Michael Ruse Quotations

In other words, science tells us that Adam and Eve are fictions. That Saint Paul or Uncle Tom Cobley and all thought otherwise is irrelevant. They were wrong.

The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist, and the McGraths show why.

In particular, I argue that in both evolution and creation we have rival religious responses to a crisis of faith-rival stories of origins, rival judgments about he meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologians call rival eschatologies-pictures of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind.

We who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it

Their [the new atheists] treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing.

...I really want to believe. I find the goodies offered by Christianity extremely attractive. But I am damned (again!) if I am going to sell my evolutionary birthright for a mess of religious pottage.

Being a philosophical naturalist does not mean that one thinks that science can provide all of the answers. That is scientism and that is wrong. I don't think a billion buckets of science could speak to the problems raised by the Tea Party. Being a philosophical naturalist does not mean that one thinks that the only truths are those of science. I think the claim just made in the last sentence is true but I don't think it is a claim of science. It means that you use science where you can and you respect and try to emulate its standards.

I think intelligent design should not be taught in the biology classroom.

It's perfectly legitimate to talk about intelligent design. I think teenagers are the very people who should talk about this issue, but I don't think there's a place for it in the biology class.

We find no empirical or conceptual reason whatsoever to think of intelligent design theory as genuine science.