Archives for “Science”
My good friend Cliff Martin describes the experience of people like myself who have followed the truth even when it took us outside the borders of the evangelical reservation and found that its gate-keepers enforce stringent import restrictions on items we acquire outside its borders – of course, he does so using the perhaps more apt biblical analogy of the shibboleth.
Speaking from experience, Cliff writes:
As I take a few steps back from the accepted traditional theology of the evangelical church to which I belong, that very church keeps nudging me to step further away. I am asked to keep my concerns to myself. When I try to warn my friends that the edifice of Christianity is supported by pillars of styrofoam, I am told things would go better for me if I would just keep it to myself. I am told that the personal rejection I endure on so many fronts is my own fault. I come on “too strong”, they tell me.
Let me interrupt here. Knowing as I do how tactfully and respectfully Cliff engages in conversation with those he disagrees with (read the comments on his blog posts!), I find it hard to imagine the label “too strong” being applied to him in any bad way, at very least in any way that wouldn’t also apply to the very evangelical polemicists he is talking to. More likely the label these people are reaching for is “too credible and unnervingly likable”, but regardless, he is passionate because he believes that these conversations are important. As he continues:
- Theodicy and evolution Cliff Martin continues his interesting discussion of the apparently conflicting ideas of the loving Christian God and the God who ordained the sometimes brutal processes needed for evolution. I see...
- Lamoureux: links and labels Mike Beidler over at The Creation of an Evolutionist has a post up with a link to an overall excellent interview with the brilliant Denis Lamoureux, author of Evolutionary Creation,...
- The place of fear in our bibliology The other night, a friend and I reiterated our independent observations that, despite all nuances, what ultimately stands behind most of American Christianity’s implacable dedication to inerrancy is fear. Dr. Jim...
This is a guest post from frequent commenter Arcamaede, who follows the climate change news very closely. I asked him to lend his “fair and balanced” perspective to this question. Often, it’s assumed that “as evolutionary science, so climate science” — either scorning both or upholding both unequivocally. Might there be cause for a more nuanced approach?
~ Steve
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If you haven’t heard about “Climategate” then you do not follow the issue of climate change!
In brief, Climategate is the controversy that erupted after the release of thousands of emails from the CRU (Climate Research Unit) of the University of East Anglia which detailed serious scientific misconduct among climate scientists there (and in other similar institutions throughout the world). That misconduct was in the form of suppressing dissenting views as well as data that conflicted with the views of an inner cadre of high level climatologists.
Related posts:- Florida science standards dethrone God! Details at 11 Talk about a love/hate relationship… I highly commend Gary Demar of American Vision for a number of reasons. Chiefly, he is on the front lines in arguing against the immobilizing...
- Faith and science: on “two ways of knowing” I’ve been watching the back-and-forth between Jerry Coyne and Karl Giberson. Apparently there has been a video produced for USA Today that features them in a conversation answering the question,...
- Limitations of science Dr. Keith Miller’s recent essay on the Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution site entitled “Creation, Evolution and the Nature of Science” included the following statement: In fact, as I have argued,...
I’ve been watching the back-and-forth between Jerry Coyne and Karl Giberson. Apparently there has been a video produced for USA Today that features them in a conversation answering the question, “Are science and religion compatible?” that has not been put online yet. I think we know their answers, though.
Karl Giberson of the BioLogos Foundation, of course, finds faith and science completely compatible. Incompatabilist atheist Jerry Coyne actually insists that he does also, at least provisionally: “…if and only if ‘compatibility’ meant only this: ‘can someone be religious and also be a scientist/accept science? ‘” He goes on to clarify by reiterating that people are capable of inconsistency and holding beliefs that are in tension with one another, which is what he thinks science and faith are. Ever the incompatibilist, Coyne attacks the common Christian claim that there are “two ways of knowing”, one that is empirical and discernable only by observation, and one that does not depend upon physical observability. Says Coyne, “This—the disparity in ‘ways of knowing’—is the true incompatibility between science and faith.” He accuses Giberson and other compatibilists of failing to address attacks on the validity of the kind of religious epistemology that is “immune to rational scrutiny”. Because rational scrutiny is indeed applied to theology by believing theologians and philosophers all the time, he appears to be defining “rational” as laboratory-driven, or perhaps motivated by empirical evidence alone. He makes a point to dismiss the validity of holding beliefs merely acquired by culture and tradition, which of course any believer would do as well, but he implies that any beliefs initially acquired by any means other than deductive reasoning or empirical observation is necessarily invalid.
Related posts:- Dr. Ard Louis on science and faith: two videos I was intrigued by this short video showing Dr. Ard Louis (Oxford University) articulate a simple but profound critique of this fundamental aspect of the reasoning behind intelligent design. Read...
- Limitations of science Dr. Keith Miller’s recent essay on the Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution site entitled “Creation, Evolution and the Nature of Science” included the following statement: In fact, as I have argued,...
- Climate science and evolutionary science This is a guest post from frequent commenter Arcamaede, who follows the climate change news very closely. I asked him to lend his “fair and balanced” perspective to this question....
Christians coming to terms with evolution, including many ID advocates who acknowledge common descent, will often arrive at a midpoint of sorts between denial of evolution and all-out theistic evolution (or evolutionary creation) that acknowledges that we are by-products of evolution and seeks to hold the line on the most theologically problematic aspect of evolutionary theory: the historicity of Adam and Eve. For many, this is a comfortable resting place and they remain content acknowledging the deafening scientific consensus of common descent on one hand and believing in a literal first human pair on the other.
This is often done by positing a bottleneck of the population down to two individuals, often misunderstanding the unfortunately ambiguous terms Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam. The more sophisticated (but odd) way of doing this is to allow there to have been more than two at the time of Adam and Eve, but to posit that the Fall event occurred to them uniquely, and that the effects have passed down to later humanity through descent from them.
Related posts:- The trouble with intramural accommodationism Can one be consistent in accepting both the common form of inerrancy as described in the Chicago Statement and universal common descent? This question is something I struggle with when...
- Dembski on theodicy and a young earth William Dembski, a father of the Intelligent Design movement, has recently become comfortable calling himself an old earth creationist who, as a good Baptist, accepts the historicity of Adam and...
- The Bible and the need for proof In his latest post, Mike mentions a Facebook conversation with someone puzzled by his rejection of inerrancy; I was involved with the conversation as well. As Mike described, this individual...
Can one be consistent in accepting both the common form of inerrancy as described in the Chicago Statement and universal common descent?
This question is something I struggle with when I observe people try to sell other believers on evolutionary theory without openly acknowledging the ways in which their own rejection of the idea of a single pair of progenitors has resulted in an often subtle yet usually profound modification of how they understand the Bible to work. I, too, have been tempted on numerous occasions to begin the presentation of my case by positing a (purely hypothetical) scenario in which accepting that early Genesis was unhistorical does not result in a revised or nuanced bibliology; if not outright dishonest, I feel that this approach is nonetheless misleading, perhaps even disingenuous, and a setup for problems later.
Related posts:- Lamoureux: links and labels Mike Beidler over at The Creation of an Evolutionist has a post up with a link to an overall excellent interview with the brilliant Denis Lamoureux, author of Evolutionary Creation,...
- Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in...
- Why the debate over creationism matters Recently I have been involved in a couple conversations with folks who aren’t really “informed” (I use the term loosely) creationists but have been hounded enough by creationists/biblical literalists who...
All right, here’s a rant for you.
There’s a news story circulating about the well-known fact that homeschooling texts are ignoring or even (the audacity!) criticizing mainstream science in favor of creationism. The usual suspects have emerged to show their disgust of the benighted institution of homeschooling. There’s a poll up at MSNBC asking the question, “Is it OK for home-school textbooks to dismiss the theory of evolution?” Wait, what does “OK” mean here? Are they asking, “Do you think it’s good that home-school textbooks do this?” or “Is it healthy for society that they do this?” The ambiguity in the question itself implies that what they really want to know is, “Should the authorities allow parents to teach their kids this stuff?” The mantra among most secularists that I’ve heard on this issue is that homeschooling should be, preferably, illegal or, at very least, strictly regulated for content by the state. Thus, the following rant.
Related posts:- Homeschooling and agendas There is no bigger proponent of home education than yours truly. I myself was homeschooled from the fifth grade through graduation. Although a somewhat shy, awkward kid, I somehow turned...
- Why the debate over creationism matters Recently I have been involved in a couple conversations with folks who aren’t really “informed” (I use the term loosely) creationists but have been hounded enough by creationists/biblical literalists who...
- Quote of the day (12-6-2008) At the risk of inbreeding, I am compelled to submit this quote from a blogger who has twice linked to my post on why the debate over creationism matters. It...
Enjoy these latest videos from the very creative Gordon J. Glover, the first in a series of videos having a little fun critiquing Intelligent Design.
http://www.youtube.com/v/iE5JIzJ0yUs
http://www.youtube.com/v/pqVJsmYJvDQ
And while I’m linking around, check out Tom Jefferson’s Mike Beidler’s witty and semi-satirical Evolutionary Creationist’s Declaration of Independence.
- Why I am convinced of common descent (and why I think you should be, too) These well-made videos from the Cassiopeia Project are excellent and accessible primers about evolutionary theory. I appreciate that, despite their emphasis on why the evidence is clearly and uniformly in...
- Lamoureux: links and labels Mike Beidler over at The Creation of an Evolutionist has a post up with a link to an overall excellent interview with the brilliant Denis Lamoureux, author of Evolutionary Creation,...
- Enemies united against an imaginary foe I’ve been quite vocal on this blog in pointing out my disagreements with the Christian critics of science (ID advocates and other creationists). Unfortunately, these special creationists have had quite...
As my 200th post, I’m going to give you a little insight into my background, how I think, and what led me to where I am right now. Of course I don’t think I’m really all that “screwed up”, but for those who do think I am, I thought I’d give you a bit of an explanation.
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While growing up in three different Southern Baptist churches, being involved mostly with other Christians living the Christian life, I saw little that made me think anything was missing about my own faith.
In high school I recognized the dangers of Fundamentalism (proper) through experiences with one of my school curricula, the Independent Baptist-based A Beka Book Publications. There writ large I saw a host of devout, well-meaning Christians who believed things that I found wholly incredible, despite the fact that by normal evangelical standards my church was quite conservative. I was amazed to think that this type of self-described Fundamentalists would think that I was teetering on the edge of damnation for believing the way I did. I knew that I, at least, was sincere and well considered in my beliefs, and that my relationship with God was as authentic as it could be and none the worse for rejecting what these sincere Christians believed.
Related posts:- The place of fear in our bibliology The other night, a friend and I reiterated our independent observations that, despite all nuances, what ultimately stands behind most of American Christianity’s implacable dedication to inerrancy is fear. Dr. Jim...
- Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in...
- The Truth Project and critical thinking The most dangerous shyster is the one who has convinced himself to believe his own pitch. Over at The Creation of an Evolutionist, Mike is continuing to blog through his...
I was intrigued by this short video showing Dr. Ard Louis (Oxford University) articulate a simple but profound critique of this fundamental aspect of the reasoning behind intelligent design.
Read Darrel Falk’s helpful summary and commentary here.
This same sort of argument can be applied to the various attractive (but always suspicious) “fine tuning arguments“.
As I said, I was struck by Dr. Louis’s evident intelligence and so went googling to find more about him. In so doing, I discovered that just a few nights ago (January 24, 2010) he gave a lecture at Stanford entitled “Can Science Explain Everything?” in which he argues that even when we accept the answers we find in the laboratory, our search for answers doesn’t necessarily come to a dead end there.
Related posts:- Faith and science: on “two ways of knowing” I’ve been watching the back-and-forth between Jerry Coyne and Karl Giberson. Apparently there has been a video produced for USA Today that features them in a conversation answering the question,...
- Limitations of science Dr. Keith Miller’s recent essay on the Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution site entitled “Creation, Evolution and the Nature of Science” included the following statement: In fact, as I have argued,...
- Florida science standards dethrone God! Details at 11 Talk about a love/hate relationship… I highly commend Gary Demar of American Vision for a number of reasons. Chiefly, he is on the front lines in arguing against the immobilizing...
The Intelligent Design documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was never released in the theaters in the UK, so now in the wake of the DVD’s release there this month, the UK radio show Unbelievable has recently partnered with someone named Mark Haville to host the first screening of the movie to a UK audience. In anticipation of this event, Unbelievable has done a couple of shows related to the topic.
This last weekend’s show was an interesting knock-down-drag-out between Meyers and atheist Peter Atkins of chemistry textbook fame. I thought I’d direct my readers to it, if for no other reason than to enjoy the fireworks that result. I thought the discussion of Meyers’s trademark information theory arguments for ID almost went somewhere really helpful, but since Meyers has the tendency to filibuster and Atkins has a short fuse, and because both have no qualms about talking over one another, the topic ended up stillborn. In any event, it is evident that they are in effect speaking two entirely different languages.
Related posts:- No arguments from ignorance allowed R.C. Sproul recently had a discussion with Ben Stein, host of a documentary called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. This documentary takes a look at the way some colleges appear to...
- My crackpot detector’s about to explode .!. Three unmistakeable signs of someone no one has any business taking even half-seriously: 1) They imply or state outright that the beginning of the universe, the earth, or...
- Enemies united against an imaginary foe I’ve been quite vocal on this blog in pointing out my disagreements with the Christian critics of science (ID advocates and other creationists). Unfortunately, these special creationists have had quite...
William Dembski, a father of the Intelligent Design movement, has recently become comfortable calling himself an old earth creationist who, as a good Baptist, accepts the historicity of Adam and Eve. This comes as no surprise really, but it’s interesting to see how his gears turn as he systematically lays all his cards on the table for why he’s personally invested in pursuing a critique of common descent.
Discussing his book The End of Christianity with the host of the UK radio show Unbelieveable and an atheist guest, Dembski describes how he thinks that the chief difficulty for old earth as opposed to young earth creationism is the exceptionally long time for evil having existed prior to the event that was supposed to have caused it: the Fall of Man.
Related posts:- Theodicy and evolution Cliff Martin continues his interesting discussion of the apparently conflicting ideas of the loving Christian God and the God who ordained the sometimes brutal processes needed for evolution. I see...
- Lamoureux: links and labels Mike Beidler over at The Creation of an Evolutionist has a post up with a link to an overall excellent interview with the brilliant Denis Lamoureux, author of Evolutionary Creation,...
- My position on the origins question Josh recently commented on another thread, “I want to hear your explanation of the origin of life on earth. I have heard the positions you are against. So how did...
Related posts:Evolution caught in the act: US-German team measures how quickly genomes change
Mutations are the raw material of evolution. Charles Darwin already recognized that evolution depends on heritable differences between individuals: those who are better adapted to the environment have better chances to pass on their genes to the next generation. A species can only evolve if the genome changes through new mutations, with the best new variants surviving the sieve of selection. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, and Indiana University in Bloomington have now been able to measure for the first time directly the speed with which new mutations occur in plants. Their findings shed new light on a fundamental evolutionary process. They explain, for example, why resistance to herbicides can appear within just a few years. (Science, January 1, 2010)
- Beneficial mutations observed As a follow up to a post of mine from June 2008, I thought I’d take this opportunity to point out the excellent blog from the BioLogos Foundation called ”Science and the Sacred“,...
- Indiana Jones and the Fall of Man Commonly in Christian theology, the agreement between Adam and God (the Adamic covenant) and the agreement between the Israelites and God (the Old Covenant of Moses) are contrasted (the Noahide...
- Enemies united against an imaginary foe I’ve been quite vocal on this blog in pointing out my disagreements with the Christian critics of science (ID advocates and other creationists). Unfortunately, these special creationists have had quite...
I generally like World magazine. Oh, there’s plenty I disagree with in every issue, but one thing editor Marvin Olasky and his team just seem to get that so many other Christian publications don’t is that the core expression of our faith is in ministry to humanity. I’ll regularly be punching the air at their blind adherence to evangelical mainstays like neoconservative politics at one moment, and at the next, blinking back tears as they highlight Christian individuals and organizations making the kind of difference in the world that I regularly campaign for but all too rarely see in action.
For the last twelve years, they’ve recognized individuals who they find to have used their big stage influence to courageously stand up against a predominant but ungodly culture/power/ethical system. These individuals are deemed “Daniel of the Year”. This year it’s none other than Intelligent Design advocate Stephen Meyer.
Related posts:- Evolution and evangel(ical)ism The poll in my sidebar asking Christians how important they considered the faith/science debate to be ran for four months as of yesterday. In that time, 99 votes were cast. Today...
- Why the debate over creationism matters Recently I have been involved in a couple conversations with folks who aren’t really “informed” (I use the term loosely) creationists but have been hounded enough by creationists/biblical literalists who...
- Mohler on theistic evolution In a recent post on his popular blog, Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presented a predictable take on the origins debate. He states, I have...
These well-made videos from the Cassiopeia Project are excellent and accessible primers about evolutionary theory. I appreciate that, despite their emphasis on why the evidence is clearly and uniformly in favor of evolutionary theory, they’re not polemical about specific claims or objections from evolution critics. There’s no slapping anyone around; the overwhelming evidence for common descent is just presented on its own terms.
There will no doubt be lingering questions about specific creationist claims and objections. But on the whole, I can’t imagine that evolution skeptics will be able to watch all of these and still automatically impute the worst motives for why Christians like me, who might have been otherwise content to hang onto the typical Protestant interpretation of Genesis, have become convinced of common descent. The scientific data is so compelling.
Related posts:- Detecting design and declaring independence Enjoy these latest videos from the very creative Gordon J. Glover, the first in a series of videos having a little fun critiquing Intelligent Design. http://www.youtube.com/v/iE5JIzJ0yUs http://www.youtube.com/v/pqVJsmYJvDQ And while I’m linking around,...
- Another one bites the dust Do you believe that the theory of evolution has never been observed? That it is purely theoretical and has never been, can never be, demonstrated in the laboratory? Well, it...
- Missing link found? From Missing Link: Scientists In New York Unveil Fossil Of Lemur Monkey Hailed As Man’s Earliest Ancestor from Sky News: Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey...
If so, I’m sure you made up your mind well before researching critiques. But seriously, do you have any idea how deceitful and fallacious Comfort’s introduction is?
It’s really sickening that so many Christians uncritically accept any criticism of evolution as valid simply by virtue of the fact that it’s a criticism of evolution. Even a cursory amount of research will show how many egregious misrepresentations of Darwin and evolutionary theory are in this introduction. And Comfort cut out two chapters that are widely recognized to contribute some of the best evidence for Darwin’s thesis.
If we will be known by our fruit, and especially if you want to entice others to eat it, I’d be much more careful that straw men and outright lies aren’t charged to your account if I were you.
Related posts:- Why are so many Christian scientists evolutionists? As a followup on my reason number two from Why the debate over creationism matters, wherein I state a couple sources underlying this question, I’d like to get my readers’...
- My crackpot detector’s about to explode .!. Three unmistakeable signs of someone no one has any business taking even half-seriously: 1) They imply or state outright that the beginning of the universe, the earth, or...
- Chance and diminishing domains During the course of his interview with Ben Stein that I mentioned in an earlier post, R. C. Sproul recounted the story of his conversation with a college professor. At...
Commonly in Christian theology, the agreement between Adam and God (the Adamic covenant) and the agreement between the Israelites and God (the Old Covenant of Moses) are contrasted (the Noahide and Abrahamic covenants are given varying significance depending on who’s talking). Many, such as those holding firmly to the Westminster Confession, argue that the Adamic covenant was a “covenant of works”, the Mosaic covenant was “of grace” at heart but administered through works, and that the New Covenant is thoroughly a covenant of grace. It’s almost as though God kept trying different ways to maintain a relationship with humanity, and finally managed to get it right with Christianity.
Reading the Eden story as an historical account gives us the impression that there was a covenant with humanity that got broken. Successive attempts at reconciling God and man were necessary, each in the form of a new epochal covenant that had to hold up at least temporarily until Jesus came and brokered the final version. But we get a slightly different picture if we understand the early Genesis accounts as etiology, an origins story, offered by later Israelite theologians to replace the errant myths they were familiar with, some lingering from their ancient past and others absorbed from surrounding cultures.
Related posts:- Case Study: the Fall This is the seventh in a series of posts on inspiration, inerrancy, and hermeneutics. The traditional doctrines of the Fall and of Original Sin teach that the first human’s first...
- Self-preservation, the Fall, and redemption In my explanation of man’s depravity from the view of a recurring, individualized (non-historical) Fall, I have argued that mankind’s natural separation from God was in origin a result of...
- N.T. Wright on “unfaithful”, “flat” readings of Genesis The BioLogos Foundation hits another home run by soliciting and sharing this gem: Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, while no fundie, is generally regarded among scholars and many evangelicals as...
One of today’s posts on Science and the Sacred is called An Artist or An Engineer? The author argues that we shouldn’t expect the precision of an engineer in creation any more than we expect it in an artist. The article brings this out by raising the issue of what has elsewhere been called “unintelligent design”:
The problem of imperfect design in nature raises serious concerns for the idea of God as the divine engineer, the metaphor put forward by those associated with the Intelligent Design movement. After all, if God designed each detail in the blueprint of life, why would he create mammalian eyes which have a blind spot?
One of my friends who is critical of evolution responded to this article with a one line explanation for design imperfections: “A little thing called the Fall.” She was referring to the belief that the Fall of Man marred the entire physical creation.
Related posts:- Intelligent Design and the unseen Some Christians who accept the mainstream science view of the origin of the species (evolution), in a fair-minded and an admirably conciliatory way, throw a bone to the Intelligent Design...
- Focus on the Family responds Focus on the Family has responded to an anonymous blogging friend we call Thomas who wrote a letter in protest of their misrepresentations about evolution in the October 2009 issue...
- Mohler on theistic evolution In a recent post on his popular blog, Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presented a predictable take on the origins debate. He states, I have...
As a follow up to a post of mine from June 2008, I thought I’d take this opportunity to point out the excellent blog from the BioLogos Foundation called ”Science and the Sacred“, which today featured an article on the same study I mentioned in my post from over a year ago. The fact that stuff is still slowly trickling out on this study highlights the commitment of true science to exhaustively vetting even potentially good news, instead of throwing stuff out there just to get it published and making their view look better.
Related posts:Twenty-one years and 40,000 generations later, an experiment looking at the evolution of a population of single-celled E. coli bacteria has finally reached its conclusion. The results “beautifully emphasize the succession of mutational events that allowed these organisms to climb toward higher and higher efficiency in their environment,” says Dominique Schneider, a molecular geneticist and member of the research team…
- How quickly genomes change Evolution caught in the act: US-German team measures how quickly genomes change Mutations are the raw material of evolution. Charles Darwin already recognized that evolution depends on heritable differences between individuals:...
- Another one bites the dust Do you believe that the theory of evolution has never been observed? That it is purely theoretical and has never been, can never be, demonstrated in the laboratory? Well, it...
- ID movie exploits overblown Cambrian controversy Have you heard about this yet? Intelligent Design Documentary to Premiere at Smithsonian Affiliated California Science Center Darwin’s Dilemma explores one of the great mysteries in the history of life:...
Focus on the Family has responded to an anonymous blogging friend we call Thomas who wrote a letter in protest of their misrepresentations about evolution in the October 2009 issue of Clubhouse Jr. which I described in the post, The creation of anti-evolutionists. Timothy Masters from the “Office of the Chairman” (who until recently was Dr. James Dobson, now supposedly but uncomfirmably one Pat Caruana) wrote this response:
Related posts:Yes, we understand that there are many Christians who consider themselves theistic evolutionists – among them Dr. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe, an eminent scientist and Christian apologist who has served as a guest on several past Focus on the Family radio broadcasts. We do not, however, feel obligated in any way to adopt these believers’ opinions or to endorse their point of view. On the contrary, we feel there is room for disagreement here. Though we love and respect those who share your perspective as brothers and sisters in Christ, we simply can’t come to terms with some of the implications of their position. As we understand it, the underlying philosophy of Darwinism – particularly the theory of natural selection – relies heavily upon the idea that life has come about purely through a process of random chance. It’s difficult to reconcile this concept of randomness with the Bible’s assertion in Genesis 1 that God made the world intentionally and intelligently, creating each and every species in its own kind. You are entitled to your own opinion, of course, but that’s the way we see it.
- Mohler on theistic evolution In a recent post on his popular blog, Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presented a predictable take on the origins debate. He states, I have...
- Intelligent deception One of today’s posts on Science and the Sacred is called An Artist or An Engineer? The author argues that we shouldn’t expect the precision of an engineer in creation...
- Cracks in the YEC wall? Early last year I had the pleasure of reading a book entitled Beyond the Firmament. The author’s site is on my blogroll, so you may have noticed it. Here’s my...
I get the impression from some I know that I spend too much time worrying about the creation/evolution controversy. So in case you didn’t notice, I posted a new poll in my sidebar. Christians only on this one, please.
Christians, how important is the faith/science debate? Add comments here.
- Critical: Christians have got to pull their heads out of the sand, for the good of the Kingdom! (41%, 41 Votes)
- Pressing: This issue has too much visibility among those engaged in the general believer/unbeliever discussion. We need to deal with this head-on. (35%, 35 Votes)
- Important, but not pressing: I'm sure it's important for some people to address, for certain groups. But just give me the Readers' Digest version. (14%, 14 Votes)
- Unimportant: Totally a non-issue. Next! (2%, 2 Votes)
- Worse than unimportant: What a waste of time! An utter distraction from what really matters. (8%, 8 Votes)
Total Voters: 100
Loading ...- Evolution and evangel(ical)ism The poll in my sidebar asking Christians how important they considered the faith/science debate to be ran for four months as of yesterday. In that time, 99 votes were cast. Today...
- Mohler on theistic evolution In a recent post on his popular blog, Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presented a predictable take on the origins debate. He states, I have...
- You can’t just ignore the evolution debate I generally like World magazine. Oh, there’s plenty I disagree with in every issue, but one thing editor Marvin Olasky and his team just seem to get that so many...
Have you heard about this yet?
Intelligent Design Documentary to Premiere at Smithsonian Affiliated California Science Center
Darwin’s Dilemma explores one of the great mysteries in the history of life: the sudden appearance of dozens of major complex animal types in the fossil record without any trace of the gradual transitional steps predicted by Darwin. Frequently described as “the Cambrian Explosion,” the development of these new animal types required a massive increase in genetic information.
Forget for a moment that there have been several cogent explanations for the apparent burst of speciation in the Cambrian period (that this film will undoubtedly misrepresent or ignore). Forget that even if the Cambrian issue were a more difficult problem than it actually is, it would not alone suggest that “Darwinism” as a whole was a “theory in crisis”. Disregard the fact that no single underdeveloped area in the theory of evolution could seriously eclipse its sufficiency to explain practically every other bit of scientific data thrown at it. Pretend that it’s realistic to expect that a theory as grand and sweeping in scope as evolutionary theory would have an answer at the snap of the fingers for every imaginable question.
Related posts:- Intelligent deception One of today’s posts on Science and the Sacred is called An Artist or An Engineer? The author argues that we shouldn’t expect the precision of an engineer in creation...
- Mohler on theistic evolution In a recent post on his popular blog, Al Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, presented a predictable take on the origins debate. He states, I have...
- Chance and diminishing domains During the course of his interview with Ben Stein that I mentioned in an earlier post, R. C. Sproul recounted the story of his conversation with a college professor. At...
I’m going to review an atrocious article I just read, and I think you’ll agree that deconstructing it will be like child’s play. And not just because it appeared in my daughter’s latest issue of Clubhouse Jr.
Featured in Focus on the Family’s magazine aimed at children aged 4 to 8, “From Goo to You?” is a two-page article authored by Barbara Owens. And boy, do those two pages pack a wallop: they’re positively jam-packed with inaccurate information, ranging from ostensibly genuine misunderstandings to obvious, indefensible misrepresentations. In the process, Owens (on behalf of Focus on the Family) throws key fellow evolution critics under the bus even while borrowing their terminology — but more on that later.
From the outset let me assure you that my comments about “creationists” and the boneheadedness (at best — dishonesty at worst) of the people behind this article are not meant to be applied to parents and kids who believe in creationism. As a former creationist, born of creationist parents, I understand how hard it is to reject the deafening roar of the evangelical Christian community, which has been lockstep in sync on the subject of how ridiculous and wicked evolution is. I read that there are 88,000 subscribers to this magazine, and if you consider multiple children in the household, you begin to see how wide a reach this article will get. I can’t help but be of the old fashioned opinion that people should know better before they set about trying to propagandize the whole evangelical population of children.
Related posts:- Why Christian scientists are evolutionists, revisited When I posted the poll, “Why do Christian scientists often profess belief in human evolution?”, originally under this post and since then in my sidebar, I resolved that I would...
- Creationism, education, and the state All right, here’s a rant for you. There’s a news story circulating about the well-known fact that homeschooling texts are ignoring or even (the audacity!) criticizing mainstream science in favor...
- Why are so many Christian scientists evolutionists? As a followup on my reason number two from Why the debate over creationism matters, wherein I state a couple sources underlying this question, I’d like to get my readers’...
A recent study in Nature News that I just read about is of interest to my field of graduate study, Indo-European linguistics. Of special interest to me, it ties in historical linguistics, the theory of evolution, and the nature of scientific inquiry in an interesting way.
Historical linguists have long supposed a link between most of the languages of Europe and India’s Sanskrit, an ancient forerunner of modern Hindi and a few other Indian languages. This link is now universally accepted to be common descent: they all shared a proto-language, spoken by a single population before splitting up and “evolving” into many of today’s languages.
The “common ancestor” of this family of languages is referred to as Proto-Indo-European (PIE). As with biological evolution, we can reconstruct its path and make suppositions about interrelationships based upon shared similarities and/or differences. Our suppositions cannot be confirmed: no one’s going to find a cassette recording or a written document in PIE, so our reconstructions will never be confirmed that way, although various stages before that proto-form have been captured and fleshed out our understanding better. Similarly, evolution, while corroborated by ancient evidence all the time, never stands a chance of finding a fossil of the first single-celled life. A fossil or a document of more “transitional forms” would be nice, but they’re not necessary to make a reasonable extrapolation that the ones we have found share ancestry.
Related posts:- Mysteries of my field of study revealed: the Indo-Europeans Germanic and Indo-European studies. What the heck is that? Well, let me start with a summary of the anthropological side of the discipline. Once upon a time, in an area...
- Genetic map of Europe Click to enlarge The New York Times has published an article on the results of a genetic study that sought to show the genetic interrelationships of the peoples of...
- Mysteries of my field of study revealed: the Birth of Historical Linguistics Earlier I made mention of the consistency of sound changes, what the nineteenth-century German grammarians called the Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze (the “exceptionlessness of sound change”) . The catalyst for this...
Three unmistakeable signs of someone no one has any business taking even half-seriously:
1) They imply or state outright that the beginning of the universe, the earth, or life itself have something to do with evolution (completely separate fields of scientific inquiry).
2) They play the Hitler card.
3) They use Kirk Cameron as their spokesperson.
Watch the below-linked video advertising a new version of Darwin’s Origin of Species published by Ray Comfort, who left Darwin’s book intact but added a large introduction “refuting” evolution as only a non-scientist religious whacko could do it. Unbelievable: the first two contentions Cameron makes in the opening seconds of this video are as preposterously false as they are alarmist — not to mention irrelevant to the creation/evolution debate (just like the Hitler issue). Cameron says fervently, “Our kids can no longer pray in public. They can no longer freely open a Bible in school.” What bald-faced lies (I’ll not soften it by calling them mere misrepresentations)!
Related posts:- Evolution and evangel(ical)ism The poll in my sidebar asking Christians how important they considered the faith/science debate to be ran for four months as of yesterday. In that time, 99 votes were cast. Today...
- Why I am convinced of common descent (and why I think you should be, too) These well-made videos from the Cassiopeia Project are excellent and accessible primers about evolutionary theory. I appreciate that, despite their emphasis on why the evidence is clearly and uniformly in...
- Lamoureux: links and labels Mike Beidler over at The Creation of an Evolutionist has a post up with a link to an overall excellent interview with the brilliant Denis Lamoureux, author of Evolutionary Creation,...
Science is just a buddy system of evolutionists who routinely turn a blind eye to methodological rigor in order to make sure evolution looks credible. Peer review’s a sham, meant to give the predetermined results a little added credibility. Right?
Remember the story a couple years ago about how a couple scientists claimed they were able to extract some protein residue from the femur of a 68 million year old Tyrannosaurus Rex? The article published in Science made the phenomenal-if-true claim that the peptides in the T. rex were startlingly similar to those of a modern chicken, which would appear to demonstrate the accuracy of long-held postulations about the evolutionary relationship between saurischian dinosaurs and birds.
But as Carl Sagan noted, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Wired Magazine chronicles the story of how the 2007 claim that astounded the scientific community with its audacity was put through the ringer and consequently rejected by scads of the most qualified experts, and how the scientists behind the original claim were forced to go back, retest, and republish. The results of the team’s latest study are quite interesting.
Related posts:- Missing link found? From Missing Link: Scientists In New York Unveil Fossil Of Lemur Monkey Hailed As Man’s Earliest Ancestor from Sky News: Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey...
- Beneficial mutations observed As a follow up to a post of mine from June 2008, I thought I’d take this opportunity to point out the excellent blog from the BioLogos Foundation called ”Science and the Sacred“,...
- The BioLogos campaign at work An article from Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk of the BioLogos Foundation appeared in U.S. Today on Sunday (August 9, 2009). Admittedly, its title (“We believe in evolution – and...