Category Archives: Science

Francis Bacon, Owen Barfield, Ian Dury, ID

It’s just astonishing how things fortuitously/providentially connect together. PNGarrison has kindly sent me a chapter of a difficult (oh dear…) book by Owen Barfield, which he has painstakingly transcribed for me. Thanks Preston. Barfield was C S Lewis’s great mentor – which has to be a recommendation – and the book, Saving the Appearances, is about the development of the way humans have viewed the world across history. The Amazon reviews tend in general to say, “This book has changed my life: I don’t understand much of it, but I keep coming back to it.” Having read one chapter, I see what they mean. It’s on my Amazon wishlist, and I’ll … Continue reading

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 9 Comments

Jaki – Science and Creation

One of the books often cited with approbium on the Christian roots of science is Fr Stanley Jaki’s Science and Creation. It’s one of the best early (1986) attempts to reverse the Victorian myth that science and religion are incompatible, by showing, to the contrary, how only the Judaeo-Christian concept of creation really made science as we know it possible.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science | 1 Comment

Chickens, eggs, concurrentism and Job

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

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

What the new creation teaches about the old

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. 

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 6 Comments

Conway Morris and Behe – an example of convergence?

One of our readers pointed me to a useful overview  by Simon Conway Morris of his thinking on his pet theory of convergent evolution. I don’t want to review it here, as it’s clear enough in itself. But I will summarise it in relation to The Hump’s recently coined approach to things scientific, Classic Providential Naturalism.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

Small earthquake in Chile, Not many dead

What’s the big deal about evolution anyway? Not scientifically, as an interesting little group of theories about the varieties of organisms, but as “the most important scientific development in the history of mankind”. The theory that makes the world a different place forever. What’s with all that heart searching about whether it does away with the need for God? That stuff about making it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist? Aren’t we forgetting something basic?

Posted in Philosophy, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Mind, quanta and algorithms

Given the difficulty of quantum theory, the last post has generated an unusually high level of interest in a short time, both in comments and hits. I surmise that it’s fascinating because it’s fundamental, rather than that the OP was world-changing. I want to reflect on just a couple of thoughts arising from the generalities of the subject, rather than the valuable and serious discussion of our more erudite readers on that thread. My prompt is the article on “qbism” referenced by pngarrison in his post, which opens up again one of the ways that “mind” seems (like King Charles’s head in Mr Dick’s Memorial) to keep impinging itself on … Continue reading

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 8 Comments

Quantum concurrentism

For my next trick, ladies and gentlemen, I shall attempt the impossible: trying to say something coherent about quantum mechanics from the background of a “B” grade in A-level physics. My only encouragement is that proportionately few people in the world have any understanding of QM, and those who do disagree about its interpretation. I’m aware (with some hope of useful feedback and correction) that our subscriber Ian Thompson, a nuclear physicist who has a very similar approach to theistic science that I do and is a concurrentist and Neo-Aristotelian to boot, has actually written a book on quantum theory and philosophy of science – currently on my Amazon wish-list.

Posted in Science, Theology | 30 Comments

Education as love

The separation of science and religion has recently been discussed on BioLogos in the context of Ted Davis’s mention of Langdon Gilkey, who advocated the complete separation of science and religion. Pretty soon in that discussion Gilkey’s particular approach was compared to Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria), in which science has to do with “facts” and religion with “values”.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Classic providential naturalism – towards a manifesto

When The Hump was relaunched with multiple authors around last October, after various events at BioLogos, I cobbled together a kind of working brief to the prospective writers whimsically entitled The Hump Strategy (or “Evolutionary Creationism in a cheap camelskin coat”). The reference to a certain infamous wedge should be obvious to those in the know. In the light of Sy Garte’s call to arms in a comment yesterday I fished this document out for inspiration (rather than reading through the whole of what is now approaching a million words on the blog). The summary with which I concluded was this:

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 18 Comments