal, Wright suggests what can only be described as a totalitarian route: moving from national to international rule. In the interests of world peace, there must be a universal world government that promotes Wright’s new type of monotheism. As Wiker says, Wright’s philosophy is: “One government, one god, and his name is Tolerance… It is wishful thinking of the worst kind: ‘I wish God would go away, but since he won't, let's at least make him useful.’”

But if history and evolution are moving human beings inexorably towards this goal of one ‘god’ of niceness, as Wright claims, why does he need to argue for it? Why not just sit back and let it evolve? Maybe because it’s not happening – human morality is not evolving towards niceness, and Wright needs to persuade us to accept a one-world government to impose this tolerance on all of us (by force if necessary, one assumes). But we have already seen what happens when a global movement to make everybody conform to the same beliefs tries to impose those beliefs by political power – it was called Communism. And not only did it not defeat religion, it moved morally backwards, not forwards. It was responsible for the most un-nice, intolerant, human rights abuses in human history.

Using implausible Darwinian theory as scant cover, Wright basically argues for a political solution to a religious problem. And just as natural selection kills off those unfit for the environment, so Wright’s so-called tolerant utopia will weed out the religious misfits who happen to disagree with him.

Haven’t we heard all this before somewhere? Well, yes. It’s all written in the Book of Revelation in the Bible, where an anti-Christ sets up a one-world government by deceiving the inhabitants of the earth. This anti-Christ will allow only one religion and “cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed” (13:15).

Those, like Wright, who try to hasten the arrival of a ‘new world order’ in the name of peace will find it only ushers in this most terrible dictator of all.

Thankfully, the return of Christ himself will end the reign of this ultimate tyrant, and reveal the Truth in all his glory.
Andrew Halloway www.christianeditor.co.uk

Evolution and cartoons

2009-07-12T21:12:00.003+01:00

Apparently children's cartoons, such as The Flintstones and Barney and Friends, are the reason why they do not accept evolution. This is according to James Williams who is a lecturer in education at the University of Sussex.

There is some irony that secular evolutionists are very happy to use iconography when in suits the cause, and only object when harmless cartoons hinder that cause. Sir Ambrose Fleming was complaining about the Illustrated News back in the 1920s and 1930s, which for instance turned a pig's tooth from Nebraska into our ancestor. Perhaps the reason many are sceptical of Darwinism is because of an apparent catalogue of abuse in science that keeps generating failed icons, thus forming a pattern from Bathybius to Piltdown Man to Microraptor. I would suggest that if science is disneyfied it is solely the work of the Darwinists.

One lesson from some Christian parents' experience of trying to ban popular cartoons from children is that it is often counter productive. If Dr Williams wishes to ban Barney and Friends from children, I can assure him that those children will not love or accept evolution more.
Evolution of confusion: Pupils take dinosaur fiction for fact - Academic says failure to teach young children scientific truth plays into creationists’ hands, TES, 3rd July 09

Peppered moths back to form

2009-06-21T07:42:00.010+01:00

The Daily Mail is reporting that the peppered moth, Biston betularia is now reverting back to its light form because of improvements to the environment. Of course this story is presented as evidence of evolution, but in reality it is just a change in the ratio of the numbers of the light and dark form. In other words, evidence of natural selection on pre existing genetic material, not an example of evolution at work.

The Daily Mail account can be read here

Other factors may also be involved. Judith Hooper's book 'Of Moths and Men' provided some interesting discussion about environmental factors that may change the moths colouration during the caterpillar stage.

Intelligent Design in the Telegraph

2009-06-11T18:57:00.004+01:00

An interesting article has recently appeared in the Daily Telegraph about 'biomimicry' - 8th June 2009 by Sanjida O'Connell.

Telegraph - Biomimicry: why the world is full of intelligent design

The Gecko for instance has specially adapted feet for climbing, technology that has been put to good use by the Pentagon.

Are animal experiments about to end?

2009-06-04T20:49:00.002+01:00

Those concerned about experimentation on living animals may find the following news encouraging. According to The Times advances in science mean that new drugs will soon be able to be tested on virtual computer systems, and on cultures of cells. Read the news story at the following link.
Sam Lister at The Times - Animals experiments could end in a generation
Andrew Sibley

The 'fiasco' of Ida. Has the BBC helped deminish science?

2009-05-27T13:13:00.003+01:00

The repercussions over Ida continue. Although I have as yet only seen the first few minutes of the BBC programme about Ida, a telling statement by Attenborough raises concern about the way the science behind Ida is being conducted. Attenborough commented that scientists had been working in secret, but are now going public in a big way on how important this find is, that is before peer review has even begun in a meaningful way. Brian Switek writes as follows.

" If Ida does turn out be more closely related to lemurs than to humans, creationists may use the hype to paint evolutionary scientists as glory hounds who care more about publicity than accuracy. Ida would not be an “icon of evolution”, as Dr Hurum hopes, but a public embarrassment that creationists would surely use to sow further doubt about evolution. Likening Ida to the Holy Grail and the Lost Ark only compounds the problem; creationists will undoubtedly argue that these metaphors reveal that evolution is a religion with its own holy relics.

What could have been a unique opportunity to communicate science has quickly developed into a fiasco. Science proceeds through discovery and debate, and hypotheses do not become accepted by flooding the media with press releases. Scientific scrutiny of Ida has only just begun, and regardless of who her closest living relatives are, I hope the debate surrounding her will not sink away from sight. She truly is an amazing find, but for now I think that she has taught us more about science communication than our ancestry."

See: The dangerous link between science and hype - Brian Switek - The Times

See also
Origin of the Specious - Ida the fossil was hailed as the ‘missing link’ in our evolution. Don’t believe the hype - Leake and Harlow - The Times

The following was place on the Uncommondescent blog a few days ago.
Ida the Lemur and media manipulation

Ida the Lemur-like creature, has had some high praise from leading Darwinists. David Attenborough announced with confidence that the missing link ‘is no longer missing,’ but the way the evidence has been presented and handled has raised questions about media manipulation, especially from the London Times science correspondent Mark Henderson; he seems quite miffed.

More on Ida; overblown claims and a worrying precedent

Mark Henderson reports that doubts have arisen now that others have finally been given access to the fossil and suggests that Ida is related to ‘nothing that exists today.’ Although Ida is an important fossil, he writes that ‘she isn’t all that’ and complains that the researchers haven’t provided sufficient evidence to justify their claims. He argues that this is…

‘…especially serious given the publicity blitz behind Ida…a popular book, a documentary, a website and an exhibition have been launched on the back of this find, before it has received full scientific scrutiny.’

Henderson comments that the researchers appear to have rushed their work ‘to fit with the media schedule.’ Rights were sold to some media outlets, including the BBC, and this has shaped the way the evidence has been conducted and presented. Science journalists without that privileged access to data were given insufficient time to properly evaluate the story. Henderson writes;

‘Is it really right that full embargoed access to important and controversial research findings should be restricted on the say-so of the authors, to media that best suit their publicity strategy? Especially when money has changed hands?’

Henderson ends by correcting a previous statement;

‘there was an unfortunate error in the graphic accompanying my piece in the paper. An early draft was printed by mistake. Darwinius masillae is not a direct ancestor of both lemurs/lorises and apes/monkeys. It seems to lie on the ape/monkey branch, after the last common ancestor of both groups, and it may well be a direct ancestor of nothing at all that exists today.’ (emphasis added)

Did Darwin Kill God ? Disappointing debate at Westminster Abbey

2009-05-15T15:47:00.006+01:00

This event, organised by Theos, and held in Westminster Abbey seems to have failed to live up to expectations, even though 800 people attended. Reading some of the commentaries suggests the debate was a bit of a non-event. But then with all the panellists committed Darwinists that is hardly surprising.

The panel consisted of Lord Robert Winston - a Jew of unknown description, Professor Steve Jones – who likes to be identified as a 'non-theist', Dr Denis Alexander - a Christian theistic evolutionist from the Faraday Institute, and Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell – who is apparently an agnostic.

The debate was supposedly part of Theos’ project on Darwin and Religion, but the panel was disappointingly unrepresentative of the British public, 51% of whom are sceptical of Darwinism according to Theos’ own recent survey.

Paul Woolley suggests that one lesson that came out of the debate is that it demonstrates that it is possible to ‘disagree without being disagreeable.’ He accuses some atheist’ books of being ‘devoid of grace, humility and courtesy.’ A fair point, but there would appear to be a little amnesia in this statement concerning comments in a postscrtipt in Denis Alexander's recent book.

Let’s be frank. While having a superficial respectability, the shape of this debate revealed a desire to exclude the views of a large section of the population who are in fact sceptical of Darwin’s claims. Very convenient instead to pretend they are not important or their views don't matter. I would hope that the next time Theos decide to organise an event they remember to include intelligent design supporters and those who are honestly sceptical of evolution. There are many of us have long called for respectful dialogue along these lines.

Further reading:

Theos comment -
http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/Did_Darwin_kill_God.aspx?ArticleID=3105&PageID=14&RefPageID=5

Justin Thacker’s comment -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/may/13/darwin-evolution-religion-science

Paul Woolley’s comment -
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/paul_woolley/blog/2009/05/13/did_darwin_kill_god
Andrew Sibley

A.N.Wilson returns to his Christian faith

2009-05-04T11:09:00.004+01:00

The former noted atheist A.N.Wilson has returned to his Christian faith after years of doubting [1]. His article in the New Statement makes interesting reading, suggesting that his initial conversion to atheism was a quasi-religious experience where he felt at one with his atheist peers such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

However, doubts remained towards atheism. Wilson comments that he finds religious authors, such as Samuel Johnson and composers such as Bach and Beethoven more interesting than the works of atheists and sceptics such as David Hume. Furthermore, he suggests that the explanations that Darwinists give are mere story telling and every bit as creedal as the biblical stories.

Wilson comments that it is just too incredible that language simply evolved, noting the ‘amazing morphological complexity of a single sentence.’ The existence of language, and love and music, convinced Wilson that humans are spiritual beings. Furthermore, he asserts that the religion of the incarnation, where God made mankind in His image, and then ‘continually restores’ humanity is ‘simply true’; this is because it fits best with a complete understanding of life. Wilson questions whether atheists are really missing out on the richness of human experience and have ‘no ear for music, or have never been in love.’

Wilson also comments on his research into the Wagner family and Nazism in Germany, and says that he found Hitler’s neo-Darwinian ravings to be incoherent. However, the opposition to Hitler came mainly from Christians who paid for their stand with their blood. This has left an impression upon Wilson, especially Bonhoeffer's book on ethics, which shows that ethics cannot simply be of human construction. Wilson then believes that atheists are making a category mistake about what it means to be human, and that, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge noted, materialism can never explain how man came to be a living soul.

[1] Published here: A.N.Wilson, Why I believe Again, New Statesman, 2nd April 2009

Andrew Sibley

Did Darwin Kill God?

2009-04-06T16:32:00.004+01:00

Professor Steve Fuller offers a very useful review of the recent BBC 2 programme 'Did Darwin kill God?' by Coner Cunningham shown 31st March 2009 Review: Did Darwin Kill God? Uncommon Descent Cunningham, it would seem, is involved with a theological movement known as ‘Radical Orthodoxy.’ An attempt apparently to recover a pre modern view of the world.

Here is my own review - The latest programme in the BBC’s pro Darwin propaganda series for the birthday celebrations was Did Darwin Kill God? Shown 31st March on BBC2 7pm, presented by Coner Cunningham. I found this programme to be very disappointing indeed.

Cunningham, who wanted us to know that he was a Christian who accepted Darwin’s findings, tried to make the case that the orthodox Christian view was that of acceptance of evolution, with the literal interpretation of Genesis considered un-orthodox and only a twentieth century invention by extreme fundamentalists. In order to make this point Cunningham used evidence very selectively, citing Philo and Augustine to make his case, ignoring the words of Jesus and the apostles writing, or biblical literalists such as St Basil. Philo though was Jewish with an interest in the works of Greek philosophers, hardly an example for orthodox Christianity. The other person he cited was Augustine, who was a convert from neo-Platonism. Even so Augustine gradually weeded the Platonism out of his theology by the time he wrote his third commentary on Genesis, considering that a literal reading should be accepted from day 4 of the creation week.

Peter Harrison, an Oxford Professor of theology, has also argued that the Protestant commitment to reading scripture literally actually enabled science to get going because the reformers then read creation literally, and not symbolically as had been the case in the past. Cunningham failed to mention this evidence, nor those Christians such as the Wesley’s and Luther who argued for a literal interpretation of Genesis in history.

Then we were told that young earth creationism was merely a twentieth century invention ignoring the hundreds of gentlemen scientists who were young earth creationists in British Victorian society, including the captain of the Beagle Robert FitzRoy. The founders of the Victoria Institute for instance were young earth creationists as were the nineteenth century scriptural geologists. Although Terry Mortenson of Answers in Genesis was interviewed his research on the scriptural geologists was ignored. Instead we were led to believe that most Christians merely caved in and accepted Darwinism within a few decades. For many years afterwards though Darwin’s claims were not widely accepted because the influential Lord Kelvin had given Darwin far too short a time span for his theory to work.

The funniest point was that we were then told that William Jennings Bryan was both a right wing Republican and a socialist! Yes Bryan was motivated to counter social Darwinism in America, and therefore he supported creationism of an old earth variety, but his politics looks decidedly mainstream being a conservative Christian with a social conscience, hardly the extremist that Cunningham was looking for.

A note about the programme from non-executive producer Jean Claude Bragard on the BBC website, comments that the producers wanted to explore how Christians harmonise Darwinism with their faith and Cunningham was asked to be involved and present the programme. Sadly, an accurate reflection of history was lacking, and we won’t hold our breath waiting for a more balanced approach that deals with the issues accurately. Instead, in this programme we were fed another set of Darwin myths that failed to get to the historical truth.

Andrew Sibley

BBC baulks at full implications of Darwinism

2009-03-29T09:13:00.002+01:00

‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’, the BBC2 series presented by Andrew Marr, has flinched from biting the bullet on the link between Darwinism and genocide. The title of this month’s three-part documentary promised more than it delivered – admitting that evolution was dangerous in the wrong hands, but absolving evolution of all the evil resulting from its adoption in the public and political sphere.

In his own BBC article promoting the series, Andrew Marr explains why Darwinism might be dangerous. He concludes: “However we celebrate the old man [Darwin], we mustn’t let his work crust into creed or harden to dogma.”

But he’s too late. Darwin’s idea hardened into dogma long ago. So much so that even Marr himself asks, “There’s no doubt that Darwinism, and indeed scientific truth generally, can supply people like me [atheists] with some of the nourishment religion offers… Darwin’s vast brow hangs over us all. His foamy white beard cascades down in the familiar Michelangelo Old Testament style. He speaks to mankind of ancient origins and end times. In this year of his double anniversary, are we in danger of turning Charles Darwin if not into God, at least into the founder of a secular religion?”

Marr in the end says that’s not the case, but he avoids the evidence. The truth is that the scientific establishment has long treated evolution as sacred doctrine and excommunicated anyone criticising the theory. And the consequences have been disastrous. Although the series highlighted the bad politics that came from Darwinism – the eugenics and genocidal policies of Nazism and Communism – it presented that fact as just an unfortunate perverting of Darwinism and not a logical consequence of believing in it. A convenient but inadequate response to the historical evidence: it’s plain wrong to divorce Darwinian theory from its impact on society. On this I can agree with Marr: Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has been one of the most politically and culturally consequential ideas of the past 200 years. But he sees it as a positive force – I see it as mainly negative. And here’s why.

There is a direct causal link between Darwin and the Holocaust, Darwin and the genocides in Stalinist Russia, and Darwin and slavery. Not to mention a whole lot of lesser evils that have arisen from ‘social Darwinism’ – the expansion of Darwin’s ideas out of biology and into political and social influences. Yet defenders of evolution like Marr downplay or deny this link. Darwin himself, Marr says, never approved of such applications. But that is irrelevant. It is also untrue. Although Darwin almost entirely avoided applying evolution to the human arena in ‘On the Origin of Species’, he himself applied his theory to society in his later book, The Descent of Man. In it he talked about natural selection’s implications for race, welfare, morality and even marriage.

Darwin researcher John G. West says, “In that book, Darwin insisted that there are significant differences in the mental faculties of ‘men of distinct races’ and argued that the break in evolutionary history between primates and humans came ‘between the negro or Australian and the gorilla’, thus making blacks the closest human beings to apes.”

Although Marr says rightly that Darwin opposed slavery, Darwin’s evolutionary analysis of human races led directly to the justification of racism by scientists. Marr is honest enough to admit that “most Europeans [of Darwin’s time] believed that slaves from Africa belonged to an inferior race. Some believed they were a different species.” But he fails to ask why this should be so. They couldn’t have got this idea from the Bible, because it teaches that all people are equal in God’s sight, and all descended from one fully human couple – Adam and Eve.

They got it from evolution, because evolution as an idea was around in intellectual circles a long time before Darwin. For example, Darwin’s own grandfather wrote a book that promoted the concept (what was missing was a mechanism to explain evolution, which Darwin, in theory, provided). So it can only have been scientists influenced by evolution that conceived of Africans as a lower race or even a different species. And certainly, once Darwin’s theory became accepted, this view of Africans and Australian Aborigines accelerated and gained a more overt scientific justification.

Whilst the majority of scientists rejected racism in the wake of the discovery of the Holocaust, even today the concept of racial superiority has not been entirely eliminated. As recently as 2007, Nobel prize winner James Watson, who co-discovered the DNA helix, claimed that black Africans are genetically inferior to whites due to their evolutionary past. And in the TV series, Marr himself gets tested to see if he has a gene which is said to have ‘evolved’ 6,000 years ago and is being associated by some scientists with higher intelligence and the white races. Darwin’s ‘The Descent of Man’ also paved the way for eugenics. At its beginning, in the early 20th century, it was a science-led campaign to eliminate genetic illnesses by preventing ‘unfit’ people from being born. Their method was to sterilise the mentally ill, the ‘weak-minded’ and a range of victims of various disabling diseases. By the Nazi era the elimination of the so-called ‘unfit’ was carried out not by sterilisation but by murder.

Marr, as usual, seeks to exonerate Darwinism as the cause. But Darwin himself said that humanity was under threat because society had halted natural selection by helping the poor and genetically weak to survive: “No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man… [E]xcepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” His comparison with animal breeding was the basis of eugenics.

And so eugenics gained the support of the majority of the scientific community, leading to a campaign for forced sterilisation of the ‘unfit’ that failed to gain political approval in the UK, but was successful in America and in some European countries. As Marr states in programme two of the series, “Between 1907 and 1970, more than 60,000 people in the USA were forcibly sterilised” and “70,000 disabled people were sterilised in Nazi Germany for the crime of ‘impure race’.” But that was the tip of the iceberg. The mentally handicapped were sent to the gas chambers. Between 1939 and 1945 almost 250,000 disabled men, women and children were killed. And we haven’t even begun to talk about the Nazi extermination of Jews and Eastern Europeans…

A perusal of Mein Kampf makes it clear that because Hitler saw the Aryan race as the height of evolutionary achievement, he believed all other races were inferior. He believed he was just accelerating the process of natural selection and human evolution. In explaining the Nazi thinking behind the ‘Final Solution’, Marr reveals that “the Nazis said the Jews who survived the concentration camps would be the most resistant due to natural selection, and if released, they would provide the seed for a new Jewish revival. Therefore, according the Wannsee Protocol, they must be eradicated.”

In truth, modern science shows that all humans belong to the same race, but this has not been concluded from Darwinism. It has been proved by the study of genetics. And it was of course asserted by the Bible 2,000 years ago. Marr defends Darwin by saying that “the selective breeding scheme of the Aryan master race was inspired by a crude manipulation of Darwin’s theory of evolution – the survival of the fittest.” In similar vein, he says evolution was “abused” to justify imperialism, discrimination and mass murder, and that the Nazis “quite explicitly used a perverted interpretation of Darwin’s theory as they finalised their plan for the Holocaust.” But was it really a ‘crude manipulation’, an ‘abuse’ of the science and a ‘perverted interpretation’?

If evolution is true, then the idea of eugenics and even the murderous Nazi programme to purify the Aryan race is a completely logical conclusion to draw. You need some other input of ethics to oppose eugenics. There is none to be found in evolution. If we are all in a competition to survive, and our creation was not the design of a loving Creator but an accident of physics and chemistry, then the only law that counts is not the Ten Commandments but the law of survival. And if there is no Creator, then there is no need to answer to him for our behaviour – either in this life or the next. In that case, human life is no more valuable than that of a flea.

Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer cites Darwin to justify his view that “the life of a newborn baby is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog or a chimpanzee.” Darwin himself was never an active atheist, but he certainly created an intellectual excuse for atheism. As Marr says in the TV series, “Evolution did not describe the world of liberty, equality and fraternity that Darwin himself believed in. It described a world of violence, competition and remorseless struggle for survival.”

So is it any wonder that a new worldview emerged that lay the foundations for the casual attitude to human life that was displayed by the Nazis and Communists (and is still displayed by the atheistic Communist regimes like N. Korea and China that continue to exist today)? In the first episode of the series, Marr correctly explained how evolution had removed the Bible as the authority to which people looked for the truth about their origins – yet he fails to recognise the consequences of this. If evolution proposes that life is all about treading on others to survive, where does that leave morality and compassion?

The Bible teaches that bad fruit comes from bad trees and good fruit from good trees, so we can identify good and evil from their fruit. If the fruit of evolution is a worldview that not only denies the Bible’s teaching on origins but on morality and faith, and has given rise to atheism, persecution and genocide – why are some Christians so blind that they embrace evolution as divine truth?

Christians who believe in evolution must be living in denial. Would they really rather believe in a man-made theory that has been responsible for destroying the faith of millions and taking the lives of many more millions than question the scientific validity of evolution? Obviously they either haven’t joined the dots yet, or they are simply refusing to believe that the connection is real.

One thing you can be sure of is this: the ultimate author of all evil is a liar and deceiver, and the Bible predicts that in the last days even the very elect shall be deceived. Satan will use any and all means to lead people away from God, and one of his classic ploys is to take something good – like science – and pervert it into something bad.

For non-Christian scientists, evolution has become a replacement religion. As the saying goes, when people lose belief in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything. Evolution has filled that gap for many of scientific persuasion. And they hold to it as if it were their god. Evidence of this is the ridicule handed out to anyone who questions evolution, and the academic persecution of non-evolutionary scientists, who have been fired, demoted or refused work because of their views – despite being eminently qualified. Italian geneticist Giuseppi Sermonti says, “Darwinism... is the ‘politically correct’ of science.”

In every programme the BBC have produced on evolution in this year of Darwin celebrations, they have held unswervingly to the party line. And sadly Andrew Marr’s series, despite its title, was no different. But then Marr is, by his own admission, someone who has abandoned faith and is a believer in evolution. So how could he ever have made a programme that looked at evolution in an objective way? Well, as the journalist he is, he should have. And in that respect, he has let us down badly.

Andrew Halloway, Editor, Writer and Publishing Consultant.

Towards a Christian University

2009-03-27T07:40:00.006Z

The Times Higher Education Section is reporting on the desire of some academics to establish a specifically Christian university in the UK. Faith, Hope and the Academy

Gavin D'Costa, who is a professor in Catholic theology at the University of Bristol, commented that such an institution would 'plug a culture gap' because the dominant culture is becoming too dogmatic in higher education in its secularism, and this endangers the 'general plurality in the public square.'

D'Costa comments further that 'only once there are more Christian higher-education institutions of real intellectual calibre can there be a flourishing again of Christian culture, which can make a genuine contribution to the wider good."

D'Costa has an interesting book published, 'Theology in the Public Square' which also argues for a Christian University. Univeristy of Warrick professor Steve Fuller, also sees benefit in such an institution because it will help people understand exactly what science is.

While undoubtedly there are those who wish to criticise this idea through fear of creationism, there is a need for institutions that reflect Christian approaches to truth and values in science. There has been a tendency for too long in secular society to exclude Bible believing Christians from studying science in higher education, because their desire is to study science in their own way. Instead the overwhelming assumption is that science must be carried out on the a priori belief that nature is all there is. This raises the secular naturalistic belief system above other faith positions.

Andrew Sibley.

Environmentalism and The Age of Stupid

2009-03-24T07:53:00.007Z

Ed Miliband was speaking at a screening of a new documentary entitled 'The Age of Stupid' asserting that opposition to wind farms should be 'faced down,' and such opposition considered socially taboo. Opposing Wind Farms should be socially taboo, says Ed Miliband - Guardian

OK so who is stupid?

It was Aldo Leopold who argued for a land ethic (much of Leopold's comments I think are overstated, but he had one good point). He said; "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac, OUP

It would seem that Ed Miliband has little respect for the beauty of the British countryside and the spiritual aspect that comes from appreciating the art of creation, unspoilt by human technology. Perhaps with his family's Bolshevik European roots he has a lack of comprehension and respect for how the natives think in Britain, and their right to determine how the land is used. It was after all the Soviet system that nearly destroyed the Aral Sea in the name of secular progress.

The RSPB has also called for a great increase in wind farms, together with more help to overcome local objections, in order to tackle climate change because of the perceived threat of global warming; Oh but we can spare sites where some birds are important. BBC - RSPB calls for more wind farms

Other environmentalists call for direct action against coal fired power stations, and for nuclear power stations to be built. The irony is that nuclear was considered the enemy when I was growing up, with pressure from CND etc., to ban it. How times change, but environmentalists have shown themselves to be a woolly headed lot in the past with lack of respect for other human beings, disagreements, changeable views and wishful thinking. Being woolly headed on its own is very English, but the lack of respect for the countryside and the views of the resident people is not.

Meanwhile Jonathan Porritt has called the UK population to be reduced to 30 million.
Timesonline - UK population must fall to 30m, says Porritt

Andrew Sibley

GM crops harming the soil in India

2009-03-21T22:12:00.002Z

What is happening with Monsanto these days? A recent report by Navdanya in India has noted that Bt Cotton is damaging the soil in parts of India by reducing the number of bacteria that perform vital ecological roles. Monsanto’s policy appears to be to make farmers around the world dependent upon their own GM modified seeds and pesticides, that they have patented, in order to make a profit for shareholders.

Read more at the Institute of Science and Society website Institute of Science and Society

Meanwhile, in America there is concern about a Food Safety Modernization Act 2009 that seeks to extend food safety laws to seeds that are to be grown for food. The concern centres around possible dependency on GM crops by small farmer's who fear they will be forced into the arms of big multinationals when unnecessary health and safety legislation becomes too costly petition comments

The pressure from secular science to extend ethically questionable practices has recently been shown by Obama’s determination to push through embryonic stem cell research, a technology that can lead to tumours and is less stable than adult stem cells, together with being ethically questionable because it leads to the destruction of the embryo.

In the same way the idea that it is acceptable to modify seeds and patent crops for profit, and thus make small farmers dependent upon big business for seeds, also goes against the grain of creation, and against the idea of equality in the global economy.

Andrew Sibley