"Reply the tape a million times ... and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again" (Stephen Jay Gould from "Wonderful Life", 1989 p. 289, Harvard University Press.).

With his standard panache, the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould argued strenuously that evolution had no inherent directionality....

Slavery's depravity is so obvious to us today that it obscures the collective mental conversion required to achieve this bit of moral clarity. This conversion entailed a titanic shift from seeing slavery as necessary for civilization (as the ancients believed) to seeing it as necessarily uncivilized. As one of humanity's...

On the morning of June 22, 1633 in the hall of the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minvera in Rome, Galileo Galilei knelt before the Lord-Cardinal Inquisitors-General and publicly abjured his false opinion that the sun was the motionless center of the universe. Thus ended Galileo's personal trials; but the...

I don't pay much attention to creationism for the same reason that I don't watch much television -- it's boring. Real science, history, philosophy, theology, etc., is far more interesting than an amateurish knockoff.

My inattentiveness has meant that until now I had only a vague notion of the...

The celebrated Scopes "monkey trial" was an intriguing, convoluted affair, only generally reminiscent of Lawrence and Lee's famous stage play "Inherit the Wind." As popular mythology, it rightly highlights the folly of outlawing the teaching of legitimate scientific theories because they are perceived as threatening to religion (or any other...

Suppose you have some marbles rolling around randomly at the bottom of a box. Now take the box and tilt it so that the marbles roll to one corner. Jiggle a bit so that they come to rest in a reasonably stable pattern and, more than likely, some of the...

"Stated in its most elementary and buoyantly positive form, my argument is ... that among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilization ... only one -- the triumph of Christianity ... can be called ... a 'revolution': a truly massive and epochal revision of...

The good life breeds atheists. The good life and a little fear breed strong atheists.

In a recent issue of New Scientist (March 28), Oxford anthropologist Jonathan Lanman summarizes newly emerging research on the rise of atheism in the West. From the outset, Lanman makes clear that scientific research...

Media-hungry atheist, creationist and religious fundamentalist provocateurs have successfully dominated the science and religion narrative for the past decade or so. In doing so, they have created the false impression of an ongoing unavoidable war between the two camps. A recently published large-scale survey of college students, however, finds that...

"You can be good without God" has become a popular slogan among campaigning atheists lately. As with most political slogans, close inspection reveals it to be a trivial assertion. Monotheism is a recent phenomenon in human history, having emerged only a few thousand years ago. Humans emerged either 200,000 or...

The scientific case against resurrection is pretty straightforward: once dead you stay dead -- that's just the way it works. Coming back to life after having been dead (I mean really dead) would constitute a violation of natural law -- a miracle -- and miracles just don't happen. Fair enough....

Near the end of Ben Hur, as Judah Ben-Hur and Balthasar stand broken and weary at the feet of the crucified Jesus, Balthasar explains how in this act of self-sacrifice Jesus took upon himself the sins of all mankind. This may have been powerful moviemaking but it was terrible history....

I wrote a check for ten pounds of boiled crawfish not too long ago, a common transaction in these parts when mudbugs are in season (you Northerners don't know what you're missing). What's remarkable about this exchange is the assumed degree of trust and fairness displayed by the total strangers...

Was religion an evolutionary adaptation? Those who say yes often argue that religion addressed a critical question central to human life: Whom can I trust?

As he watched the aggressive ritual dancing of the Tsembaga warriors of New Guinea, anthropologist Roy Rappaport concluded that ritual played a critical role...

To casual observers the history of science goes something like this: Greek philosophers introduced the world to rational, naturalistic ways of thinking which freed us from superstition and myth. Sadly, the Roman Empire crumbled, Christianity replaced paganism, religious dogma replaced rationalism, and progress stagnated until about the 16th century when...

For many, Gabrielle Giffords' recovery from an assassin's bullet has been nothing short of miraculous. Her case highlights how healing involves the spirit as much as medicine. For too long the role of the spirit in healing has been denigrated as nothing but a "placebo effect." But recent studies suggest...

The media's (all too predictable) obsession with Pope Benedict's recent "condom" comments has obscured other noteworthy aspects of his recently released book-length interview, Light of the World. German journalist Peter Seewald engages Benedict in an extensive exchange on the global ecological turmoil facing our planet. The Pope's responses...

A few Christmases ago my family thought it advisable to expand my reading diet. Left to my own devices, the scientific and philosophic are my staples. To wit, Christmas morn, along with the ties and underwear, I was presented with Ron Chernow's 800-plus page biography, Alexander Hamilton (excellent book, by...

For Matthew, Jesus' birth in Bethlehem was a necessity. For Luke, it was a necessary absurdity.

For the past 25 years or so, the "Third Wave" of historical Jesus scholarship has been in full swing. Scholars such as John Meier, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, and Bart Ehrman have...

The cover of Steve Bruce's book, God is Dead: Secularization in the West, features a busy West Yorkshire street corner where a shuttered church sports the sign "Mike's Carpets." An iconic metaphor for our times: Religion retreating in the face of a relentless consumerist onslaught. With increasing numbers...