Category Archives: Science

Tom Gilson runs the excellent Thinking Christian blog, but has also made a useful contribution to the recent debate over methodological naturalism. In 2011 he did a multi-part series here on why science neither needs, nor benefits from, MN, and came to the positive point with his alternative here. In the main, he favours a change of nomenclature rather than of practice, because of the ease with which MN, originally coined by a Christian (and not many decades ago, at that) to distinguish it from metaphysical naturalism, has actually become a potent means of endorsing the mythical link between science and atheism.

The American botanist Asa Gray was, probably, the very first Darwinian theistic evolutionist, in that he was in correspondence with Darwin for years before the latter’s theory was published, and as an orthodox Congregationalist had discussed with him the theory’s theological implications. I recently discovered an online link to the body of Gray’s writings on evolution, Darwiniana, and thought to do a post in relation to current discussions on methodological naturalism.

I get the impression that Evolutionary Creation, especially in the shape of BioLogos, is less keen on “open process theism” than it was a year or two ago. It’s hard to be sure, though, because whilst individuals there will criticise people like our Eddie Robinson for tarring them with its brush, none of them seem to be saying, “Yes, that was the prevalent theology of theistic evolution, but we now believe that was an error.”

Argon (an occasional poster here in the past) made an ironic, but serious, point over on the Methodological Naturalism thread at Biologos. After talking about a result in his own protein modelling research that seems to fall midway between the predictions of “chance” and “design” (whilst favouring neither), he concludes that God has a sense of humour – or, more seriously, that deliberate ambiguity is built into the Creation: It is highly improbable that a designer would leave ambiguous, non-objectively discernible marks on its creation. Similarly, it is improbable that a purely natural, designer-less universe would leave ambiguous marks behind. Considering the great difficulty in demonstrating the existence or non-existence … Continue reading →