Monthly Archives: May 2017

Devolution revisited

The Intelligent Design biochemist Michael Behe not long ago critiqued laboratory evidence for evolution, based on instances of loss of function, as “devolution”, and as a result brought the disdain of many Evolutionary Creationists down on himself because, you see, “there is no such thing as devolution in science.” One poster at BioLogos escalated that by saying that nearly all ID scientists believe (equally stupidly) in devolution. We’ll pass by that entirely baseless hyperbole as typical of the man, but Behe did use the word, so let’s think about it.

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Latest Gallup Poll on Origins: A Questionable Analysis by Deb Haarsma

The Gallup organization has put out the results of another survey of American public opinion on human origins. The question allowed those surveyed to choose from the same three options that Gallup has offered since 1982: Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?: 1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process; 2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process; 3) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one … Continue reading

Posted in Edward Robinson, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 11 Comments

Where are all the pagans in Genesis?

Continuing my attempts to place the early chapters of Genesis within some historical context, I noticed for the first time this week that Genesis doesn’t mention any foreign gods at all in its fifty chapters. That seems remarkable to me, for I’ve never heard mention of it before, though it must undoubtedly have been noticed by someone over the last three thousand years. I look to the scholars to explain it.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 5 Comments

What a historic Eden means for understanding “goodness” in creation

In a recent post I argued for the case that Genesis 2 intends us to take the garden of Eden as a real place set in geography and history. I want to take that idea a bit further, and draw some conclusions on what we are intended to understand about the “very good” nature of the Creation before the Fall.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

A Promising Suggestion on BioLogos, But Will There Be Any Support for It?

Regarding tone, and often regarding contents, one of the more reasonable commenters on BioLogos is Chris Falter. He tries to at least listen to those who disagree with the TE/EC party line, and (with one exception which I will refrain from mentioning here, as it concerns a science other than evolutionary biology), he tends to engage constructively with critics of his views.

Posted in Edward Robinson, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

Keeping on message

There’s an election campaign on at the moment here, and it’s amusing how, whatever questions politicans are asked in an interview, they’ll make sure they get one of their chosen manifesto slogans or buzzwords into the answer. It’s laughably transparent, but presumably it works because we are all depressingly gullible. For light relief, my wife and I relaxed over a wildlife documentary last evening.

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Escaping the flannelgraph Bible world

Over at “the other place” I’ve been in conversation with Richard Wright about divine action, and one of his points, all too common in the science-faith discussion, is that science has increasingly shown nature to operate through natural causes (and hence the accusations of invoking the “God of the Gaps” in any consideration of design). So divine action is to be sought (at least in Richard’s rather more positive view, compared to some others) in answered prayer, biblical miracles and so on, but not in nature.

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(Testable) hypotheses about a historical Eden

Carrying on the theme of biblical archaeology, Kenneth Kitchen’s book On the Reliability of the Old Testament takes a general overview of the “proto-historic” first 11 chapters of Genesis, but there have been some interesting developments since he wrote it that are worth considering, with regard both to the Flood and to the Eden narrative.

Posted in Adam, Genealogical Adam, History, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

Creative power and oriental potentates

This year’s BioLogos conference was addressed by N T Wright, and his talk was praised by Hump writer Sy Garte on his own website. A clip, basically showing that one might expect an evolutionary process if one sees Christ as the creative Logos of God, appeared later at BioLogos. You can see the four minute clip here.

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Sodom and aetiological tales

I like to keep tabs on Biblical archaeology from time to time, not only because I wanted to be an archaeologist till my Auntie Dorothy put me off by saying they spend all day down a hole, but because it’s fun to see 19th century mythology about the Bible writers slowly being eroded by a steady trickle of confirmatory evidence (by which you can tell that I’m not sympathetic to the archaeological “minimalists” of the last couple of decades).

Posted in History, Science, Theology | 4 Comments