Category Archives: Science

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:

One of the strands running through some of these posts is that if we want to understand God’s ways in creation (and therefore scientific questions like evolution), we must also understand how he acts now. I’m speaking here as to Christians, who accept Scripture’s inspiration and authority, but who sometimes say these questions of God’s governance in the world are moot. The same (they say) is therefore true of God’s involvement in natural processes and the vexed question of natural evil. There seems to be a feeling that the kind of philosophical-theological views proposed in such concepts as concurrentism are imposed upon the biblical text. But I’m going to argue … Continue reading →

The Christian doctrine of creation is incomplete without a consideration of the concept of the new creation. Not only is Christianity inextricably linked to the idea that, in Christ, the whole cosmos will soon be renewed, but that renewal has been revealed as the end towards which the old creation was always headed.