Category Archives: Science

I sometimes think that many commentators on faith and science don’t really understand the case being made for the inference of design from information. Here’s an attempt to explain it.

I’ve reported back on what I consider the “big thing” at this weekend’s Tyndale Fellowship conference “Design in Nature?” Here’s just a miscellany of small points that gained my attention in the context of the bigger question of Christian responses to origins questions.

Over at Uncommon Descent there has been a thread running for over a fortnight majoring on sociologist Steve Fuller’s suggestion that ID ought to be upfront regarding its Abrahamic theistic assumptions, rather than sticking to a purely “naturalistic” scientific position that it cannot comment on the nature of the designer, though the attribution of design may have metaphysical implications. Gregory (also a regular supporter here), whose acquaintance with Fuller prompted the thread, has been getting a hard time (though, as always, giving one too) over Fuller’s presumption in trying to change ID’s terms of reference from those of its leading proponents.

Gregory raised the question of occasionalism in a reply to the last post, hinting at its presence in the BioLogos leadership and asking me about the alternatives to it in the pre-evolutionary era. Historical philosophy is a bit above my pay-grade, but it might be useful to discuss it in view of the ongoing question of divine agency in evolution. So here’s my overview for proper historians and philosophers to come back with corrections.

In the article  by Elliot Sober I mentioned in my previous post, he describes a hypothetical experiment to show what evolutionists mean by “random mutation”, before going on to establish that, because the Neodarwinian explanation is causally incomplete, science can neither deny, affirm, nor even express agnosticism on whether those random mutations were directed by an agent such as God.

It’s lazy, I know, but this is a cut-and-paste of a post I wrote to Ted Davis on BioLogos. The Sober article makes points relevant to previous blogs here, so it seems relevant to record them and my comments on the Hump rather than to lose them in the Biologos archives.

In Darrel Falk’s latest intervention on Dennis Venema’s behalf at BioLogos  (#70551), he refers Bilbo back to previous statements of his (and BioLogos‘) position, especially in his replies to William Dembski, on the extent to which God directs evolution.