My bisexual friends “Dick” and “Jane” have sent comments on my last post, “‘Gay Genes’ and Religious Homophobia.” Here are the comments, the first from Jane, the second Dick. By the way, they are extremely smart computer-industry veterans.
Dear John,
It wouldn’t surprise me if there was some biological basis for homo- or […]
My writings have often been used by those whose views diverge from my own. Christians in particular. To my dismay, many of them embraced The End of Science because they wrongly saw it as an implicit endorsement of non-scientific, religious solutions to existence. This made for some uncomfortable conversations between me and Christian radio-talk-show hosts. […]
After writing “The Problem of Beauty” yesterday and firing it off into cyberspace, I pulled on my sweatshirt and headed out with Merlin, our big curly-coated retriever. I ran down the driveway, Merlin prancing before me, proudly bearing a fungus-covered log in his jaws. I ran through the field beside our property, dodging bushes studded […]
One reason why many of us can’t believe in God—at least as conceived within Judaism, Christianity and Islam–is the problem of evil. If God really loves us, then why is life often so painful and unfair? No one has answered this question adequately. But the flip side of the problem of evil is the problem […]
A couple of other points on which I diverge from Dawkins, whose antipathy toward religion I share (if he sees these posts, he’ll probably think, “With friends like these…”):
First, in God Delusion and elsewhere he exaggerates the degree to which Darwinism explains life. Dawkins opens The Blind Watchmaker by declaring that life "is a mystery […]
Being a shallow, self-absorbed sort, I ran out to buy The God Delusion yesterday after someone told me that Richard Dawkins mentions me in it. In a section titled “An Interlude at Cambridge,” Dawkins recalls his participation as a speaker in the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship for Science and Religion in the summer of 2005. He […]
Does the premier American scientific organization think psi might be real and worth investigating? The American Association for the Advancement of Science has 262 “affiliates," groups whose aims are “directed toward, or consistent with, the aims” of the AAAS. One affiliate is the Parapsychological Association, a self-described “organization of scientists and scholars engaged in the […]
One last blast at psi:
Paranormal phenomena can be explained in three ways. One explanation views these phenomena as miracles, divine overrides of nature’s laws. According to this view, God grants psychic powers to certain special people, who can part seas, change water into wine, see the future, heal the sick, even resurrect the dead. Even […]
Several respondents to “Who Believes in ESP?” have mentioned that Brian Josephson, like Freeman Dyson, is a prominent physicist who believes in paranormal phenomena. I met and interviewed Josephson in Tucson, Arizona, in 1994 at “Toward a Scientific Basis of Consciousness.” Below is a slightly modified version of my write-up of Josephson for The Undiscovered […]
Since Discover published my update on The End of Science, some readers have informed me that science—far from ending–is on the verge of thrilling breakthroughs in the understanding of paranormal phenomena, or “psi.” Coincidentally (or is it synchronistically?), the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina, just sent me a fundraising letter making the same […]