Cold Comfort

As I’d already noticed, Philip Kitcher seems to want to be the Good Cop, or the Good Atheist, to Richard Dawkins’s Bad Cop/Atheist. “See,” he’s saying, “I’m not one of those mean, inhumane atheists who want to take away all your hope… well, actually, I do, but I feel really bad about it.” Like most would-be conquerors, he promises liberation -- in the form of the “enlightenment case”:

Cold Comfort

As I’d already noticed, Philip Kitcher seems to want to be the Good Cop, or the Good Atheist, to Richard Dawkins’s Bad Cop/Atheist. “See,” he’s saying, “I’m not one of those mean, inhumane atheists who want to take away all your hope… well, actually, I do, but I feel really bad about it.” Like most would-be conquerors, he promises liberation -- in the form of the “enlightenment case”:

Wishin’ and Hopin’ and Thinkin’ and Prayin’

(Sorry for the visual distortion in this clip; I couldn’t embed the letterboxed version. The wedding imagery reminds us that the Church is the Bride of Christ, and if you imagine the third-person pronouns with initial capitals [“Wear your hair just for Him … You won’t get Him thinkin’ and a-prayin’ …] you have quite a kinky little hymn on your hands.) My text today, dearly beloved, is

Wishin’ and Hopin’ and Thinkin’ and Prayin’

(Sorry for the visual distortion in this clip; I couldn’t embed the letterboxed version. The wedding imagery reminds us that the Church is the Bride of Christ, and if you imagine the third-person pronouns with initial capitals [“Wear your hair just for Him … You won’t get Him thinkin’ and a-prayin’ …] you have quite a kinky little hymn on your hands.) My text today, dearly beloved, is

It's Literally Turtles All The Way Down

(Cartoon from Baldo, via Literally, A Web Log)But back to literalism. I’ve finished reading Philip Kitcher’s little book Living with Darwin, and he has it all wrong. The Book of Genesis has him in a tizzy, but fundamentalists and creationists don’t even take Genesis literally. I mentioned before that there are two different creation stories in the first two chapters of Genesis. In chapter

It's Literally Turtles All The Way Down

(Cartoon from Baldo, via Literally, A Web Log)But back to literalism. I’ve finished reading Philip Kitcher’s little book Living with Darwin, and he has it all wrong. The Book of Genesis has him in a tizzy, but fundamentalists and creationists don’t even take Genesis literally. I mentioned before that there are two different creation stories in the first two chapters of Genesis. In chapter

Living With Literalism

Philip Kitcher’s Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith (Oxford, 2007) is a nice little book. Kitcher, a philosopher who’s written a well-known critique of creationism and a well-known critique of sociobiology, now takes on Intelligent Design. He does a good job of explaining why natural selection is the best theory we have for the origin and extinction of species, and

Living With Literalism

Philip Kitcher’s Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith (Oxford, 2007) is a nice little book. Kitcher, a philosopher who’s written a well-known critique of creationism and a well-known critique of sociobiology, now takes on Intelligent Design. He does a good job of explaining why natural selection is the best theory we have for the origin and extinction of species, and