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Category Archives: Creation
Stegosaurus and gradualism
This is just a small update on the issue of gradualism and the palaeontological record that I started in 2013. There I suggested that in a number of iconic species (chosen more or less at my whim, in fact) the fossil pattern shows a significant number of specimens of a small number of species, suggesting a stasis-saltation pattern rather than the expectations from the classic gradualism pattern of evolution, which would give a large number of species with very few representatives of each.
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Gene takes a hit
The ENCODE project became controversial last year when it suggested that 80%+ of the human genome is “functional”, meaning “transcribed”, meaning “let’s all argue about what we mean”. The argument continues to rage vituperously though, of course, there is no disagreement whatsoever about the consensus science (fortunately for BioLogos which is theologically wedded to the consensus), because science seems to be helpfully defined nowadays by what isn‘t in dispute at any particular time. But in truth the stage was set for upset back in 2007, when an ENCODE paper suggested a new definition for the gene that said: A gene is a union of genomic sequences encoding a coherent set of potentially … Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Science
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A world of signs and symbols
Over the last couple of months I think I’ve hammered the message that not only science, but even our very basic sensory experience of the world, is inseparable from the world of mind. This ties into the “personal knowledge” concept of Michael Polanyi, the information-based metaphysics of William Dembski and the mind-based one of Arthur Eddington. It relates to the holistic approach to science of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his followers. And I’ve even suggested that the world of reality we share with all other life-forms has the character of a common symbolic language giving meaning to an otherwise rather chaotic universe, and so raising the question of whether … Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science
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Colour me red
An unexpected, but very welcome, contributor to my recent post on spectral colour was David Briggs, whose excellent website on colour theory, primarily intended for artists, is an invaluable educational tool for us all (or me, at least). I particularly liked his section on colour vision, which shows just what an incredibly sophisticated visual system we enjoy, as well as how disappointingly little of its workings get into the educational curriculum of either arts or sciences. Check out, for example, the set of “illusions” David uses to show how much neurological processing is involved in maintaining our sense of the constancy of colours under different lighting conditions.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science
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The price of dualism
I’ll leave pngarrison to comment on the interesting paper to which he linked on the last post. Good stuff again – thanks. I’ll just kick off this line of thought with the final sentence of that paper: We are thus left with a fascinating puzzle as to how an 8-mo-old prelinguistic human not only seems to think of animals as a coherent category but then makes inferences that they alone must have filled insides. The paper is written from the mindset that this infant concept is somehow the origin of the “folk biology” that animals are integrated wholes, but I would suggest that perhaps the real “folk biology” is more … Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology
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The organic and the atomistic
One of the accusations that modern Aristotelians (like Ed Feser) throw at Intelligent Design is that it has an engineering view of biology, and an engineering Deity, the issue being that organisms are actually whole entities that cannot be divided, like human artifacts, into disconnected parts assembled for a function. Interestingly, a good number of Evolutionary Creation voices at BioLogos have echoed that critique (to the point of getting Ed Feser to write some columns).
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science
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The thick plottens
Pngarrison helpfully pointed us a day or two ago to a recent article in the context of the randomness of variation. It does raise some interesting issues from The Hump’s perspective. So I’ll very briefly summarise it in the knowledge that it’s open-access, and those with a better background can bypass my meanderings.
Posted in Creation, Science
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More on mind and randomness
Just as Dennis Venema failed to reply to my serious questions about randomness on his BioLogos post in October, so also Darrel Falk abandoned any reply to my questions on his concept of randomness on his. Ones respect is bound to flag in the face of such determined non-interaction. Both propose a vaguely fuzzy idea that God can achieve his purposes through randomness, without saying anything specific either about what that randomness might be, or about the nature of God’s purposes. I conclude it’s yet another theistic evolution idea that depends on rhetoric rather than intellectual rigour, which is disappointing.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology
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Chance, providence and apostleship
I have a couple of posts in reply to Darrel Falk’s review of Alister McGrath’s book over at BioLogos. My entrée was to critique McGrath’s cavalier use of some of the writers I have dealt with here at length (though I should mention that the book has been on our own recommended list for a year or more). But underlying that I’m still rather mystified about what overall case is being argued, whether by McGrath of Falk. I may be obtuse, but it looks as though the New Revelation is that God’s planning and purpose might possibly work through the mechanisms of mutation and selection through the wonder of providence. If … Continue reading
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Evolutionary trajectory
A particularly zealous reader may recall that in my recent piece on the fossil record I raised a question, in passing: “…as an exercise, can you say what in Neodarwinian theory precludes a cyclical, rather than linear and branching, evolutionary process?” Despite claims like Koonin’s (2009) that there is no tendency to greater complexity in evolution, the most basic finding of palaeontology is the overall trajectory from simple (if that word means anything in biology) single celled organisms to, well, humans, or at least higher life-forms. Whether one calls it progress or not, what is undeniable is that it is a trajectory, or rather a branching series of trajectories, which … Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Science
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