Tag: Religion and Science

The Secret God of the Secularists

March 17, 2015

“The English philosopher John Gray, himself an atheist, says today’s evangelical New Atheists have far more in common with the religionists they despise than they think they do. In a rich, rewarding essay in the Guardian, Gray says that an earlier generation of modern atheists worshiped Science, which in their reasoning made them supporters of eugenics … until Nazism showed where that led. It is today conveniently forgotten, says Gray, that those who preached Science as the foundation for modern political life were, in the pre-Nazi 20th century, the most avid promoters of eugenics”

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-secret-god-of-the-new-atheists-secularists/

Evolution vs. Creationism Debate: Bill Nye v Ken Ham

February 11, 2015

Below are some links about the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham from early 2014 about whether evolution or creationism better explains life on Earth.

Some interesting questions emerge from this debate. How do proponents of evolution and creationism approach knowledge and truth differently? This can be extended to the natural science and religious knowledge systems. Both look to find answers and truth and construct knowledge in fundamentally different ways. The two articles get into this issue a bit. You can watch the debate itself, it’s a bit long but worth watching at least a little bit.

1.Why Bill Nye Won the Creationism Debate Last Night

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/02/bill-nye-ken-ham-evolution-creationism-refuted

2. Bill Nye v Ken Ham: should scientists bother to debate creationism?

The public debate between Bill Nye and the president of a US creationist museum gives creationism a scientific legitimacy that it isn’t entitled to

http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/feb/05/bill-nye-vs-ken-ham-creationism-science-debate

3.Bill Nye versus Ken Ham: Who won? 

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0205/Bill-Nye-versus-Ken-Ham-Who-won-video

Dr. Gupta: When religion and medicine meet

January 28, 2015

Dr. Gupta interviews Joel Osteen.

He started by telling the story of his own mother, Dodie Osteen, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer back in 1981. She was told “there was no treatment that could be given to her.”
It was liver cancer, and she was just 48 years old. Osteen told me, “She prayed, she believed, and she quoted scripture. Thirty-something years later, she’s alive.”
Osteen is describing a sort of faith healing or at least the power of prayer, and it is an issue that deeply divides the medical community.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/21/health/gupta-religion-medicine/