Category Archives: Science

BioLogos was ostensibly, as far as I can see, constituted to deal with one main problem. And that is, the problem that Evangelicals, especially in America, did not accept evolutionary theory. This was perceived to lead to two main problems. Firstly, in apologetics, Evangelical Christianity was in danger of being intellectually sidelined, unnecessarily alienating the educated community by denying the evidence of science. Secondly, pastorally, Christians brought up in Creationist churches were liable to be stumbled on encountering the strength of the evidence for evolution when they studied science, thus leading unnecessarily to abandonment of their Evangelical faith.

One key part of the argument John Wesley brings for there being particular providence (see previous post), as against only general providence, is that the latter necessarily consists of the sum of the former: You say, “You allow a general providence, but deny a particular one.” And what is a general, of whatever kind it be, that includes no particulars? Is not every general necessarily made up of its several particulars?

Michael Denton’s book Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis, on which I’ve been drawing in the last few posts, opens up some interesting thoughts on a divinely-ordained evolutionary process, because its emphasis on a law-driven structuralism and more or less saltational changes frees one up from having to concentrate on the dodgy metaphysics of open-ended Neodarwinism (it’s undirected, but mysteriousy produces order – purely Epicurean, as N T Wright stresses). And if that order is intended, it’s not even Epicurean, but incoherent: God doesn’t aim at anything, and hits it every time.

Well, by that I don’t mean what NASA means. Michael Denton in Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis argues from the the astonishing emergent properties of water, which I discussed in the last post, to the idea that similar emergent principles underlie many of the most important features of life, and hence of evolution. My title, then, is intended to suggest that similar principles are involved in the properties of water and life.

I want, in this post, to use the properties of water as a proxy for the kind of emergent structural laws for which Michael Denton argues in Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. This is because it is a simple compound that is one of the examples he explores at length in his earlier book, Nature’s Destiny, to argue for the fine tuning of the universe for human life (pp.15-46).