Category Archives: Science

In the last few posts, I’ve been trying to point out the epistemological limits of science (and how they are routinely transgressed). In particular, I’ve tried to show how “contingency” and “randomness” are, in effect, epistemological black boxes in science. To say something is random, in science, should mean nothing more than “we do not fully understand the causes, and cannot predict the effects.”

After 190 or so posts  in the BioLogos thread to which I refer in the last two columns, I’m still not convinced that my central point has been answered in the to-and-fro about the definition or modelling of natural selection.

The last post was about the importance of contingent extinction events in the trajectory of evolution. It occurs to me since that, in the context of Evolutionary Creation, the “creative catastrophism” of these undermines one of the commonest arguments used by TEs for the sufficiency of “natural causes”, usually against ID and any form of Creationism.

There’s a very nice podcast here by Australian cosmologist Luke Barnes answering the common objections to Cosmic Fine Tuning. And very amusingly, too. His blog is good value as well. It majors on CFT too, and is notable in critiquing even-handedly (if not without scorn when deserved!) arguments not only from physicists, but from atheist apologists like Richard Carrier and Christian apologists like philosopher William Lane Craig and OEC astrophysicist Hugh Ross. I should add that it comes across clearly, but not crudely, that Barnes himself is a Christian theist.

Joshua Swamidass, in dispute with staunch ID apologist “Deliberateresult” (Joe Palcsak) over at BioLogos, denies (like a surprising number of TEs) that DNA is anything more than “analogically” a code, or a language, in the wider context of his being uncomfortable with considering people as biological machines: Honestly it sounds like you are seeing people as machines, even in this quote. Of course we make analogies between living systems and machines, language, technology, etc. That is how humans work. We reason about often this way. You, however, seem to think the there is not analogy, that this is actually describing the reality. You say, DNA is actually a language, no … Continue reading →