John Haught says, in God and the New Atheism, that gnu atheists get faith all wrong, at least from the point of view of theology, which

thinks of faith as a state of self-surrender in which one’s whole being, and not just the intellect, is experienced as being carried away into a dimension of reality that is much deeper and more real than anything that can be grasped by science and reason. [p 13]

You know…there’s a problem here. I would like to say something sober and restrained about that; I would like to give a cool, sarcasm-free account of what I think is wrong with it, for once; but I find it very hard to do that, … Read the rest

The Anglican Bishop of Fulham is going to switch over to Catholicism because he prefers the Catholic church’s way of dealing with pesky women, which of course is to tell them to shut up and do what they’re told.

The Pope created a special enclave in the Roman Catholic Church for Anglicans unhappy with their church’s decision to let women become bishops.

Too bad all men can’t find enclaves like that, isn’t it. If only. If only there were special enclaves in universities for male academics unhappy with the prospect of seeing women become professors. If only there were special enclaves in law for male lawyers who don’t want to have to put up with women judges or prosecutors; if … Read the rest

Twelve of the Chilean miners went to a “service of thanksgiving” at the mouth of the San Jose copper and gold mine today. Thanksgiving for what?

Imagine this scenario. Imagine last Thursday the Minister of Mines and all the engineers held a press conference and revealed that they had blown up the mine and trapped the 33 on purpose.

Would the 33 and all the people who were afraid for them for 70 days feel grateful to the minister and the engineers for rescuing them after first trapping them?

They wouldn’t, you know. They would be livid. They would be angry beyond imagining – they would want to do violence.

But that’s what “God” did, obviously.

So why are people … Read the rest

Michael Ruse is explaining about religion and morality now. It’s way deep.

Is there a place under the accommodationism canvas for the non-believer? I think there is for I aspire to be one such person. As…argued at length in my book Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science, I believe that one can argue for all of modern science and yet agree that there are certain questions that science leaves unanswered: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the ultimate ground of morality?

I believe that although one need not turn to religion — I am simply a skeptic on these sorts of questions — it is legitimate for the believer

So let’s just make it a solipsism triple, and get it out of the way, shall we?

Michael Ruse, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, talking at first about the pressures on people who teach at religious colleges, but then, as usual, veering back to the real subject, which is the evilness of gnu atheists and their especial evilness toward him and his debonair indifference to that evilness toward him.

I hope very much that this will blow over.  I hope even more that if it does blow over it will not be with the understanding, implicit or explicit, that neither Schneider nor any other Calvin faculty member ever again try to reconcile science and religion.  These days it