The website of John C. Snider
Step just inside the front entrance of the University of Kentucky’s historic Miller Hall and you might notice a brass plaque on the righthand side titled Freedom of Inquiry, the Teaching of Evolution, and the “Monkey Trial”. The plaque reads, in full: In March 1922, the Kentucky House of Representatives debated a bill to prohibit the teaching …
[Originally posted on April 2, 2008 at AmericanFreethought.com.] Yes, I blew $20 at the Creation Museum, brainchild of Answers in Genesis front-man Ken Ham. It’s located in northern Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. On the drive up along I-75 I didn’t see any billboards advertising it, but there was one of those brown …
In this book from 2003, philosopher Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell) tries to reconcile free will and Darwinian theory. [Originally posted October 2004 at SciFiDimensions.com; re-posted on February 3, 2008 at AmericanFreethought.com.] Does free will exist? It’s a thorny issue that philosophers have tangled with for millennia. And despite the occasional claim of victory, the …
A review of Peter Nichols’ biography of Robert Fitzroy, captain of the H.M.S. Beagle [Originally posted in February 2004 at SciFiDimensions.com; re-posted on February 2, 2008 at AmericanFreethought.com.] Every schoolchild and amateur scientist knows (or should) that Charles Darwin began developing his ideas about evolution and the origin of species while on a round-the-world voyage aboard …
[Originally posted on November 9, 2007 at AmericanFreethought.com.] Whether we like it or not, the Evolution/Creation Wars will be with us for a while. The forces of Creationism are as determined as ever to challenge Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, especially as it is currently taught in public schools and universities. The Creationists’ latest ploy is ”Intelligent Design,” …
[Originally posted in February 2007 at SciFiDimensions.com; re-posted on September 25, 2007 at AmericanFreethought.com.] It’s hard to believe, 82 years after the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, that there are still Americans who really do believe that the earth is 6,600 years old (give or take a century) and that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is just …
[Originally posted in March 2004 at SciFiDimensions.com; re-posted on September 24, 2007 as the first entry at AmericanFreethought.com.] What is “human nature”? How much of what we do is really “free will,” and how much of it is driven by deep genetic programming laid down even before there was such a thing as a human …