Can You Believe in God and Evolution?

Can You Believe in God and Evolution?
(Time)

Nearly all working biologists accept that the principles of variation and natural selection explain how multiple species evolved from a common ancestor over very long periods of time. I find no compelling examples that this process is insufficient to explain the rich variety of life forms present on this planet. While no one could claim yet to have ferreted out every detail of how evolution works, I do not see any significant “gaps” in the progressive development of life’s complex structures that would require divine intervention. In any case, efforts to insert God into the gaps of contemporary human understanding of nature have not fared well in the past, and we should be careful not to do that now.
–Francis Collins

Steven Pinker, Michael Behe, and Albert Mohler weigh in too.

Hey, what about the evolution of God?

The Right Time for An Islamic Reformation

The Right Time for An Islamic Reformation
by Salman Rushdie (Washington Post)

Muhammad was also a successful merchant and heard, on his travels, the Nestorian Christians’ desert versions of Bible stories that the Koran mirrors closely (Christ, in the Koran, is born in an oasis, under a palm tree). It ought to be fascinating to Muslims everywhere to see how deeply their beloved book is a product of its place and time, and in how many ways it reflects the Prophet’s own experiences.

However, few Muslims have been permitted to study their religious book in this way. The insistence that the Koranic text is the infallible, uncreated word of God renders analytical, scholarly discourse all but impossible. Why would God be influenced by the socioeconomics of seventh-century Arabia, after all? Why would the Messenger’s personal circumstances have anything to do with the Message?

Yeah, they’ll listen to you, dude. Dream on.

Teaching the controversy

The Flying Spaghetti Monster Theory

Spaghetti & Pulsar Activating Meatballs

The Theory of DUH

The Lyttle Lytton Contest 2005 Results

The Lyttle Lytton Contest 2005 Results

John, surfing, said to his mother, surfing beside him, “How do you like surfing?” —E. Davis (Winner)

[…]

Dr. Metzger turned to greet his new patient, blithely unaware he would soon become a member of a secret brotherhood as old as urology itself. —A. Kyras

Check out the “earlier, funnier” ones too.

Announcement

Praise Allah, The Religious Policeman is back.

The Politics of Ignorance

The Politics of Ignorance
by Sam Harris (The Huffington Post)

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality. Likewise, Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of “non-overlapping magisteria” served only the religious dogmatists who realize, quite rightly, that there is only one magisterium. Whether a person is religious or secular, there is nothing more sacred than the facts. Either Jesus was born of a virgin, or he wasn’t; either there is a God who despises homosexuals, or there isn’t. It is time that sane human beings agreed on the standards of evidence necessary to substantiate truth-claims of this sort. The issue is not, as ID advocates allege, whether science can “rule out” the existence of the biblical God. There are an infinite number of ludicrous ideas that science could not “rule out,” but which no sensible person would entertain. The issue is whether there is any good reason to believe the sorts of things that religious dogmatists believe—that God exists and takes an interest in the affairs of human beings; that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception (and, therefore, that blastocysts are the moral equivalents of persons); etc. There simply is no good reason to believe such things, and scientists should stop hiding their light under a bushel and make this emphatically obvious to everyone.

Vindication for Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

Vindication for Ivory-Billed Woodpecker and Its Fans
(New York Times)

But while the skeptics’ paper was still in the works, the Cornell team provided several audio recordings to Dr. Prum and Dr. Robbins. Dr. Jackson, who was out of the country, has not had a chance to listen to them, Dr. Prum said. The evidence was so convincing—the characteristic nasal “kent” call and double raps on a tree—that Dr. Prum and Dr. Robbins withdrew their challenge.

“The thrilling new sound recordings provide clear and convincing evidence that the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct,” Dr. Prum said in a statement.