Sago Boulevard

Philosophers’ Carnival #24 is up at Rad Geek People’s Daily.

Leibniz on Intelligent Design (via Kenny Pearce):

We know that while there have been, on the one hand, able philosophers who recognized nothing except what is material in the universe, there are, on the other hand, learned and zealous theologians who, shocked at the corpuscular philosophy and not content with checking it’s misuse, have felt obliged to maintain that there are phenomena in nature which cannot be explained by mechanical principles; as for example, light, weight, and elastic force. But since they do not reason with exactness in this matter, and it is easy for the corpuscular philosophers to reply to them, they injure religion in trying to render it service, for they merely confirm those in their error who recognize only material principles. The true middle term for satisfying both truth and piety is this: all natural phenomena could be explained mechanically if we understood them well enough, but the principles of mechanics themselves cannot be explained geometrically, since they depend on more sublime principles which show the wisdom of the Author in the order and perfection of his work.

Madeleine Bunting picks up on what I think is the most serious problem of Richard Dawkins’ brand of secular humanism. (via Mr. Grouchypants) It simpy “hasn’t generated a compelling popular narrative and ethic of what it is to be human and our place in the cosmos.” The misguided alliance of atheism and science further obfuscates the key issues. Science will never tell us why we are here and what our role is in relationship to the world that we perceive around us.

To be fair, many claims made by religious institutions may be and have been debunked by scientific discovery. But religion per se, humanity’s search for God and its subsequent relationship with Him, remains completely unscathed. When pushed against the wall, the secular humanist merely plays the skeptic’s card, seeming not to realize that it cuts both ways.

I’m still waiting for a positive atheistic-humanistic worldview that can hold its own with the great religious traditions of the ages, in both scope and depth, while maintaining the strict logical rigor that critics demand of theologians.