Christian apologist Michael Jones, who goes under the handle “Inspiring Philosophy,” has just put up a video arguing that the Gospel of Luke was written by a physician named Luke, who was a traveling companion of St. Paul, and who consulted eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection before penning his Gospel. The video, which I’ve posted above, makes a very well-argued case. It may persuade some of my viewers that Luke did indeed base his account of Jesus’ life on the testimony of eyewitnesses with whom he had conversed. However, I was not so easily convinced, and after viewing the video, I posted some critical comments, which I’ve appended below. (For some strange reason, they appear to have been deleted.) I’ll let viewers decide who has the better case, but before I present mine, let me state candidly that I do not claim to be certain of my position. It is entirely possible that I am wrong. If I am, though, then I think the author of Luke’s Gospel has got a lot of explaining to do, about why he wrote his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles the way he did. Without further ado, here’s my reply to Jones.

This is a skeptical Website, where empirical arguments in support of supernatural claims are subjected to heavy scrutiny. The subject of today’s post is Eucharistic miracles, which if true would violate the laws of chemistry. I happened to attend a Catholic Mass last Saturday evening. It was in a cathedral, but I won’t say exactly where it was, as I wish to respect the privacy of those who attended. I was sitting at the back of the church, which is where bad Catholics like myself tend to sit. At this time in the liturgical year, the Mass readings focus heavily on the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist: that when the priest celebrating Mass says the words of consecration over the bread and wine (“This is my body … This is the chalice of my blood…” – full text here), the bread and wine, while remaining unchanged in their outward appearance and their empirical properties, are actually transformed into Jesus Christ’s body and blood, which spiritually nourishes those members of the Church who receive the Eucharist worthily, and who believe it to be the body and blood of Christ (which they confess when they say “Amen” at Holy Communion). The priest celebrating the Mass which I attended had a fervent faith in the Eucharist, and he said he wanted his parishioners to say their Amens more enthusiastically when receiving Communion, so during his sermon, he attempted to inspire faith in his audience by talking about Eucharistic miracles, of which (he said) there were 107 that had been officially certified by the Church as worthy of belief by Catholics (although I should point out that they are in no way obliged to believe in them). Naturally, the priest didn’t have time to discuss them all, so he proceeded to focus on the best-known one: the miracle of Lanciano, said to have taken place in the eighth century as a sign given to a Catholic priest-monk who was having doubts about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

In my earlier post, I documented how the Discovery Institute has failed to keep up with the literature on the evolution of developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs). In today’s post, I’d like to illustrate my case by looking at a creature whose embryological development has been documented in minute detail: the humble lancelet (also known as amphioxus), a fish-like creature belonging to the subphylum Cephalochordata, whose ancestors diverged from other chordates either before or during the Cambrian period. Before I do so, however, I’d like to quote some insightful excerpts from a comment by Rumraket on my earlier post, which explain how developmental gene regulatory networks are able to evolve, in the first place.

Structure of a gene regulatory network. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

In a series of three articles (see here, here and here) over at Evolution News and Views, Dr. Casey Luskin, a geologist and an attorney who is also an Associate Director and Senior of the Center for Science and Culture, recently discussed the question of whether mutations in gene regulatory networks are capable of giving rise to significant changes in phenotype. Dr. Luskin argued that unguided processes, be they microevolutionary (i..e. neo-Darwinian) or macroevolutionary, are simply unable to account for the evolution of new body plans.

Dr. Luskin’s articles were irenic in tone and commendably fair in their discussion of opposing views. The author’s style of exposition was also admirably lucid. However, what struck me most about the articles was their use of dated sources. Reading them, I felt like I was stepping back in time.

Regular readers of articles on The Skeptical Zone will have noticed that the site has been down for a few weeks. On this point, I have some good news from Elizabeth Liddle, who messaged me a few hours ago with the latest update:

“…I’ve been trying to sort this out, but I’ve been absolutely swamped with work things, so it has taken longer than it should have done. The issue was that the hosting service had migrated us to new servers, and the domain name wasn’t pointing to the new servers. This is now sorted, and the site is back up.”

I will be putting up posts in the near future. Others are welcome to contribute their own material. Stay tuned!

I’ve just been watching a video posted on the One Life Network, titled, “Experts DESTROY Darwin’s Theory in 16 Minutes”, in which Peter Robinson (who is best known for writing President Ronald Reagan’s famous “Tear down this wall!” speech in 1987, and who is currently the host of the current affairs show Uncommon Knowledge) interviews David Gelernter, David Berlinksi, and Stephen Meyer on the possibility of life originating from non-living matter (abiogenesis) and on the possibility of new animal body types arising as a result of unguided mutations.

The “meat” of the interview is from 5:40 to 10:15, for readers who have little time to spare.

One viewer who went under the handle @TenMinuteTrips made a highly pertinent comment:

Here’s my issue with this discussion. You have three “experts” in their particular fields, discussing mathematical odds that supposedly prove that evolution could not possibly have happened the way Darwin described. We have a professor of computer science, a Princeton PhD who taught mathematics, and someone who specializes in something called, “the philosophy of science.” Where, pray tell, is an actual evolutionary biologist to defend their contributions to research in the field?

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Recently, Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity interviewed cosmologist Luke Barnes, a noted defender of the fine-tuning argument. Despite the numerous attacks directed by critics at the premises of the fine-tuning argument, Barnes is more convinced than ever of the merits of this argument.

By construct, James Fodor, a neuroscience grad student, has produced a video critiquing the fine-tuning argument. I have to say it’s about the best critique of the fine-tuning argument I’ve ever seen. The points Fodor made about divine psychology, the low prior probability of a God who wants to create life, and the evidential double standard employed by apologists arguing for theism, were especially telling. I’ll let readers decide whether Fodor has successfully refuted the fine-tuning argument.

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Red panda feeding. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

In this, my final post on panda evolution, I’d like to conclude with some clinching evidence for panda evolution and respond to Professor Dilley’s arguments in the last two posts of his five-part series.

The red panda and the giant panda: a case of convergent evolution

(a) The evidence from the false “thumb” of the red panda and the giant panda

I’d like to begin by referring readers to a news article in AsianScientist magazine by Sim Shuzhen, titled, How Two Pandas Got Their Thumbs (Feb. 2, 2017). The article provides some fascinating evidence for the evolution of the giant panda. Interestingly, this evidence comes from the red panda, which isn’t even a bear:

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The importance of thinking like an engineer

Uncommon Descent was, in its heyday, the leading blog for Intelligent Design, before it was eventually overtaken by EvolutionNews.org. (I contributed dozens of articles to it myself during my years as an Intelligent Design proponent, before leaving the ID community in 2016.) If you look at the Glossary of terms on the Uncommon Descent blog (which has now been archived) and if you expand each of the definitions and do a text search, you will find four references to “engineers,” “engineered” or “engineering,” but not a single reference to the terms “God,” “divine” or “divinity.” The word “Creator” is used twice, but only in connection with creationism, as opposed to Intelligent Design, which ID theorist Dr. William Dembski has defined simply as “the science that studies signs of intelligence.” Citing Wikipedia, the Glossary defines “intelligence” as “capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn.”

I was therefore astonished to find that in Professor Stephen Dilley’s article
Gould’s God-Talk: Is the Panda’s Thumb Incompatible with ID? (Evolution News, April 5, 2024), the word “God” is used no less than 27 times, including footnotes.

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The giant panda Jiao Qing in May 2020. Berlin Zoological Garden. Image courtesy of Avda and Wikipedia.

In an online article at Evolution News titled, Is the Panda’s Thumb Suboptimal? (April 4, 2024), Professor Stephen Dilley criticizes Stephen Jay Gould for claiming that the panda’s thumb is suboptimal and, therefore constitutes evidence in favor of naturalistic evolution. In response, Professor Dilley cites “two major studies” that highlighted the functionality and efficiency of the panda’s thumb before concluding that the panda’s “thumb” provides evidence of being engineered:

Gould’s claim is mistaken. The panda’s thumb is not suboptimal. The best studies we have conclude that the thumb is anything but “clumsy” or “highly inefficient.” Instead, they describe it as having “great precision,” “great economy of motion,” and “great dexterity.” It may even rank as “one of the most extraordinary manipulation systems” among mammals. That is quite an accolade.

Indeed, one might rather regard the thumb as positive evidence for intelligent design. A system of such precision, efficiency, economy, and dexterity is a spectacle of a high order. That sounds very much like the kind of sophistication that only engineers produce.

UPDATE: A clarification from Glenn Branch over at Panda’s Thumb

Professor Dilley’s remarks demonstrate that he misunderstands the meaning of the word “suboptimal,” as used by evolutionary biologists. He isn’t the first person to do so; nor will he be the last. Allow me to quote from a science educator who can set him straight on this issue.

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In a recent journal article titled, God, Gould, and the Panda’s Thumb (Religions 2023, 14(8), 1006; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14081006), former philosophy professor Stephen Dilley, who is currently a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, takes aim at an influential argument for evolution formulated by the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) in his best-selling book, The Panda’s Thumb (Norton and Company: New York and London, 1980). Sadly, Professor Dilley manages to completely misconstrue Gould’s argument, which isn’t about God at all, but about engineering. This can be shown by the fact that even if we delete the two brief references to God and the single reference to an omnipotent creator and replace them with “an engineer,” and if we replace the reference to God’s “wisdom and power” with the term “skill,” then Gould’s argument still makes perfect sense. I maintain that Gould’s use of theological terms is a mere embellishment which obscures the central point he is making: namely, that mere tinkering (i.e. a series of step-by-step natural changes involving the adaptation of pre-existing parts) does not warrant an inference to intelligent design, as it requires no foresight. The panda’s “thumb” works very well, but it appears to be the product of tinkering and shows no signs of foresight on the part of whatever produced it, in the way it is put together. Instead, it is best described as a “contraption,” adapted from “a limited set of available components” via a series of natural transformations, which “follows automatically from simple hypertrophy [i.e. a massive increase in size] of the [panda’s] sesamoid bone.”
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The last few weeks have seen the release of some excellent videos by both defenders and skeptics of the authenticity and reliability of the Gospels. In this post, I’ve decided to collect the best recent articles and videos I’ve seen on both sides, and put them all in one place, where readers can weigh up the evidence for themselves. My work features recent videos on the “names statistics” argument for the reliability of the Gospels, highlighting the recent work of two skeptics, Professor Brian Blais and Dr. Kamil Gregor (who appear in Paulogia’s videos) and a critique by Christian apologist Dr. Lydia McGrew, as well as a five-part series on a new book titled, The Historical Tell: Patterns of Eyewitness Testimony in the Gospel of Luke and Acts by Dr. Luuk Van de Weghe, a New Testament scholar who defends both the authenticity and reliability of Luke’s accounts. My own comments on each episode of the series, in which Dr. Van de Weghe is interviewed by Cameron Bertuzzi on his Capturing Christianity blog, are also shown below. Enjoy!

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Scottish-American historian Niall Ferguson, who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, has written an article on Bloomberg titled, “Global Population Crash Isn’t Sci-Fi Anymore.” I have to say it’s about as convincing a Doomsday scenario as I’ve ever seen. After identifying the various causes of global fertility decline (the increasing social pursuit of individualistic goals; the empowerment of women, who tend to postpone motherhood in order to achieve career success; the rising cost of raising and educating a child; lower rates of sexual activity among the young as smartphones, economic uncertainties and the stresses of modern life combine to depress people’s sexual appetites; more careful use of contraceptives by young people; declining religiosity due to the rise of secularization; the worldwide failure of government attempts to raise fertility rates; the global trend – America is one of the few outliers – towards easier access to abortion; a 50% fall in global sperm counts over the past 50 years, which is believed to be caused by factors such as “bad food, bad air and bad lifestyle”; increased social tolerance of euthanasia and assisted suicide) and explaining why the rise in international migration will increase the spread of global plagues and stymie attempts to tackle climate change, thereby leading to yet more immigration from exposed countries, Ferguson points out that when it happens, the global decline in population will be precipitous: from around 10 billion in 2100 to less than 2 billion by the year 2400, or a fivefold drop over the space of ten generations. His conclusion is a depressing one:

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Hi everyone. Today’s post is a melange, with a bit of this and a bit of that. There’s an article from The Washington Post on a new piece of the jigsaw puzzle that gives us a better understanding of how life began, plus links to two opposing articles on the origin of COVID-19, a short video by Dr. Dan McClellan on why Moses and the Exodus are probably not historical, and an interview with Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, who is Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, on about we can know about Jesus. Enjoy, and please feel free to comment as you wish.

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Sara Jayne is a cardiac diagnostic imaging specialist with over 20 years’ experience in the medical field. After being diagnosed with a life-threatening autoimmune disease, she underwent a profound near-death experience (her second), which turned her life around. She now works in Mind-Body Medicine and Applied Neuroscience, delivering mindfulness-based health & wellbeing programs, workshops and retreats. On a recent episode of Passion Harvest Podcast, Sara Jayne shared her story with the host, Luisa, who had the very good sense to let her speak without interruption. Sara Jayne’s Near-Death Experience testimony (which begins at 18:00) was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. I was impressed by her modesty, her frank admission that what she saw makes no medical sense, and the powerful transformative effect her experience has had on her life. What do readers think?

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An open fiberglass float pool at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. Image courtesy of Justin S. Feinstein , Sahib S. Khalsa, Hung-wen Yeh, Colleen Wohlrab, W. Kyle Simmons, Murray B. Stein, Martin P. Paulus and Wikipedia.

Gender identity is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as “an individual’s self-conception as a man or woman or as a boy or girl or as some combination of man/boy and woman/girl or as someone fluctuating between man/boy and woman/girl or as someone outside those categories altogether.” While it is thought to have a genetic component, no genes have yet been found to underpin it, and a recent scientific paper titled, “Brain Sex Differences Related to Gender Identity Development: Genes or Hormones?” (International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2020 Mar 19;21(6):2123. doi: 10.3390/ijms21062123. PMID: 32204531; PMCID: PMC7139786) modestly concludes that “to provide reliable conclusions, more data are needed.” Anyway, what interests me as a philosopher is whether gender identity is something purely subjective (like my perception of the color of a bank note), intersubjective (like the value that we as a society collectively assign to pieces of paper we call bank notes), or objective (like the length or mass of a bank note when it is at rest). So I came up with an interesting thought experiment involving a hitman, post-traumatic amnesia and a sensory deprivation tank. (Students of philosophy will notice the resemblance of this case to Avicenna’s “floating man” thought experiment, but my purpose is altogether different.) Curious? Read on.

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Introduction
Fr. Spitzer’s Proof of the Unity of God
The Trinity explained by the act of looking at a bottle
The Incarnation
The central paradoxes of the Trinity and the Incarnation

(NOTE: I’ve included the above podcast, which is divided into five sections, for the benefit of those who would prefer to listen to what I’ve written, rather than read it. People who prefer to read my post are welcome to continue scrolling down.)

Fr. Robert Spitzer S.J. is a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order and a retired President of Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Currently, he is President of the Magis Center of Reason and Faith and the Spitzer Center of Ethical Leadership. As well as having a Bachelor of Business Administration degree, Fr. Spitzer has a Master’s degree in Philosophy, a Master of Divinity degree, a Master of Theology degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree. He has published more than ten books, as well as dozens of articles, and he has appeared on several national television programs, including Larry King Live, The History Channel in “God and The Universe,” The Today Show, the PBS series “Closer to the Truth,” and the Hugh Hewitt Show. So when I came across a Youtube video featuring Fr. Spitzer being interviewed by Lila Rose (a pro-life activist and convert to Catholicism) titled, You’ve Never Heard the Trinity Explained Like THIS, I was intrigued.

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