On Creationism

Theists often use morality to try to prove the existence of God. William Lane Craig's argument Possibly the best know is William Lane Craig's argument , one form of which is: 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. 2. Objective moral values do exist. 3. Therefore, God exists. The conclusion certainly follows from the premises, but are the premises true? I see no reason to suppose they are, and until the premises are proven, the conclusion remains unproven. Let us think about why we need God for objective moral values to exist... Indeed, how is the existence of objective moral values even consistent with God? Consider the issue of slavery. If slavery is morally wrong, then either God arbitrarily choose for slavery to be morally wrong - that is, he was free to choose either way - or it was not an arbitrary choice. Either it was possible that God could have make slavery moral or it was not.  In the former case, the claim that slavery is immoral is, well, arb...

 Many Christians cite the guards on the tomb as good evidence for the resurrection, claiming that they are pretty much a historical fact. In contrast, I hold that the guards were made up. How would this have played out? Jesus was real, and was know to be real to the Jews (i.e., the non-Christian Jews) of the time that Matthew was written. The story of the Empty Tomb was already circulating by then (whether true or not), as Mark had already been written, and so the Jews (some at least) also knew that the Christians were claiming an Empty Tomb as part of their apologetic. As a reaction to the claims of an empty tomb, some Jews were saying that the disciples had stolen the body. So far, I do not think any of this is particularly contentious. In this environment, the author of Matthew wrote his gospel. This would have been a community effort. Probably one person did the writing, but the book represented the collective view of the community, and that community invented the guards on the...

To be fair, this is based on a magazine article published in 1909, nevertheless,I feel fairly safe saying the science is from the nineteenth century.  The blog post is here : A new edition of Wallace book, Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism, is out now, edited by science historian Michael Flannery.  It is worth pointing out that Wallace published a book, Darwinism , in which he defended much of Darwin's ideas, and was itself foundational for neo-Darwinism, as it moved the theory away from inheritance of acquired characteristics . However, Wallace did hold to teleology, i.e., that evolution was directed. This is, of course, what appeals to the creationists at the DI... And is what over a century of subsequent science has rejected. It is worth remembering that a lot of scientists are Christians and followers of other religions, so hard to imagine why they would reject teleology - unless that is what the evidence points to. More from the blog:...