Christian scholar Jay Richards was interviewed by Brian Auten of Apologetics 315.
Topics:
- What is intelligent design (ID)?
- Is ID specifically Christian?
- How does ID helpful to Christian apologetics?
- What does ID prove?
- Is it OK to use an argument that doesn’t prove Christianity specifically?
- What is the difference between deism and theism?
- Do ID arguments get you to deism or theism?
- What is materialism, and how can you challenge it?
- How do opponents of ID define ID?
- What factors do you need to make a habitable planet?
- Are habitable planets common or rare in the universe?
- What is “The Privileged Planet” hypothesis?
- Is there an overlap between habitability and suitability for making scientific discoveries?
- What is the “Copernican Principle”?
- Has the progress of science made Earth seem common and ordinary?
- What is the most Earth-like planet that we’ve ever discovered?
- How should ID proponents respond to the objection that creatures aren’t perfect?
- Does having a big moon make a planet more or less habitable?
- Does a planet’s distance to the Sun make that planet more or less habitable?
- How do these two habitability factors affect the observability of solar eclipses?
- What does co-relation between habitability and “discoverability” tell us about God?
- How important is training in philosophy to Christian apologetics?
- What one thing should a Christian apologist work on to be more effective?
I’m hoping that Brian will do a follow-up interview with Jay on Jay’s new book on theistic evolution.
Here’s the description from Amazon.com:
What does it mean to say that God “used evolution” to create the world? Is Darwin’s theory of evolution compatible with belief in God? And even if Darwin’s theory could be reconciled with religious belief, do we need to do so? Is the theory well established scientifically? Is it true?
In the century and a half since Charles Darwin first proposed his theory of evolution, Christians, Jews, and other religious believers have grappled with how to make sense of it. Most have understood that Darwin’s theory has profound theological implications, but their responses have varied dramatically.
Some religious believers have rejected it outright; others, often called “theistic evolutionists,” have sought to reconcile Darwin’s theory with their religious beliefs, but often at the cost of clarity, orthodoxy, or both. Too few have carefully teased out the various scientific, philosophical, and theological claims at stake, and separated the chaff from the wheat. As a result, the whole subject of God and evolution has been an enigma wrapped in a shroud of fuzz and surrounded by blanket of fog.
The purpose of this anthology of essays is to clear away the fog, the fuzz, and the enigma. Contributing authors to the volume include Jay Richards, co-author of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery; Stephen Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design; William Dembski, author of The Design Revolution; Jonathan Witt, co-author of A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature; Denyse O’Leary, author of By Design, or by Chance?; and David Klinghoffer, author of Shattered Tablets.
Those authors are some of my favorite people to read in the whole world. I think this group will be mostly fed up with theistic evolutionists, like I am, although they may not go as far as I do when I label theistic evolutionists “functional atheists” or “theistic atheists”.
Jay Richards is probably my favorite all-round Christian scholar, because he also writes a lot on policy and economics, and was interviewed on those topics by Frank Turek. He has a complete, well-rounded worldview.
Posts featuring Jay Richards
- Jay Richards explains when you should doubt “scientific consensus”
- Fiscal and social conservatives unite in new free e-book “Indivisible”
- First Things reviews Jay Richards’ Money, Greed and God
- Video of the Stanford debate between Jay Richards and Christopher Hitchens
- Cato Institute talks with Jay Richards about Christianity and capitalism
Interviews by Jay Richards
- Ann Gauger’s new peer-reviewed paper on Darwinian evolution
- Doug Axe publishes a new peer-reviewed paper on protein folding
Related posts
- The origin of the universe from nothing
- The fine-tuning of the cosmological constants to permit life
- The fine-tuning of the galaxy, solar system, and planet to permit life
- Origin of the building blocks in the simplest replicating cell
- Origin of biological information in the simplest replicating cell
- Sudden origins of all major body plans in the Cambrian explosion
- Irreducible complexity in molecular machines
- The limits on what natural selection and random mutation can do
- Peer-reviewed paper says there is no atheistic explanation for the Cambrian explosion
- Does the Cambrian explosion disprove Darwinian evolution?
