Recent items of interest

Two things making noise on the internet and getting my attention recently:

Firstly, it appears that Richard Dawkins has, shockingly, started softening his anti-theistic line recently. My attention was first drawn to this possibility when I saw Peter S. Williams' piece in the Evangelical Philosophical Society blog about Dawkins' "search for a grander truth". But that was just the tip of the iceberg: according to Spectator writer Melanie Phillips' report on the second Dawkins/Lennox debate a couple of weeks ago, he now accepts that "a serious case could be made for a deistic God". This from the man previously set on attacking "God in all his forms"! Bjørn Are's and William Lane Craig's responses to Phillips' article are also worth your attention.

I wonder if Dawkins' neo-atheist fellow-travellers Dennett, Harris and Hitchens are going to have to have an intervention with him? First Antony Flew, and now this...

Meanwhile, popular science journalism hasn't gotten any less scientistic while I wasn't looking. According to this hatchet job in New Scientist, non-materialist philosophy of mind is part of a "war on science" led by the ever-evil Discovery Institute. Joe Gorra does the job of presenting a response on behalf of the EPS, many of whose members are mentioned in the NS article. Tom Gilson also counted to ten before writing anything about it. For some idea of just what a piece of hackery this article was, though, you should see Merlijn de Smit's blog post about the fiasco, which also gives some of his views on popular science journalism more generally. Reasonable discussion can be found on Dangerous Idea, where Blue Devil Knight plays the role of the naturalist not stricken with chronic dogmatism (leaving that, as usual, to Doctor Logic). I've stuck my oar in in the comments to this post by Paul Wright. Go there (or here) for my views.

Yes, that was really just a collection of links. I hope to be back shortly with something more substantial. Until then, good night and God bless.