Parchment & Pen Blog

(Paul Copan) The former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca once said: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”  This simple advice has wide-ranging application—whether we’re settling personal disagreements, planning our schedules, or trying to build bridges with non-Christians. One area of bridge-building has to do with the creation-evolution “debate.”  In my [...]

Naturalism takes for granted the following tenets: Nature is all there is. All reality is comprised of or rooted in matter. There is no supernatural—no Creator, no miracles, no souls, no angels, no life after death. Science becomes the only (or best) means of knowledge.  Richard Dawkins is a four-point naturalist.  Such a position, however, [...]

1. Young Earth Creationism (YEC) The Skinny: Belief that the universe was created miraculously by God around ten thousand years ago (or less). Explanation: YECs often insist that their view is the only way to understand and remain faithful to the integrity of the Scriptures. For them, options which integrate evolution or an old earth paradigm compromise [...]

There was quite a bit of reaction to my comic the other day. I suppose that I should just get out of the comic business, but that darn iPad is just too inviting to draw out some fun stuff here and there. Here is the first one I posted two days ago: It is funny, [...]

by Paul Copan In my last post, I mentioned my brief interaction with Richard Dawkins when he came to Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale last month. A week later, I responded to Dawkins at Nova in an open forum. (Here is one of the video clips from the Q&A time that followed—on “If God [...]

One of my all-time favorite movies is “Elf.” Our family probably watches it three or four times every Christmas season. The child-like naivety of “Buddy” the elf is more than enough to make anyone smile. He believes in Christmas. He most certainly believes in Santa. It takes us back to the time when we, who’s [...]

by Paul Copan Last week, Richard Dawkins spoke here in Ft. Lauderdale at Nova Southeastern University on “The Fact of Evolution.” The following week, I spoke on “The Fact of God”—also delivered at Nova Southeastern. It was a direct response to Dawkins’s naturalistic worldview as well as a number of the comments he made at [...]

Paul Copan and Richard Dawkins [ 2:13 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“The history of Science is the history of bad ideas.” This is a quote that I heard recently. I think that it is a rather tongue-in-cheek way of expressing our (post)modern culture’s current attitude with respect to the authority of science. During the modern period, science was king. The scientific revolution produced hopes of a [...]

In a recent debate on the topic of design, I expressed amazement at all the huffing and puffing by anti-design proponents. Though they assert that a design hypothesis is “unscientific,” they say things in other places that make me suspicious. That is, many of these naturalists express profound astonishment at the universe’s precision-tuning for life, [...]

1. Young Earth Creationism The belief that the universe and all that is in it was created by God around ten-thousand years ago or less. They insist that this is the only way to understand the Scriptures. Further, they will argue that science is on their side using “catastropheism.” They believe that world-wide biblical catastrophes [...]

I recently received an email from someone who asked me what I thought of Francis Collins’s 2006 book, The Language of God. Let me say, first, that I have great appreciation for Collins. A committed Christian, he is head of the Human Genome Project and has done pioneering work in genetic research. I can identify [...]