Every group has its role models and its lowlifes, its aspirations and its shortcomings, its best moments and worst. And so, we all need prophets that call us back to our ideals. Amongst skeptics, atheists, and secularists, some quieter voices like Michael Ruse and Julian Baggini have tried, lamenting the rise of a cavalry of imperious and hostile voices that have become the face of the self-described “community of reason”. More recently, Massimo Pigliucci, a member in good standing of said community, echoes their concerns. He called upon his cohorts to reject scientism, anti-intellectualism and a number of vogue theories while embracing classic epistemic virtues like charity, respect, and civility. Hear. Hear.

Creationists who dismiss Darwin’s theory of evolution. Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. Climate change deniers who dismiss the warming planet as a hoax. These are just some of the groups that, despite robust scientific evidence, embrace pseudoscientific beliefs and practices. Why do they believe bunk? And how does their ignorance threaten us all? Noted skeptic Massimo Pigliucci sets out to separate the fact from the fantasy in this entertaining exploration of the nature of science, the borderlands of fringe science, and– borrowing a famous phrase from philosopher Jeremy Bentham–the nonsense on stilts. Covering a range of controversial topics, Pigliucci cuts through the ambiguity surrounding science to look more closely at how science is conducted, how it is disseminated, how it is interpreted, and what it means to our society. The result is in many ways a "taxonomy of bunk" that explores the intersection of science and culture at large. ~ Product Description

Because conservative students do not take over buildings or drown others out with their shouting, instructors feel free to mock conservatives in the classroom, and administrators pay scant attention when their posters are torn down or their sensibilities offended. As a tenured professor who does not decline the label “conservative,” I benefit from this imbalance by getting to know some of the feistiest students on campus. ¶ But these students need and deserve every encouragement from outside their closed and claustrophobic environs. … In Nigeria, Islamists think nothing of seizing hundreds of schoolgirls for the crime of aspiring to an education. Here in the United States, the educated class thinks nothing of denying an honorary degree to a fearless Muslim woman who at peril of her life, and in the name of liberal democracy, has insisted on exposing such outrages to the light. The struggle for freedom is universal; would that our universities were on its side.

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude, in which I am placed in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly abandon’d and disconsolate. Fain would I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth; but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I call upon others to join me, in order to make a company apart; but no one will hearken to me. Every one keeps at a distance, and dreads that storm, which beats upon me from every side. I have expos’d myself to the enmity of all metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and even theologians; and can I wonder at the insults I must suffer? I have declared my disapprobation of their systems; and can I be surprised, if they should express a hatred of mine and of my person? When I look abroad, I foresee on every side, dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me; tho’ such is my weakness, that I feel all my opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by the approbation of others. Every step I take is with hesitation, and every new reflection makes me dread an error and absurdity in my reasoning.

For with what confidence can I venture upon such bold enterprises, when beside those numberless infirmities peculiar to myself, I find so many which are common to human nature? Can I be sure, that in leaving all established opinions I am following truth; and by what criterion shall I distinguish her, even if fortune shou’d at last guide me on her foot-steps? After the most accurate and exact of my reasonings, I can give no reason why I shou’d assent to it; and feel nothing but a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view, under which they appear to me. Experience is a principle, which instructs me in the several conjunctions of objects for the past. Habit is another principle, which determines me to expect the same for the future; and both of them conspiring to operate upon the imagination, make me form certain ideas in a more intense and lively manner, than others, which are not attended with the same advantages. Without this quality, by which the mind enlivens some ideas beyond others (which seemingly is so trivial, and so little founded on reason) we cou’d never assent to any argument, nor carry our view beyond those few objects, which are present to our senses. Nay, even to these objects we could never attribute any existence, but what was dependent on the senses; and must comprehend them entirely in that succession of perceptions, which constitutes our self or person. Nay farther, even with relation to that succession, we cou’d only admit of those perceptions, which are immediately present to our consciousness, nor cou’d those lively images, with which the memory presents us, be ever receiv’d as true pictures of past perceptions. The memory, senses, and understanding are, therefore, all of them founded on the imagination, or the vivacity of our ideas.

And this is the key moment of the finale, [Baltar] realizing the connections. Baltar is the man who has been thinking about and talking about God from the very beginning. Since the moment that Caprica Six said “God is Love” and Baltar dismissed her belief and mocked her belief. There is a direct connection between that moment and here where Baltar in the finale realizes, truly realizes, there is a different, there is another hand at work here, that there is something else going on, that there is a greater truth, that there is really something to this idea of destiny, that there is really something to this notion that he is a player in a grander play, and that he has to fill that role. I was really intrigued by that and I really wanted that to be a part of what happened at the end…

We’ve had moments where it looked like all is lost, and the question here was who is going to save this, who is going to step forward and say the thing that gets them out of this circumstance. And it felt right that the man who started it all, Gaius Baltar, who allowed the cylons entry into the mainframe at the very beginning, he’s the guy that is going to get them out of this. And he gets them out of it by realizing the larger story, by realizing the supernatural, by realizing the divine, the divinity of something, and realizing that there is some force here — whether you want to call it God, whether you want to call it the gods, whether you want to call it the energy of the universe, or mathematics as Einstein would probably term it. The acknowledgment of this man, of the secular man, his acknowledgment that there was something greater that wanted them to make it, that was rooting for them, that was trying to help them and trying to guide them. That felt right…

There are people who say that the show is nihilistic, and the show is bleak, and the show is too brutal to watch, and the show just says something negative about people. I never felt that. I wanted the show to be brutal and honest. I wanted the show to talk about truths that we were afraid to talk about in polite company, we were afraid to put into our fiction on some level. But I didn’t want it to be nihilistic and I never felt it was nihilistic. I always felt that there was something beautiful about the show, that there was something poetic about it, something that did speak to the better angels of our nature. I wanted the finale to end on that note. I didn’t want it to end on something horrible. I didn’t want it to end with the idea that life is meaningless, that life has no purpose. I wanted to give an idea that there is something greater, and something beautiful, but that you can only really appreciate that by acknowledging the ugliness, by acknowledging death, by acknowledging brutality, horror, and evil, and to realize that good and evil are tied up together and one cannot exist without the other. That’s part of my personal understanding and awareness of life. I don’t pretend that that’s particularly profound, or particularly new. It’s just that the story I chose to tell, that’s how I chose to end it.

[Note: This quote is a transcript of an extemporaneous audio commentary, hence the run-on sentences and repetition. No doubt the exposition would be more terse had it been committed to the page.]

Challenges to the reliability of Scripture are perennial and have frequently been addressed. However, some of these challenges are noticeably more common today, and the topic is currently of particular interest among evangelicals. In this volume, highly regarded biblical scholar Craig Blomberg offers an accessible and nuanced argument for the Bible’s reliability in response to the extreme views about Scripture and its authority articulated by both sides of the debate. He believes that a careful analysis of the relevant evidence shows we have reason to be more confident in the Bible than ever before. As he traces his own academic and spiritual journey, Blomberg sketches out the case for confidence in the Bible in spite of various challenges to the trustworthiness of Scripture, offering a positive, informed, and defensible approach. ~ Publisher’s Description

Over the past twenty-five years, no one has done more than J. P. Moreland to equip Christians to love God with their minds.  In his work as a Christian philosopher, scholar, and apologist, he has influenced thousands of students, written groundbreaking books, and taught multitudes of Christians to defend their faith. In honor of Moreland’s quarter of a century of ministry, general editors Paul M. Gould and Richard Brian Davis have assembled a team of friends and colleagues to celebrate his work.  In three major parts devoted to philosophy, apologetics, and spiritual formation, scholars such as Stewart Goetz, Paul Copan,  Douglas Groothuis, Scott Rae, and Klaus Issler interact with Moreland’s thought and make their own contributions to these important subjects.  Moreland concludes the volume with his own essay, “Reflections on the Journey Ahead.” ~ Publisher’s Description