Author: Neil Thomas

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post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 28, 2022

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Atheism, atomism, automatism, Bertrand Russell, chance, Darwinism, empirical evidence, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, European Enlightenment, Evolution, experimental science, fine tuning, Galen, Hank Hanegraaff, Intelligent Design, James Le Fanu, John Lennox, logical positivism, Lucretius, Materialism, Michael Denton, Natural Selection, Neil Thomas, nihilism, Plato, Privileged Planet, rationalism, Richard Dawkins, Richard Spilsbury, Thomas Huxley}

Neil Thomas Takes on Epicurus and the Logical Positivists

_{Neil Thomas

January 28, 2022

Evolution}

Today’s ID the Future concludes a three-part series featuring author Neil Thomas in a free-ranging conversation with radio show host Hank Hanegraaff. The focus is Thomas’s recent book, Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design. Here Thomas and Hanegraaff discuss the logical positivists and what Thomas sees as their failure to consistently apply their evidential standards to Darwinism. Thomas also contrasts the cosmic nihilism of Richard Dawkins with the mounting evidence of fine tuning for life, and calls out what Thomas describes as the magical thinking at the heart of Darwinism. Hanegraaff and Thomas also explore how Darwin’s theory of evolution has roots in an ancient philosophical system that was long regarded as resting on Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 26, 2022

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, Darwinism, DNA, Eugenics, Evolution, Fossil Record, Francesco Redi, Francis Crick, Friedrich Max Müller, genetic information, Hank Hanegraaff, human evolution, human language, Intelligent Design, Louis Pasteur, Mel Brooks, Michael Denton, Miller-Urey experiment, Naturalism, Neil Thomas, Neo-Darwinism, Niles Eldredge, Noam Chomsky, origin of life, panspermia, physicalism, Punctuated Equilibrium, Richard Dawkins, Robert Cornish, Scopes Monkey Trial, sociobiology, spontaneous generation, Stephen J. Gould, substance dualism, Taking Leave of Darwin, The Descent of Man, Theism, Thomas Aquinas, William Harvey, Young Frankenstein}

Neil Thomas Talks Darwin, Aquinas, OOL and … Young Frankenstein

_{Neil Thomas

January 26, 2022

Evolution}

On this ID the Future, Taking Leave of Darwin author Neil Thomas continues a lively conversation with radio host Hank Hanegraaff. In this second in a three-part series, the two touch on the fossil record’s challenge to Darwinism, Gould and Eldredge’s rescue attempt, the question of whether Darwin’s best known contemporary defender is dishonest or merely self-deluded, the wishful thinking surrounding origin-of-life studies, the failed attempts to reduce the mind to mere brain chemistry, and the morally repugnant pro-eugenics ideas rooted in Darwinism and touted in the textbook at the heart of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. The conversation is posted here by permission of Hank Hanegraaff. Get Neil Thomas’s book here.

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 24, 2022

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
agnosticism, Alfred Russel Wallace, Atheism, Charles Darwin, Christianity, Darwinism, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, fundamentalism, George Eliot, God, H.M.S. Beagle, Hank Hanegraaff, Hank Unplugged, John Milton, Karl Marx, Lawrence Krauss, Mary Ann Evans, memes, methodological materialism, Miracles, Naturalism, Neil Thomas, Oxford University, Paradise Lost, Richard Dawkins, Robert Chambers, Samuel Wilberforce, Satan, Taking Leave of Darwin, theistic evolution, Theory of Evolution, Thomas Huxley, vera causa, William Empson, William Thorpe}

Neil Thomas and Hank Hanegraaff: An Autopsy for Darwinism

_{Neil Thomas

January 24, 2022

Evolution}

Today’s ID the Future kicks off a three-part series featuring Taking Leave of Darwin author Neil Thomas interviewed by radio host Hank Hanegraaff. In this first part, Hanegraaff begins by lauding Thomas’s book and underscoring how influential Darwin’s theory of evolution has been on Western culture. Then Thomas sketches the cultural milieu and individual motivations that he’s convinced drew Darwin toward his formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Here the focus is not on the various evidential weaknesses of Darwin’s theory (which Thomas does cover in his book) but on a question that puzzled Thomas once he became convinced of just how evidentially weak the case for Darwinism was: How was it that a theory so poorly Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
August 30, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
agnosticism, animism, Antony Flew, artificial selection, Battle of Maldon, Bertrand Russell, British Rationalist Association, Cambrian Explosion, Charles Darwin, Church of England, Darwinism, devolution, domestic breeding, Evolution, gradualism, heroic fatalism, heroic poetry, Homeric epics, humanism, Icelandic sagas, John Updike, Michael Behe, Natural Selection, Neil Thomas, Niles Eldredge, paganism, Pigeon Feathers, Punctuated Equilibrium, Richard Dawkins, Richard Spilsbury, Stephen Jay Gould, Taking Leave of Darwin, the Enlightenment, Theism}

Author Neil Thomas Takes Leave of Darwin, Pt. 2

_{Neil Thomas

August 30, 2021

Evolution}

On this ID the Future, Taking Leave of Darwin author Neil Thomas and host Jonathan Witt continue their conversation about Thomas’s journey from Darwinian materialism to theistic humanism and a thorough skepticism of Darwinian theory. Here Thomas links the heroic posturing of modern atheists Richard Dawkins and Bertrand Russell, on the one hand, and on the other, the heroic fatalism of poetry stretching back to the early Middle Ages and, further still, to the ancient Greeks. Thomas also draws a link between the animistic thinking of much ancient pagan thought and the magical powers attributed to the Darwinian mechanism. Thomas explains why he now views the latter as essentially “crypto-animism.” In their wide-ranging conversation, Thomas and Witt also touch on Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
August 23, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
agnosticism, atomists, British Rationalist Association, Darwin’s warm little pond, Darwinism, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, evolutionary theory, Frankenstein, history of evolutionary thinking, Intelligent Design, Mary Shelley, Miller-Urey experiment, Neil Thomas, Neo-Darwinism, origin of life, propaganda, rationalism, Robert Chambers, scientific dogma, skepticism, Theism, University of Durham}

Author Neil Thomas Discusses Taking Leave of Darwin, Pt. 1

_{Neil Thomas

August 23, 2021

Evolution}

On today’s ID the Future, meet Taking Leave of Darwin author Neil Thomas, not at all the sort of person one might expect to find waging a campaign against modern evolutionary theory. An erudite and settled Darwinist living comfortably in a thoroughly secular English academic culture, Thomas nevertheless came to reject Darwinian materialism and, as he insists, did so on purely rationalist grounds. Listen in to learn about his journey and about his new book from Discovery Institute Press, Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design.

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
August 11, 2021

Categorized
Evolution

Tagged
abiogenesis, Adam Ure, agnosticism, Alexander Oparin, Andy Dougan, Atheism, Charles Darwin, Darwin’s warm little pond, Darwinism, DNA, double helix, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, Francis Crick, Frankenstein, Harold Urey, Intelligent Design, James Watson, John Haldane, Karl August Weinhold, Louis Pasteur, Mary Shelley, Materialism, Matthew Clydesdale, Miller-Urey experiment, origin of life, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus, Prometheus Unbound, Richard Dawkins, spontaneous generation, Stanley Miller, Theism, Watson and Crick}

Taking Leave of Darwin’s Warm Little Pond

_{Neil Thomas

August 11, 2021

Evolution}

Today’s ID the Future offers a sneak peek at the new book Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design by Neil Thomas (Discovery Institute Press). Here Scotsman Andrew McDiarmid reads from a Chapter 2 segment titled “The Elusive First Step.” Much of the book is a critical examination of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, in its original and updated forms; but here Thomas takes up Darwin’s proposal for the unguided origin of the first living cell. Thomas, like others before, points up the persistent and growing problems with a designer-free origin of life, but here he also explores some of the cultural influences that primed society to view the leap from non-life to life as Read More ›