Tag Archives: Carl Sagan
Black Holes, Belief Systems, and Help for the Skeptical Soul
More than Stardust: How to Debunk Scientific Materialism for Your Kids
A few weeks ago, I introduced IFI readers to Science Uprising, a project of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture that aims to (among other things) help people living in a secular culture learn to separate out legitimate claims of science from philosophical claims made under the guise of science. For a quick recap, philosophical materialism is the belief that matter and energy is all that exists. Best captured in Carl Sagan’s famous pronouncement that “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be,” it is a belief about the nature …
A Thinking People’s Revolt
Science Uprising Pulls back the Curtain on Pseudo-Scientific Posturing
In the 1980s, Madonna captured the image of one girl’s shallow, self-absorbed life with her pop song, “Material Girl”:
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl.
The era’s personal materialism of “I like stuff” or “Stuff is all that matters” was also captured in TV teen Alex Keaton of the sitcom Family Ties. Individuals may not be so enamored today of material things, but there’s another kind of collective materialism that holds undue sway in our culture. I’m talking about …
Bill Nye’s Reasonable Man — The Central Worldview Clash of the Ham-Nye Debate
Last night’s debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham attracted a huge international audience and no shortage of controversy—even before it began. Bill Nye, whose main media presence is as “The Science Guy,” and Ken Ham, co-founder of Answers in Genesis and founder of the Creation Museum, squared off in a true debate over one of the most important questions that the human mind can contemplate. That is no small achievement.
I enjoyed a front row seat at the debate, which took place even as a major winter storm raged outside, dumping considerable amounts of snow and ice and causing …
