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Category Archives: Science
Nature – the director’s cut
The time has come round again to register ambivalence about the latest technically wonderful, and in many ways aesthetically stupendous, David Attenborough series, Planet Earth II. My criticism isn’t far removed from the fact that the title itself is in the style of a Hollywood Blockbuster franchise. I voiced a similar concern back in 2013, referencing criticisms of a similar series about the anthropomorphism, and perhaps emotional manipulation, of the stories, and mentioning the riposte that anything that makes people more aware of the plight of wildlife in such a visually stunning way has to be a good thing. That’s true, of course, and one might add to that the … Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science
6 Comments
Science and faith – as easy as riding an epicycle
Engaging with a Young Earth Creationist at BioLogos recently, Chris Falter raised the examples of Calvin, Luther and other Reformers opposing Copernican cosmology on the basis of biblical literalism. His aim was to show that this is a dangerous pursuit, and likely to pit theology unnecessarily against science, since nobody now thinks that modern astronomy contradicts the intent of Scripture.
Posted in Creation, History, Science, Theology
22 Comments
Progressive Creation = Evolutionary Creation
Before it got diverted on to US party-politics, Joshua Swamidass’s thread on BioLogos looked for common ground between the four common Christian origins positions (YEC, OEC, ID and EC). This was in the light of bridgebuilding discussions he has set up between representatives of all but ID (so far – given that many IDists are also believers in evolution, this ought not to an irremediable omission).
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
6 Comments
The clarity of mud
Last week’s Royal Society symposium – on whether the Evolutionary Synthesis should be extended, or whether (as some appeared to imply) all the dramatic new mechanisms found recently were successfully and silently subsumed into standard population genetics several centuries ago -had a slide that caught my attention. It caught the attention of ID people in the audience as well, which is how I came to be aware of it. It was in Andy Gardner’s talk expounding the virtues of “weak adaptationism”. Here’s the pic:
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology
8 Comments
A brief history of chance
Somebody at BioLogos, following a common line, recently expressed hesitation about whether God intended the particular life forms that we have, and based this on what he said was the long-argued question of free-will versus determinism. The idea was that God, by allowing true (ontological) randomness in evolution, was in some way casting his vote for free-will rather than determinism.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology
14 Comments
Higgs Bison
It was my brother who pointed out to me this month’s most amusing evolution story, in the form of the discovery that the European bison (or wisent) is actually a hybrid of the extinct pleistocene steppe bison (closely related to the American plains bison) and the aurochs, the ancestor of domestic cattle.
Posted in Creation, Science
4 Comments
Discussion with Sy Garte on Teleology
Sy Garte has replied to a post of mine on BioLogos. Because I am temporarily suspended from BioLogos, I’m replying to him here. I’ll write in the form of a column, but with some references to his own statements.
Posted in Edward Robinson, Philosophy, Science, Theology
29 Comments
A theological lens on “random with respect to fitness”
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.”
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
12 Comments
The folly of defining randomness randomly
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.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
2 Comments
A short afterthought on extinction events
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.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology
22 Comments