Recovering Evangelicals Podcast
Recovering Evangelicals
Luke Jeffrey Janssen
#141 – The Teleological Menace: Why Biology (Still) Requires God - episode of Recovering Evangelicals podcast

#141 – The Teleological Menace: Why Biology (Still) Requires God

1 hour 20 minutes Posted Oct 27, 2023 at 8:56 am.
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Show notes

Our deep-dive into Intelligent Design got us wondering why so many people embrace that worldview. Not just “sheeple” who can often blindly follow vocal proponents of even crazy beliefs (COVID was a global government-orchestrated event; vaccines cause autism; everything Q-Anon; the “stolen” election), but even many with impressive academic credentials who appear to have researched the question. In trying to understand this, we came across an article with the title The Teleological Menace: Why Biology (Still) Requires God by Seth Hart, a doctoral candidate whose current research project asks: does Darwinism (Natural Selection as a causal mechanism of evolution) require teleological concepts? He made many great points that are worth sharing with our listeners.

Some of the main points we discussed with him included:

At the end of this discussion, we addressed what seems to be two inevitable conclusions:

If those two conclusions didn’t slap you in the face, you need to read them again, more carefully.

Two equally provocative implications of those two statements:

Let us know what you think of those conclusions and their implications …..

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy our retrospective of our Intelligent Design mini-series, in which we summarize our current understanding of that worldview, including why so many people embrace it.

Find Seth Hart at his university profile page or this Academia profile page. Also make sure to check the article that first brought Seth to our attention on this matter.

Dr P. Z. Myers is a Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota Morris, and founder of and writer at the Pharyngula science blogweb-site.

Dr. Denis Walsh is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

Episode image by meineresterampe from Pixabay.

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