Category Archives: Philosophy

The Independent reports some research from the “1000 Genome Project”, under the headline “Human genome study reveals certain genes are less essential than previously thought”. The gist is that in 2,500 individual genomes studied (a supererogatory number in terms of the project’s name): “…we were surprised to see over 200 genes that are missing entirely in some people,” said Jan Korbel of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, who led one of the genome project’s studies.

An unusually perceptive, and rather charitable, piece by Justin Topp on BioLogos just now, on the subject of why people “stubbornly” persist in their particular ways of approaching origins issues. He bases his thesis on the “research program” concept of philosopher of science Imre Lakatos, and exemplifies what he means by his own journey which (rather refreshingly for BioLogos!) didn’t begin with his being indoctrinated in Young Earth Creationism as a kid. Instead he came to it by rational choice, though he abandoned it for Evolutionary Creation as a student.

When the first attempts were made at serious natural philosophy by the Greeks two and a half millennia ago, the most fundamental disagreement was between those who held that chance was at the root of the world, and those who considered there was direction to it, telos. In the former category would be the atomists like Democritus and Lucretius, and in reaction to them were those like Plato and, particularly, Aristototle, who held the teleological view.

In our thinking here about origins theological and scientifical, and the metaphysical and philosophical issues related to these that can’t be ignored, the old scholastics, and particularly Aquinas, have provided us many insights. With that interest raised, one theme we’ve touched on a few times is the way that Thomas Aquinas is invoked to support the most common version of theistic evolution, in which (as far as it’s ever spelled out) God seems to set up the universe to evolve itself with neither intervention, nor even necessarily forward planning (aka “design”). Such drawings on Aquinas have been commonplace on BioLogos (with usually superficial treatments and the overall message “Look, even … Continue reading →