Quote:Evolution has been caught in the act, according to scientists who are decoding how a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.

Along the warm coastal lowlands of New South Wales (map), the yellow-bellied three-toed skink lays eggs to reproduce. But individuals of the same species living in the state's higher, colder mountains are almost all giving birth to live young.

Only two other modern reptiles—another skink species and a European lizard—use both types of reproduction. (Related: "Virgin Birth Expected at Christmas—By Komodo Dragon.")

Evolutionary records shows that nearly a hundred reptile lineages have independently made the transition from egg-laying to live birth in the past, and today about 20 percent of all living snakes and lizards give birth to live young only.

Quote:In his latest book, The Grand Design, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

Quote:Chris,

Intriguing letter on the problem of evil. I'm a former believer, and while the problem of evil was a convincing reason not to believe, it wasn't my only reason for making the decision.

From that standpoint, I can, perhaps, offer a clue into what I suspect many of my former churchgoers might say in response, and it runs parallel to Platinga's case: God would not create a being without free will because he wants us to choose to be good to each other and, most importantly, choose to believe in Him. Believers, I think, would say that God was not interested in creating slaves or robots or mindless followers. Man absolutely needed to be able to make up his own mind on whether to believe in his creator, or else, we are zombies. I, to the contrary, think that creating a perfect, or at least, better, environment for humans, and stamping out evil at every turn (immediately stopping the rapist before the act occurred, for instance), would not be outside the grasp of a truly all-powerful god. It would surely present a better case for his existence rather than utter silence in the face of untold anguish and misery down through the ages.

Of course, I can take it a step further: If God created us, and knew that evil would be introduced into the world and knew that he was introducing us, without our input, into some spiritual chess match between good and evil (God and Satan, or whatever other unknown dichotomy might be at play), and then demanding we make choice between him and eternal fire, then we are and were never really free. Free will, if you believe in a divine creator and in his allowance of evil into the world, is an illusion in my view.

Or, as Christopher Hitchens likes to say, from the believers standpoint, we are made sick and commanded to be made well. This is not free will. And I think believers are wrong in making such claims unless the claim is only from deism. In that case, it may be possible to have true free will without the threat of an intervening god throwing us down to pits of perdition for not choosing correctly.