Creationism, Christianity and Critical Thinking Around the Blogosphere

At BioLogos, the next installment in a series on Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography in the Bible.

Troy Britain illustrates that young-earth creationists like Henry Morris don’t only have unpersuasive and dishonest arguments – they aren’t even bothering to update them significantly, so they are the same old unpersuasive and dishonest arguments as well! Click through and see some specific instances of creationist dishonesty, such as using a photo of an organism that is off by some 400 million years so as to give the impression that change is not visible in the fossil record.

RJS at Jesus Creed continues blogging through Joel B. Green’s book.

On this day in 1967 the Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of evolution, made famous in the Scopes trial, was repealed. Rachel Held Evans continues coping with the ramifications of evolving in “Monkey Town.”

Jerry Coyne comments on Mark Vernon’s piece in The Guardian about Intelligent Design, creationism, David Hume, miracles, science and the ongoing controversy about the Synthese disclaimer.

Paul Sims discusses Islamic creationism.

Finally, Hemant Mehta discusses a case of a parent disturbed by a teacher making their child provide reasons for what they believe. Doesn’t that parent know that the teacher is just preparing the child for when they end up sitting next to a person of another religion on the train? Jokes aside, it is the parent who neither thinks that the child should be able to justify her beliefs, nor took the responsibility as a parent for preparing her to do so, who should be embarrassed and ashamed in such an instance, and not the teacher, whose job it is to cultivate critical thinking rather than shield students from the need to think critically.