Been dragging the last few days. I don't know if that was ridiculously long "crashing" from after the not-too-strenuous traveling I did, or if it was a very slight bug. More like I had post-flu light-headedness and lethargy without the inconvenience of the flu itself. Small blessings, if so.

Read through John Allen's latest "All Things ( Read more... )

This National Catholic Reporter story on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the great Jesuit paleontologist and theologian, caught my eye today, making me think of the essay I wrote along these lines several months ago for Bishop Seraphim's hoped-for collection of essays on Theosis in honour of Fr. Alexander Men. I was going to try to re-use that essay ( Read more... )

Here's an article and sample essay from a conference I would have loved to have attended in Rome about the broad cultural reception of evolutionary theory over the last 150 years. Fun stuff, and hopefully the type of thing on the academic level that will raise popular consciousness and discourse in the United States.

Give to Darwin What Is Darwin ( Read more... )

A few news stories that caught my eye over the last few days that are related, for better or worse, to religion in America....:

Optimism in Evolution
Obama’s View on Abortion May Divide Catholics
McCain and Obama face questions about their faith

( Read more... )

One key problem that seems to lurk in many students' minds is this cultural stereotype of what I once heard CNN describe as "the eternal war between science and religion." Now, if you know anything about the history of science, not only do you know that this perceived conflict only goes back to the philosophers who proclaimed their anti-Christian ( Read more... )

It is gratifying to have students coming up to me on the street to say that they're signing up for my class next semester, or to have freshman coming up after class, like today, and asking if and how they can get into the course. Especially after my first period today was kind of blah, where I felt like I was pulling teeth to try to get discussion ( Read more... )

Office hours. Wheeeee... I don't know what the deal is: I get semesters where my office hours are like a coffeehouse, with students showing up to hang out and talk class stuff and anything under the sun, and then I get semesters of utter disuse. I would have mostly said that's a spring/fall distinction, respectively, but at least one time I can ( Read more... )

Avery Dulles published this useful article, "God and Evolution" in the October 2007 issue of First Things. I'm calling it "useful" because it seems, from my first reading of it, to very ably summarize the last two years' discussion on the intersection of the disciplines of evolutionary biology, philosophy, and theology. First Things was ( Read more... )

John Allen's interview for the National Catholic Reporter with Peter Schuster, the molecular biologist who is the current President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and who is meeting with Benedict XVI and his Schülerkreis - his former graduate students - to have an informal symposium on the much-misunderstood topic of "Creation and Evolution ( Read more... )

Two writers' takes on the annual meeting of Pope Benedict's circle of former graduate students as they discuss the issue of the doctrine of Creation and the biology of Evolution, with a particular eye toward the philosophical misuses of evolutionary biology that have helped give rise (along with an unnuanced doctrine of biblical inspiration) to all ( Read more... )