“Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin,” writes Richard Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” This little book shows that atheism must seek intellectual fulfillment elsewhere decisively demonstrating the need for intelligence in explaining life’s origin. This is the best overview of why traditional origin-of-life research has crashed and burned and why intelligent design is necessary to explain the high-tech engineering inside the cell. It is no longer possible to be an intellectually fulfilled (...) atheist because life's origin requires an intelligent cause—this book shows why. _WHAT MAKES THE BOOK UNIQUE FROM OTHERS ON THE TOPIC? _ Coverage, brevity, and accessibility: It accurately and comprehensively surveys contemporary origin of life research, shows that attempts to rule out intelligence fail conclusively, and does so in a way that the average reader can understand. It demonstrates that atheism has no scientific basis, but instead is an ideology based on a speculative faith in the power of matter to do all its own creating. (shrink)

A study was undertaken of the views of users of two genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics in England on unlinked anonymous testing (UAT) for HIV. The UAT programme measures the prevalence of HIV in the population, including undiagnosed prevalence, by testing residual blood (from samples taken for clinical purposes) which is anonymised and irreversibly unlinked from the source. 424 clinic users completed an anonymous questionnaire about their knowledge of, and attitudes towards, UAT. Only 1/7 (14%) were aware that blood left over (...) from clinical testing may be tested anonymously for HIV. A large majority (89%) said they would agree to their blood being tested, although 74% wanted the opportunity to consent. These findings indicate broad support for UAT of blood in a group of patients whose samples are included in the HIV surveillance programme. The findings suggest the need for greater attention to be given to the provision of information and, if replicated in a larger survey, may justify a reappraisal of UK policy on UAT. (shrink)

Research demonstrates that women experience disgust more readily and with more intensity than men. The experience of disgust is associated with increased attention to disgust-related stimuli, but no prior study has examined sex differences in attention to disgust facial expressions. We hypothesised that women, compared to men, would demonstrate increased attention to disgust facial expressions. Participants completed an eye tracking task to measure visual attention to emotional facial expressions. Results indicated that women spent more time attending to disgust facial expressions (...) compared to men. Unexpectedly, we found that men spent significantly more time attending to neutral faces compared to women. The findings indicate that women’s increased experience of emotional disgust also extends to attention to disgust facial stimuli. These findings may help to explain sex differences in the experience of disgust and in diagnoses of anxiety disorders in which disgust plays an important role. (shrink)

Turing's analysis of computation is a fundamental part of the background of cognitive science. In this paper it is argued that a re‐interpretation of Turing's work is required to underpin theorizing about cognitive architecture. It is claimed that the symbol systems view of the mind, which is the conventional way of understanding how Turing's work impacts on cognitive science, is deeply flawed. There is an alternative interpretation that is more faithful to Turing's original insights, avoids the criticisms made of the (...) symbol systems approach and is compatible with the growing interest in agent‐environment interaction. It is argued that this interpretation should form the basis for theories of cognitive architecture. (shrink)

While niche construction theory locates animal artefacts in their constructors’ environment, hence treating them as capable of exerting selective pressure on both the constructors and their descendants, the extended phenotype concept assimilates artefacts with their constructors’ genes. Analogous contrasts apply in the case of endoparasite and brood parasite genes influencing host behaviour. The explanatory power of these competing approaches are assessed by re-examining the core chapters of Richard Dawkins’ _The Extended Phenotype_. Because animal artefacts have multiple evolutionary consequences for their (...) constructors, the extra-body effects of a gene seemingly include feedback effects on multiple other genes, a result which is more consistent with niche construction theory than with selfish gene theory. In the case of endoparasite genes influencing host behaviour, Dawkins’ argument leaves out what appears to be the key explanatory component, namely the role of the host’s own bodily systems in making it possible for such genes to exist. For action at a distance, it is unclear whether the key genes have extended effects because they sit in the body of the manipulating organism, or alternatively do not have such effects because they sit in the body of its victim. It is argued that niche construction theory offers a superior explanation in all three cases, regardless of whether the extended phenotype concept is interpreted in selfish gene or selfish organism terms. (shrink)

In Improvisation, Samuel Wells defines improvisation in the theater as "a practice through which actors seek to develop trust in themselves and one another in order that they may conduct unscripted dramas without fear." Sounds a lot like life, doesn't it? Building trust, overcoming fear, conducting relationships, and making choices--all without a script. Wells establishes theatrical improvisation as a model for Christian ethics, a matter of "faithfully improvising on the Christian tradition." He views the Bible not as a (...) "script" but as a "training school" that shapes the habits and practices of the Christian community. Drawing on scriptural narratives and church history, Wells explains six practices that characterize both improvisation and Christian ethics. His model of improvisation reinforces the goal of Christian ethics--to teach Christians to "embody their faith in the practices of discipleship all the time."--Publisher description. (shrink)

It is widely held that, in his pre-Critical works, Kant endorsed a necessitation account of laws of nature, where laws are grounded in essences or causal powers. Against this, I argue that the early Kant endorsed the priority of laws in explaining and unifying the natural world, as well as their irreducible role in in grounding natural necessity. Laws are a key constituent of Kant’s explanatory naturalism, rather than undermining it. By laying out neglected distinctions Kant draws among types of (...) natural law, grounding relations, and ontological levels, I show that his early works present a coherent and sophisticated laws-first account of the natural order. (shrink)

Anthropology is a significant matter within the church. A person's doctrine of humanity will inevitably shape the way a person thinks about the church, salvation, and in part, God. This dissertation is written out of concern for the potential harm that a faulty anthropology may do to the church. This study is concerned with exposing an approach to leadership within the church that is based on a faulty anthropology. Servant leadership has been hailed as the answer to the leadership crisis (...) that has plagued businesses, political offices, and churches. It is said that the authoritarian, monarchical style of leadership in the twentieth century no longer meets the needs of the current setting. In 1970 Robert K. Greenleaf---the chief advocate of servant leadership---proposed servant leadership as the emerging style that was prepared to address the social unrest of the 1960's and 1970's. He argued that the current leadership style must change---adapt to the emerging needs of the people. Greenleaf developed his ideas on servant leadership in the context of his reading of Hermann Hesse and Albert Camus. The repercussions of Robert K. Greenleaf's anthropology are evident in his view of human transformation. ;This study exposes the philosophical and theological underpinnings of Greenleaf's work on servant leadership as a distortion of the nature of humanity to the point that it leaves the doctrines of sin and salvation bereft of Christian significance. Since many within the church have used Greenleaf in their search for a biblical leadership paradigm, a Christian theological response to Greenleaf's assessment of humanity and human transformation will conclude this study. (shrink)

Several clinical cases are presented to illustrate the phenomenon of discontinuity of personal narrative. These discontinuities are markedly and overtly present in the cases described, which include cases of bipolar disorder, incipient schizophrenia, dissociative disorder, and others. One of the patients suggests that they are also ubiquitous in people without psychiatric diagnoses.

Barsalou's theory rightly emphasizes the perceptual basis of cognition. However, the perceptual symbols that he proposes seem ill suited to carry the representational burden entailed by the architecture in which they function, given that Barsalou accepts the requirement for productivity. A more radical proposal is needed in which symbols are largely external to the cognizer and linked to internal states via perception.

This updated and revised second edition of Donald A. Wells's popular 'War Crimes and Laws of War', originally published in 1984, traces the rules of war since ancient times. The major sources of the rules or 'laws' of war are explored: the congresses of the Hague, Geneva, and the United Nations. But an abyss exists between what military manuals allow and what the congresses prohibit; this book attempts to resolve this dilemma. An important text for military college courses and (...) international relations, as well as social philosophy courses. Co-published with the North American Society for Social Philosophy. Here is what reviewers had to say about the first edition. (shrink)

Johann Wolfgang Goethe* (1749–1832) believed that in 1784 he demonstrated the presence of the intermaxillary (premaxillary) bone in man, and that after a certain amount of opposition professional anatomists accepted his findings. This paper tries to show what the anatomical facts are, what it was that Goethe discovered, how his beliefs about his contribution and influence arose, and how his discovery is related to his general scientific aims and methods.

Bishop John A.T. Robinson's Honest to God was exceptionally successful. In the decade following its publication more than a million copies were sold in seventeen different languages. Robinson was aware that numerous awkward questions were being asked about traditional Christian beliefs, which it was no longer possible to ignore. His purpose was not so much to question traditional ideas of God as to suggest alternatives for those who found them unsatisfactory . He wanted to convince such persons that an inability (...) to believe what is stated in the Bible or the prayer book does not disqualify them from calling themselves Christians and presenting themselves at church. He speaks of traditional Christian beliefs, as stated in the New Testament, as a ‘language’ and thinks that Christianity should be conveyed to people in a variety of languages. By employing, as he does, the language of such Christian scholars as Bonhoeffer, Tillich and Bultmann, an atheist may find himself able to call himself a Christian. But the old familiar language of the Bible remains more pleasing to most of God's children, particularly to his ‘older children’ , so we must not give it up, although he allows that it is becoming increasingly unpopular, so that without ‘the kind of revolution’ he is advocating, ‘Christian faith and practice … will come to be abandoned’. (shrink)

When I purchased Verdict on Jesus: A New Statement of Evidence, published by SPCK in 2010, I hoped it would confront me with the very latest attempt to vindicate Christian doctrines. In fact the book turns out to be fundamentally a reissue of a very conservative apologetic work of that title, first published sixty years earlier by an Anglican – Leslie Badham, who later became Vicar of Windsor and chaplain to the Queen. Admittedly, he updated the book in 1971, and (...) in 1983 his son, the Revd. Professor Paul Badham, further revised it after the author's death, and later reissued it as a fourth edition, with further revision, in 1995. The present edition is thus the fifth, and includes a new introduction by Paul Badham and three new chapters (one of which he has written himself) presented with his conviction that the book is ‘a religious classic’ and ‘its central argument of permanent validity’. -/- One of the added chapters, entitled ‘Current Trends in Historical Jesus Research’, by the New Testament scholar Kathy Ehrensperger (239–258) is of philosophical interest. She insists that it is now acknowledged that a historical account is ‘not an objective reconstruction of the past’ but ‘a narrative about it from the perspective of the present’ – a perspective informed by the historian’s own ‘hermeneutical presuppositions’, who in consequence cannot ‘retrieve neutral facts from the past and thereby present an original, that is, “true” image of “how it really was”.’ This insight, she says, constitutes a ‘challenge to the notion of history as a discipline’. Scholars can do no more that provide ‘reconstructions ... informed by the best available contextual information interpreted in a responsible way which is sensitive to the data’. But ‘because of the limitations of the discipline of history itself’, they cannot ‘excavate the real Jesus ... as he really was’, and the present diversity of interpretations of him ‘should not be deplored’ but is ‘to be expected’, and is not ‘evidence for the failure of ... research’. (shrink)

Many theologians accept that it is not plausible to dismiss what is called the ‘higher criticism’ altogether, but try to limit its efficacy. This article discusses a number of their ways of doing so.

C.S. Lewis, the scholar of English mediaeval and Renaissance literature who died in 1963 and is still widely respected as a Christian apologist, complained that academic biblical scholars simply assume that miracles cannot have occurred in the fashion reported in the New Testament. In a lecture quoted by A.I.C. Heron 1 , he said: ‘The canon “If miraculous, unhistorical” is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it.’ In fact, as John Kent (...) retorted, they did not rule out in advance the idea of supernatural events, but were able, without it, to give adequate and plausible accounts of how the biblical documents reached their present form, by means of a method ‘based on questions of probability in terms of evidence’, not ‘on an a priori rejection of miracle’. 2 Conclusions concerning historical events of any kind are similarly based. ‘No historians’, says the historian R.J. Evans, ‘really believe in the absolute truth of what they are writing, simply in its probable truth, which they have done their utmost to establish by following the usual rules of evidence’. 3 To this question of ‘absolute’ truth I shall return. (shrink)

Lifelines discusses two approaches to biology, “ultra-Darwinism” which Rose criticises, and the “homeodynamic perspective,” which he offers as an alternative. This review suggests that ultra-Darwinism is a caricature of the theoretical positions Rose wishes to oppose and that the homeodynamic perspective is not an alternative, but is complementary to so-called ultra-Darwinism.