Category Archives: Science

My last-but-one post reminded me of Eugene Koonin’s invocation of the multiverse to explain unlikely events such as the development of DNA replication. In my first post on this I hinted at some absurdities inherent in this idea, in that one ought to expect far more instances of unlikely events than we see if all things are possible in an infinite many-worlds multiverse. Blow the irreducibly complex biology – where are the unicorns and spontaneous transmutation of lead to gold? Nevertheless, one might conclude that a more mainstream view of the multiverse (if “mainstream” has any meaning in gauging pure speculation) could still help explain highly contingent events. After all, … Continue reading →

There’s a chapter in the Gordon/Dembski magnum opus by Howard J Van Till, called Cosmic Evolution, Naturalism, and Divine Creativity. Of Van Till, the book says: “His books in the 1980s… played a powerful role in moving evangelical higher education to accept theistic evolution over against creationism.” So it’s clear that he is the source to which we need look for much of the theology of the BioLogos school of thought.

I’ve been wading through the recent tome edited by Bruce Gordon and Bill Dembski, The Nature of Nature. It’s a tour de force indeed, though every reader is bound to find whole areas of discussion where their eyes glaze over from incomprehension. That’s no bad thing if it reminds us how little we know even when we think we’re well educated. So far, the piece that’s intrigued me most is Fazale Rana’s essay on molecular convergence, simply because I was unaware of the extent of this (and, of course, because I actually understood it, which helps). What most unsettled me was his drawing our attention to the confusing origins of … Continue reading →

Regarding the paper I linked to in my last post, I just want briefly to emphasize an implicit conclusion from it that may not have been obvious. If you remember, the difference in architecture of E. coli compared to the Linux operating system was taken by the authors as evidence of the difference in “the design principles of the two systems” (sic). Human developers aim at cost-effectiveness and top-down design, whereas bacteria take a bottom-up approach suited to random mutation and natural selection:

One reason I’ve not posted for a few days is that my computer blew up. Quite spectacular – smoke and bangs and everything. A failing power supply took out much of the rest, requiring a new system. The old one lasted nearly ten years, so I can’t complain. But even in that time updates to Windows and so on created headaches in keeping the thing functioning. I’ve had to update drivers for hardware rendered obsolete, buy new compatible programs and so on. I frankly dreaded trying to start again from scratch.