Author Andreas Schueler

Gould’s NOMA – a thorough analysis (part 1) revisited

By Andreas Schueler • • 6 comments

This post will be split into two parts due to its length. This will allow any posters to be able to interact with certain points as we go. Regards, Andreas Schüler.

Can science and religion coexist in harmony ?

A favorite phrase of sophisticated theologians™ is – science tells us how and religion tells us why. But it is not only theologians who claim that there can be no conflict between properly understood science and religion because they deal with different questions. Many scientists, and not only religious ones, support this view as well.

David Marshall gets owned in debate so the church refuses to post video…

By Andreas Schueler • • 100 comments

A moment of Schadenfreude: David Marshall recently debated Phil Zuckerman on the issue “What provides a better foundation for civil society: Christianity or Secular Humanism?” and Marshall apparently got creamed. The debate was recorded and the church that organized it planned to upload it. But after their guy lost, they changed their mind on that. Zuckerman asked them when they will finally keep their word and upload the video material of the debate, this is the reply he got:

Nazism, Christianity and Atheism

By Andreas Schueler • • 13 comments

You´ve all heard the standard lies about the third reich being an “Atheist regime” and Darwinian evolution being a foundation for the Nazi race ideology. The funny (“funny” in a tragic way) thing about this is, that these claims are not only wrong, but that the exact opposite happens to be true.

Whether supernatural or not, extraordinary claims DO require extraordinary evidence – a naturalistic parallel to the Gospels

By Andreas Schueler • • 10 comments

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A Jewish preacher being the human incarnation of an all-powerful being, dying on a cross and being resurrected from the dead, is probably one of the most extraordinary claims ever made. But a collection of ancient documents like the Gospels is everything but extraordinary evidence.

In my opinion, documents like the gospels could never be sufficient to establish such an extraordinary claim beyond reasonable doubt. And this has nothing to do with a “bias towards naturalism”. I also don´t believe extraordinary claims which do not violate the laws of nature in any way, simply because an ancient document claims they happened.

Can we choose what we believe?

By Andreas Schueler • • 44 comments

Isn´t it interesting how the same argument can be very powerful and persuasive for some people while being completely uninteresting for others? The problem of evil is one of the most powerful arguments against the existence of an all-loving God for many Atheists, but I never cared much about it. I´m not sure why, maybe because I never believed in a God anyway, for other reasons, so speculations about what an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God would or would not do always seemed kind of moot to me. But nevertheless, I recently thought about the problem of evil when I had a discussion with our local young earth creationist JohnM.

Life starts at conception but what about personhood?

By Andreas Schueler • • 54 comments

Growing up in heathen headquarters (aka central Europe), I never met anyone in meatspace who thinks that a fertilized human egg is a “fully human person”. I’ve met many Catholics in my life so far, but none of them would agree with the notion of a zygote having full personhood (disagreeing with the majority of official Church doctrines is quite common for Catholics in first world countries). Since this view is virtually non-existent where I live, I never had to debate it with anyone and, to be honest, I never really thought about this issue until recently. The first time I participated in a discussion on this issue was on JW Wartick´s blog (Jonathan already mentioned the discussion that ensued on his blog in this post). While Jonathan was mostly raising philosophical issues in this discussion, I was focused on whether the personhood-starts-at-conception position is defensible based on a 21st century understanding of Biology, especially Embryology. I think that this position is necessarily incoherent, and I want to summarize my argument for that here.

Science Committees and Republicans – Meet the Experts (yes, dumber than a bag of hammers-type experts)

By Andreas Schueler • • 6 comments

Ever heard of the “Committee on Science, Space and Technology” of the United States Congress ? This committee has jurisdiction over: “all energy research, development, and demonstration, and projects therefor, and all federally owned or operated non-military energy laboratories”.

http://science.house.gov/jurisdiction

So… you would expect the members of this committee to be well educated, right ? Or at the very least you would expect them to have at least a rudimentary understanding of science, wouldn´t you ?