Category Archives: Science

As of yesterday, I’m no longer quite so sure what BioLogos means when it affirms that “God intended humanity.” There are some signs that wriggle-room may have been left for “humanity” to mean something like “some species with self awareness and complex civilisations.” The relevant BL thread has now, characteristically, long since been deserted by the BioLogos staff to be picked over by scavengers, so clarification is unlikely to be forthcoming. Whatever their own position, though, Ken Miller thinks a roll of the evolutionary dice would have produced “human” dinosaurs or squid, Stuart Conway Morris seems to figure only on A. N. Intelligent-Species filling the “God’s image” niche, and his 2011 … Continue reading →

The particular variant of theistic evolution put forward by Deborah Haarsma in her recent post on BioLogos is, as I’ve suggested before, a considerable advance on other forms that, rightly or wrongly, have been attributed to BioLogos as an organisation before, not least by me. She has firmly stated that God intended mankind. Within the meaning of the English language, that is a belief in design. Because the Creator God had an intention  (specifically the existence of mankind rather than some other intelligent form, or even no intelligent form at all) and because as a result it came to be, it is a fulfilled design, just as surely as if God … Continue reading →

Like most guitarists of a certain age in Britain, including Dave Gilmour, Brian May, Mark Knopfler and a host of others, my ambition to play came from hearing a certain instrumental band, The Shadows, and their lead guitarist Hank Marvin. That was back in 1961, when I was nine, and one of my immediate responses then was to compose (mentally) some tunes that I would play and record if I were he.

Sometimes I think I’ve never had an original idea in my life. It’s not at all that I like to follow the crowd. On the contrary I love discovering new truths. On occasions I’ve had a wonderful new insight, say from the Bible, or have drawn strands together from primary sources, and have shared it with friends who say they’ve never heard of that before, and think it’s great. A few months later, I’ll read the self-same thing in John Calvin or C S Lewis (or usually some much lesser luminary).

I’m posting below a reply I’ve made on BioLogos to a post by the president thereof, Deborah Haarsma. This is for the usual reason that BioLogos deletes comments after 6 months, and I don’t want this to be lost. In a thread discussing recent survey results on US belief about origins, she linked to an essay by Robert Bishop, which is a not only unexceptionable, but excellent survey of the biblical doctrine of creation. Read it if you want to know what I believe, and why. Its application to evolution is also good, but (paranoically or not, given BioLogos‘ track record) I notice some possible departure from the doctrine previously … Continue reading →

Our dawn chorus, though usually initiated by a resident cock pheasant, Philip, squawking for food, has been dominated recently by a blackbird, probably brain-damaged. The blackbird is one of Britain’s most inventively melodic birds (check out this YouTube clip). But this one has become obsessed with a simple diatonic motif, in Bb, which it will usually repeat back-to back before breaking up into half-hearted warbles. Here is my transcription: