Commie professor alert!* I just sent Kelly (UW graduate student) a note that said, “http://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2014/09/david-barash-speaking-with-authority-on-what-he-knows-next-to-nothing-about/ — Don’t take Biology at UW. You might get that guy.”
She wrote back and said, and I quote exactly, “ha ha i won’t” with precisely that punctuation and capitalization.
I fear for the reputation of the graduate schools at UW. While there is a certain amount of hipness associated with IM’ing people with little regard for grammatical convention, I do not get why people like the good Biology professor do not realize how foolish they look (and actually are) in making outdated, absurd, discredited philosophical, historical, and theological statements outside their area of expertise. Tom Gilson over at ThinkingChristian explains in painstaking detail (see the linked article) why this is so ridiculous. It seems like it has reached epidemic levels amongst atheists credentialed in one area (Biology, Physics, Zoology) and an abysmal lack of knowledge and training in the areas on which they are opining (Philosophy, History, Theology). Here is a snippet, but I recommend you read the whole thing. And while you are out it check out the blog; there is always something interesting going on there, too.
In his Talk, [David Barash] also says,
Adding to religion’s current intellectual instability is a third consequence of evolutionary insights: a powerful critique of theodicy, the scholarly effort to reconcile belief in an omnipresent, omni-benevolent God with the fact of unmerited suffering…. The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.
He does not say, “I have observed and reflected on animal pain and death as a biologist, so therefore I am qualified theologically to pronounce every explanation for the goodness of God to be inadequate.”
*Just kidding. I WISH that guy was at UW or ASU. I would have a ton more interesting material if he was. On the other hand, Lawrence Krauss of ASU got his hat handed to him in debate with William Lane Craig at NCSU for much the same reason that David Barash has clowned himself, so maybe there is hope for good material at the kids’ new schools.
I work closely with Tom as part of a team that is implementing his “vision” of an instrument to help ophthalmologists and optometrists do their work better. It is a joy to work with him and I am learning a lot about how humans do the things I have spent my career trying to do inside computers.