I have just spent the last week at a field station in Kenya run by the Turkana Basin Institute, an organization founded and inspired by Richard Leakey, the famous human-fossil-hunting son of Louis and Mary Leakey. I was there for a workshop on human evolution and, although I...

Catholic Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City has just been indicted for failure to report suspected child abuse. The offender, one of his priests, apparently was a photographer of some considerable energy. According to the indictment, as reported by the New York Times, the bishop for some...

I am fascinated and a little puzzled at the connection that apparently exists today in certain segments of society between evolution and global warming. More particularly, at the connection between denial of evolution and denial of global warming. I don't think the two are necessarily connected. I don't suppose you...

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion -- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint -- and Mr....

The cover article of this month's Christianity Today is on the subject of Adam and Eve. Could humans be descended from one single pair or not? Really, Christians should be over this one by now. They should have been over it by Christmas of 1859, a month after...

My last piece was on the Pope and what I believe is his insensitivity to the threat posed to Christian beliefs by modern evolutionary thinking. I don't think I was saying anything very much that I haven't said before, but I was especially struck by his Easter message...

I don't think anyone would want to say that the present pope, Benedict XVI, has the charisma of his predecessor, John-Paul II. Or the avuncular warmth of John XXIII -- or the deep-seated understanding of that prelate about how his institution was in need of reform. But, we are often...

It's a question that comes up and in fact I have been asked it a couple of times by new atheists themselves, worrying that they are being tarred with the same brush as Catholics and Evangelicals. It was a question that crossed my mind when I read one...

Karl Giberson, a physicist on the faculty at Eastern Nazarene College, and Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, have a new book out, The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions. Given that they are both committed Christians, as well as totally convinced that...

Trawling through the blogs on Darwin Day, February 12th, the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, I came across a photograph of someone proudly flying an atheist flag -- white with a big red "A" -- and started to wonder just how appropriate this action was....

On February 22, 1943, in Munich, the German student Sophie Scholl went to her death on the guillotine. A member of what is known as the "White Rose" group, she had been found guilty of distributing pamphlets against the war and the Nazis. Her last words, as she walked bravely...

Earlier this year I wrote on the topic of original sin. Realizing that it may seem a little gloomy to return to this topic at this time of the year, thanks to the publication of a most interesting new paper on the subject, I do nevertheless...

Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was the second Anglican bishop of Calcutta. He was a prolific hymn writer, including what has been described as the "greatest missionary hymn ever written," which opens with the following two verses:

"From Greenland's icy mountains, from India's coral strand;
Where Afric's sunny fountains roll down...

Neither I nor the well-known philosopher Philip Kitcher believes in the existence of God or in the claims of the major (or minor) religions. I don't know how he would describe himself, but I say I am an agnostic or skeptic. In truth, when it comes to the...

"Accommodationism" is the word used today to speak of the position that believes science and religion can exist together harmoniously, or at least without conflict. It is disliked strongly both by the New Atheists, who loathe religion, and by the fundamentalists, who reject science. Expectedly, it is a position much...

The New Atheists continue to swing out against all and sundry. The Pope is an ever-popular target, especially with his trip to Britain. President Obama is another punching bag these days, what with his attempts to soothe down the row over the Muslim center near the World Trade...

As we stagger to the end of yet another record-breaking, overheated summer down here in Florida, and as yet more tar balls arrive on our beaches, I find myself thinking increasingly of global warming and its causes. The world is getting hotter and we know why. The carbon-based fuels that...

In my last blog, sparked by the essentially non-directedness of the Darwinian evolutionary process, I raised what seems to me to be a major problem for those who would reconcile Christian belief with modern science. I want to follow this in a similar vein, turning now to morality,...

The science-religion front is the site of ongoing conflict. On the one side are the militant atheists like Oxford-based biologist Richard Dawkins, who want simply to remove religion from the face of the earth. On the other side are the Bible-touting evangelicals like Intelligent-Design-enthusiast and Lehigh University biochemist...

You could make a good case for saying that Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) started two and a half thousand years ago with Socrates, because it was he who first thought up the Argument from Design to prove the existence of God. The world is too complex and...