Category Archives: Science

Pentadactyly Live

Posted on 27/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

News being slow at the moment, I thought that for light relief I’d link to a video someone’s posted on YouTube of part of the set I did at Lyme Regis Folk Festival last weekend. After all, the song Pentadactyly arose from discussions about the pentadactyl limb both here and on BioLogos.

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Creation and Election

Posted on 19/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

The BioLogos thread on the historicity of Adam turns out to be another important one, though the most interesting bit has got hived off to a sub-thread involving the Usual Suspects here, one Ex-Suspect and Christy (who so far is not suspected of anything, though she’d be most welcome on The Hump). I venture to suggest that amongst these there is broad agreement (though they may not fully realise it) that classical Christianity requires that Adam and Eve are not optional, and that attempts to make them so at least amount to new doctrine (so Eddie) and more strongly that such attempts amount to heterodoxy. That a significant strand in … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | 21 Comments

You heard it here first

Posted on 17/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

V J Torley, in a piece on Uncommon Descent, cites ex-Biologos TE Karl Giberson writing a blurb for atheist John Loftus’ new book, in which Giberson does a mea culpa for the weakness of his “free creation” defence of Christianity in relation to evolution.

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Why the zebra got his stripes

Posted on 12/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

An instructive little news lollipop on the BBC radio news this morning. There was an interview with a PhD student researching the reason zebras have stripes. Her team was testing the hypothesis that herds of striped targets present a confusing target for predators. They did this by simulating such a scenario on a computer game, testing humans’ ability to zap confusing patterned targets as opposed to plain grey ones.

Posted in Creation, Science | 4 Comments

Some bad scientists, bad theologians, bad philosophers – 2

Posted on 07/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

In yesterday’s post I recounted some of the panoply of thinkers who have propounded the argument from design down the centuries. At the beginning I asked at what point this respectable enterprise had become “bad science and bad theology”. The usual answer would seem to be that Darwin confronted William Paley and overcame.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Some bad scientists, bad theologians, bad philosophers – 1

Posted on 06/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

Well, it seems BioLogos and the Discovery Institute are once more locked in contention for the heart and mind of (I suppose) the Informed Christian. The recent spat seems mainly to stem from BioLogian Jim Stump’s review of a book on design arguments, and can be summed up (from that side) in the now well-worn phrase: Design arguments are bad science and bad theology.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

Paradigms that don’t fit

Posted on 04/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

In my last post I mentioned in passing YEC thinker Dr Arthur Jones, who has commented here in the past and who is remarkable in being one of the only people ever to get a PhD in evolutionary biology with original research leading to anti-evolutionary conclusions. The link was intended as an introduction to him, but the essay so linked is educational in its own right. It shows a remarkable degree of perception on the stuff I discussed in the last post, given that it was written back in 1970, even before his PhD, and only eight years after Kuhn published his book on paradigm shifts in science.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 6 Comments

Does rejecting a paradigm mean rejecting knowledge?

Posted on 01/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

An unusually perceptive, and rather charitable, piece by Justin Topp on BioLogos just now, on the subject of why people “stubbornly” persist in their particular ways of approaching origins issues. He bases his thesis on the “research program” concept of philosopher of science Imre Lakatos, and exemplifies what he means by his own journey which (rather refreshingly for BioLogos!) didn’t begin with his being indoctrinated in Young Earth Creationism as a kid. Instead he came to it by rational choice, though he abandoned it for Evolutionary Creation as a student.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science | 4 Comments

Theistic science depends on theistic worldview

Posted on 27/07/2015 by Jon Garvey

I put in a couple of comments on a thread on BioLogos that began by tut-tutting Intelligent Design’s “anti scientific” stance. Coincidentally it overlaps with the theme of my last post on ID, whose aim (by provocatively portraying ID as a foundational science rather than the more usual accusation that it is a pseudo-science) was to draw attention to the historical centrality of teleology to science, and the scientific cost of its loss in the last last two centuries. Eddie Robinson continues, currently, to battle away to good effect on that thread.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 13 Comments

Intelligent Design as foundational science

Posted on 24/07/2015 by Jon Garvey

When the first attempts were made at serious natural philosophy by the Greeks two and a half millennia ago, the most fundamental disagreement was between those who held that chance was at the root of the world, and those who considered there was direction to it, telos. In the former category would be the atomists like Democritus and Lucretius, and in reaction to them were those like Plato and, particularly, Aristototle, who held the teleological view.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science | 14 Comments