Personally, I am fundamentally (if you’ll excuse the pun) convinced that there are no genuine Biblical literalists in the world today – not even Ned Flanders on the Simpsons, who on the brillian episode “Hurricane Neddy” famously claimed “I’ve done everything the Bible says – even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff”. No one believes in the dome. No one believes that 14=13, that pi equals precisely 3, and so on. But to acknowledge that interpretation is always a... Read more

For either young earth creationism or intelligent design to be on the right track and genuinely scientific, both movements have to posit a conspiracy in the ranks of the scientific community to prevent “the truth” about creation from getting serious scientific attention. In my view, this it is not strong enough to say that this is false: it is laughable. Let me give you my strongest reason for making this strong statement: Fred Hoyle. Hoyle was a great scientist, but... Read more

I am currently grading assignments that asked how the Israelites came to be in the land of Canaan, specifying that I am expecting historical answers and not merely a retelling of the Biblical narrative. Students often equate the existence of debate or the suggestion of uncertainty with a situation in which nothing is certain. I am still trying to find ways to communicate the actual state of affairs more clearly, and would welcome comments and suggestions on how to do... Read more

I first encountered Eric Cline in the wonderful documentary on Joshua and Jericho in the Ancient Evidence series. Now that I have read his recent book From Eden to Exile, I am all the more impressed. His book simply sets forth the current state of our knowledge. He treats even amature archaeologists with respect, even though not endorsing most of their conclusions – even in mentioning Ron Wyatt, words like “con” and “artist” are never used (either separately or together).... Read more

New Testament scholar C. F. D. Moule recently passed away. He was nearly 99 years old, and rightly famous in his field. Obituaries have appeared in the British newspapers The Independent and The Telegraph. Since he could be called my “Doctor-Grandfather” (since he was Jimmy Dunn’s Doktorvater, and Jimmy Dunn was mine), I thought I’d share links to some online books and articles by this great scholar: The Birth of the New Testament The Meaning of Hope Christ’s Messengers: Studies... Read more

Sean Carroll is one of the many top-notch scientists whose public lectures and presentations can be found on YouTube. Ken Miller, Barbara Forrest, and many others also appear: The institution Carroll is connected with, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, sponsored a series of lectures on the subject of evolution and religion: There are many other interesting clips on YouTube that relate to this subject – those provided above are just a few that feature some top-notch scientists. Read more

Last night Sean Carroll began his public lecture with scenes from Nick Park’s Creature Comforts. Park’s brilliant idea was to interview members of the British public, then to provide animation to accompany the actual voices of the public expressing its views on various topics – including evolution. I’m including the clip here. Enjoy! Read more

Many fundamentalists (including, but not limited to, young earth creationists and proponents of intelligent design) spend a lot of time emphasizing the greatness of the Bible, its importance, and so on. Yet there is a serious dearth of actual knowledge of and about the Bible in detail. Sure, people hear a lot of sermons, read a lot of popular books. But how many study a particular Biblical book with the help of a commentary – a good serious academic commentary... Read more

Having vanquished the unholy proponents of chemistry, we may turn our attention to the next great bastion of falsehood. I am starting another new organization: Linguistics Undermines Scriptural Truth (also known as Scriptural Linguistics Upholds Truth). Our aim is simple: to prove that just as chemistry and biology make no sense without God, the same holds true for linguistics. This is not simply a question of upholding the truth of the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel, however important... Read more

I had the privilege of having lunch today with a couple of my colleagues and Sean B. Carroll, who is doing some of the most interesting work at the cutting edge of biology, more specifically in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (or evo devo for short). I had students read a significant number of chapters from both Carroll’s recent book The Making of the Fittest as well as Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Today I learned that Carroll... Read more