Stephen M. Barr

The Rev. George Coyne, S.J., director of the Vatican Observatory, has a penchant for theologically risqué statements. In a recent talk he asked, about life’s origins, "Do we need God to explain this? Very succinctly, my answer is no." Well, very succinctly, that is absurd. Of . . . . Continue Reading »

For a while it seemed that Father John Jenkins, the new president of the University of Notre Dame, was going to do the sensible thing about the performance of “The Vagina Monologues” on his campus. Unfortunately, he seems to have suffered some kind of collapse, whether of the will or . . . . Continue Reading »

There are two fundamentally different battles raging in the current debates about evolution. The first pits nearly the entire scientific community against creationists, who believe that they are upholding the veracity of Scripture by denying that evolution happened at all. The second battle . . . . Continue Reading »

In his op-ed piece last Sunday in USA Today , Edward O. Wilson makes a sweeping pronouncement: “The two world views—science-based explanations and faith-based religion—cannot be reconciled.” I agree: one cannot reconcile them, because they do not need to be reconciled. They . . . . Continue Reading »

One often hears it said that modern science has adopted a methodology that takes no account of teleology and final causation. This is taken to be a point against teleology by some and against modern science by others. It is true that Bacon, Descartes, and many others who have philosophized about . . . . Continue Reading »

Every academic knows how completely in thrall to identity politics and quotas our universities are. I heard a refreshing comment on this recently at a physics research talk. The speaker was a scientist originally from the Soviet Union, now at an American university famous for its liberalism and . . . . Continue Reading »

The philosopher Daniel Dennett visited us at the University of Delaware a few weeks ago and gave a public lecture entitled "Darwin, Meaning, Truth, and Morality." I missed the talk¯I was visiting my sons at Notre Dame and taking in the Notre Dame-Navy football game. Friends told me . . . . Continue Reading »

Catholic theology has never really had a quarrel with the idea that the present species of plants and animals are the result of a long process of evolution”or with the idea that this process has unfolded according to natural laws. As the 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia put it, these ideas seem to . . . . Continue Reading »

Science and the Trinity: the Christian Encounter with Reality by John Polkinghorne Yale University Press. 208 pp. $24. The story of science and religion since the Middle Ages has been one of estrangement rather than conflict. When the Aristotelian synthesis shattered, science and theology drifted . . . . Continue Reading »

A Devil’s Chaplain is a collection of essays book reviews, forwards, eulogies, and assorted “tirades and reflections” selected by Richard Dawkins from his work of the past twenty-five years. It is a miscellany that touches on postmodernism, the jury system, New Age superstitions, . . . . Continue Reading »