Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Now hear this...
Some notices for your interest, mainly about radio interviews.
First of all, you might like to listen to Dr. Thomas Woodwood, Professor of rhetoric and author of the excellent 'Doubts About Darwin' and its recent sequal 'Darwin Strikes Back', discussing ID with Peter Hearty of the National Secular Society on the listen again service for Premier Christian Radio's Unbelievable show, hosted by Justin Brierly.
Yours truly makes a guest appearance at the other end of a phone line in the second half of the show - quite a difficult task to debate with no visual input, but I think I caught Pete Hearty in a real doozie: I gave the analogy of an archaeologist digging up a statue and infering design from what they see to show, contra Hearty, that infering design is a common scientific practice. Hearty responded that in the case of an archaeolgist infering a designer archaeologists know that the things they dig up are made by humans. I replied that this is not the case, but rather that archaeolgists assume that what they dig up might be due to design (not that it is) and that they have to infer design by looking at what they dig up and reasoning from there. Pete shocked me somewhat by boldly replying that archaeolgists do not do this! But of course they do - they don't assume that what they dig up is designed (it might not be), only that it may be and that they can tell a designed arrow head from a non-designed bit of rock by looking at the object and infering design from it. Besides, what if our archaeolgist is the first man on Mars and digs up a statue there? Obviously it can't have been man-made (baring time travel), but the object would be no less obviously the product of design - even if we had no idea who or what the designer was - it might have been a martian, or it might have been a god. Who knows? But it is obviously designed and saying so would not require us to step outside the science of archaeology!
Second, I spent today in London recording interviews for Premier Christian radio with Justin Brierly on Richard Dawkins' latest book: The God Delusion. I think the main review interview is going out live tomorrow morning on the breakfast show - hopefully you can track it down on-line through their listen again service. We also recorded a few short 'nuggets' looking at individual issues form the book, to be peppered through next week's broadcasts.
Finally, Dr Angus J. Menuge, author of the very insightful ID/Philosophy of Mind book 'Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the rationality of science' has asked me to advertise: 'the 11th academy of apologetics, evangelism and human rights to be held in Strasbourg France, July 10-212, 2007. It is run by John Warwick Montgomery and Craig Parton, and I [Menuge] will be one of the speakers this year. Full conference info is at: http://www.surfoutsider.net/monty/ '
There you go!
First of all, you might like to listen to Dr. Thomas Woodwood, Professor of rhetoric and author of the excellent 'Doubts About Darwin' and its recent sequal 'Darwin Strikes Back', discussing ID with Peter Hearty of the National Secular Society on the listen again service for Premier Christian Radio's Unbelievable show, hosted by Justin Brierly.
Yours truly makes a guest appearance at the other end of a phone line in the second half of the show - quite a difficult task to debate with no visual input, but I think I caught Pete Hearty in a real doozie: I gave the analogy of an archaeologist digging up a statue and infering design from what they see to show, contra Hearty, that infering design is a common scientific practice. Hearty responded that in the case of an archaeolgist infering a designer archaeologists know that the things they dig up are made by humans. I replied that this is not the case, but rather that archaeolgists assume that what they dig up might be due to design (not that it is) and that they have to infer design by looking at what they dig up and reasoning from there. Pete shocked me somewhat by boldly replying that archaeolgists do not do this! But of course they do - they don't assume that what they dig up is designed (it might not be), only that it may be and that they can tell a designed arrow head from a non-designed bit of rock by looking at the object and infering design from it. Besides, what if our archaeolgist is the first man on Mars and digs up a statue there? Obviously it can't have been man-made (baring time travel), but the object would be no less obviously the product of design - even if we had no idea who or what the designer was - it might have been a martian, or it might have been a god. Who knows? But it is obviously designed and saying so would not require us to step outside the science of archaeology!
Second, I spent today in London recording interviews for Premier Christian radio with Justin Brierly on Richard Dawkins' latest book: The God Delusion. I think the main review interview is going out live tomorrow morning on the breakfast show - hopefully you can track it down on-line through their listen again service. We also recorded a few short 'nuggets' looking at individual issues form the book, to be peppered through next week's broadcasts.
Finally, Dr Angus J. Menuge, author of the very insightful ID/Philosophy of Mind book 'Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the rationality of science' has asked me to advertise: 'the 11th academy of apologetics, evangelism and human rights to be held in Strasbourg France, July 10-212, 2007. It is run by John Warwick Montgomery and Craig Parton, and I [Menuge] will be one of the speakers this year. Full conference info is at: http://www.surfoutsider.net/monty/ '
There you go!
