If I understand my Catholic friends and scholars correctly, God created the cosmos, earth, and life. This God sparked the original organism and designed an evolutionary process that has resulted in endless forms most beautiful and wonderful. But of all these forms, one stands out and one was the goal from the beginning: humans. When [...]
Tags:adaptation·Catholic·Christian·creationism·design·evolutionary theism·Gobekli Tepe·God·intelligent design·John Haught·Klaus Schmidt·Matt Rossano·Michael Blume·Panglossian Paradigm·Simon Conway Morris·teleology·theology
Over the past decade several books and articles have appeared which purport to explain the “evolution of religion” as an adaptation, usually invoking group level selection as the source. These explanations nearly always depend on the fallacious assumption that if something evolved, it must be have been selected and therefore is adaptive. These explanations also [...]
Tags:accident·adaptation·byproduct·Charles Darwin·confirmation bias·design·evolutionary psychology·fitness·group level selection·hypothesis·Matt Rossano·methodology·Michael Ghiselin·natural selection·Panglossian·pleiotropy·storytelling·testing·theory
Stephen Hawking’s new book, The Grand Design, is generating a fair amount of press because of his claim that the laws of physics explain the Big Bang and remove the need for a Prime Mover. God in the Gap theists have thus been pushed further back in time to nothingness, which is the non-state that [...]
Tags:bellum omnium contra omnes·Big Bang·Deepak Chopra·deism·design·designer·Enya·God in the Gap·Leviathan·Natural Theology·New Age·physics·Prime Mover·spiritual realm·Stephen Hawking·The Grand Design·theism·theodicy·Thomas Hobbes·transcendent reality·watchmaker analogy·Where is the Design·William Paley·Yoga
Among scientists, physicists seem to be the most likely to believe in some version of an all powerful sentient being or force. While very few of them are willing to say what such a being or force might be, religionists are always keen to claim such statements as “evidence” for their gods.
I have always understood [...]
Tags:Big Bang·deism·design·laws of physics·physicists·Richard Dawkins·Stephen Hawking·theism
In this classic video, Kirk Cameron explains — in all seriousness — how God perfectly and exquisitely designed the banana for human use and consumption:
Although the banana’s functional and optimal design features may not cause nightmares for those who understand that bananas evolved like all other plants and were domesticated (i.e., selected) by humans, they [...]
Tags:adaptationist programme·adaptationists·atheists·banana·bananas·creation·design·Dr. Pangloss·Eden·functionalism·group level selection·group level selectionists·Homo antecessor·Homo heidelbergensis·Kirk Cameron·morals·Paleolithic religion·Panglossian Paradigm·paradise·prosocial·rituals·spandrels
