Perpetuating the Myths
By Thony Christie ***This post originally appeared on The Renaissance Mathematicus on May 17th, 2017 – for the original click here*** Since the re-emergence of science in Europe in the High Middle Ages down to the present the relationship between science and religion has been a very complex and multifaceted one that cannot be reduced […]
Peter Harrison’s The Territories of Science and Religion: A New Peter Principle
By Bernie Lightman Peter Harrison’s new book,[i] based on the Gifford Lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 2011, is essential reading. It is the most important study of the history of science and religion since the publication in 1991 of John Brooke’s Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives, in which Brooke […]
“The most pestilential book ever vomited from the jaws of hell”
By Sylvia Nickerson Radicalism and science at the publisher John Chapman In the latter nineteenth century several British doctors, philosophers and naturalists embraced scientific principles as the ones upon which society should best form itself for the future. The theory of evolution, the atomic theory of matter and the theory of the conservation of energy […]
What’s the best way to think about creationists?
By Jeffrey Guhin What’s the best way for non-creationists to think about creationists? Some view them, unhelpfully, as inescapably anti-modern, utterly unwilling to face facts. This unwillingness is often supposed to be linked to religion itself, with religious belief understood as diametrically opposed to the scientific process. Science, we are told, is about facing facts, […]
Darwin Day: Celebrating Without Deifying
By Alexander Hall Today, Friday February 12th 2016, is the 207th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Celebrated around the world as ‘Darwin Day’, events across 6 continents from Tel-Aviv to Tokyo will commemorate the English naturalist’s work, explore his legacy, and discuss the current state of affairs in the field of Evolutionary Biology and beyond. […]
Science and Secularisation
In November 2015 the celebrated historian of science, Professor John Hedley-Brooke gave a seminar at Newman University (UK) on the chequered history of science and religion. Professor Hedley-Brooke, a former Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre at the University of Oxford, presented a skilful overview of the history of science and religion, challenging the thesis
A Look at the Professional Creationists and Anti-Creationists
By Ted Davis ***This post originally appeared on 22 October 2015, on Ted Davis’ blog, Reading the Book of Nature hosted on the BioLogos website*** Evolution and Religion: The Conflict Narrative in Crisis Recent results of the social scientific research on creationism in the United States raise more questions than they answer, especially with respect to […]
Edward Burnett Tylor and the Evolution of Religion
By Efram Sera-Shriar Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) may not be a household name today, but during the second half of the nineteenth century the Victorian anthropologist and scientific naturalist was a figurehead for anthropology throughout the British Empire. At his seventy-fifth birthday in 1907, his former student and friend Andrew Lang (1844-1912) argued that ‘he […]
How dinosaurs became the darlings of creationists
At the Forum on Science and Religion held in May 2015 as part of a workshop at York University, Toronto, Professor Ron L. Numbers of the University of Wisconsin gave a keynote lecture titled, “Conflict Denied: How Once-Suspect Evidence of Evolution Came to Support the Biblical Narrative.” In the lecture Professor Numbers, the author of […]
