Did Darwin Kill God?

Good to see the BBC providing, in Did Darwin Kill God?, a well-made and well-presented balance to earlier programmes in the Darwin season which argued that evolution equates to atheism.

Executive Producer Jean Claude Bragard describes presenter Conor Cunningham's argument as being:

"that we have been witnessing an unnecessary cultural war between religion and evolution that is damaging to both religion and science. Cunningham reveals that since the early days, mainstream Christianity’s view of God and Creation has not been literal. The idea of reading the Book of Genesis literally is essentially a 20th century American phenomenon that had very little to do with science and religion and a great deal to do with the morality and politics of the time."

The programme specifically came from the realisation that, while Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' has fuelled a widespread perception that the theory of evolution makes belief in God redundant, it remans clear that many Christians have easily been able to reconcile their belief in God with the theory of evolution. So how is this possible?

This is the question that the programme explores and its answers are partly theological (the Church Fathers did not understand Genesis literally), partly historical (Creationism is a recent aberration primarily of Bible-belt Christianity) and partly critique of Ultra Darwinianism (the application of Darwin's theory beyond the domain of science to all aspects of life undermines the cogency of evolution as a science).

It is interesting to read some of the advance comments on the programme from atheists purporting to second guess and dismiss Cunningham's likely arguments. These reveal the extent to which prejudice, faith and lack of rigour characterise the arguments of some who hold atheistic beluefs, just as the same can be said of some holding Christian beliefs.

Having watched Did Darwin kill God? I don't think that the same can be said of Cunningham whose arguments add to the critiques of the New Atheists already raised by the likes of Flew, McGrath and Ward, among others.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

King's X - We Were Born To Be Loved.

Former atheist takes Dawkins to task

Following on from yesterday's post about Richard Dawkins comes this from the Bible Society's Newswatch emailing:

"A renowned atheistic philosopher, who stunned his peers four years ago by abandoning atheism, has accused the atheist scientist Richard Dawkins of becoming ‘a secularist bigot’. Prof Anthony Flew, emeritus professor at Reading University, chides Dawkins in a review of The God Delusion. Dawkins’ omission of Albert Einstein’s belief that a divine intelligence must lie behind the complexity of physics leads Flew to accuse Prof Dawkins of ‘insincerity of purpose’. He says Dawkins’ examination of Albert Einstein’s views on religion is selective and designed to support his own position."

Flew's review can be found be clicking here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Martyn Joseph - Just Like The Man Said.