Category Archives: Science

There is a remarkable thing about scientific discoveries in all fields. They generally tend to be surprising. Nobody expected that the universe had a clear beginning, and that space and time started at a particular moment, before which there was….. well, nothing. Not even time. How surprising was that?

In general I find Shapiro’s views very exciting and well worth disseminating as widely as possible. I think that his theory of Natural Genetic Engineering has the capability of finally unseating the rigid doctrinaire paradigm of neo Darwinism, with its overly simplistic and outdated view of the mechanism of evolution. If there is one universal rule that governs biology, it is that nothing is ever simple. Shapiro’s NGE is complex and chaotic enough to be true.

James Shapiro is a microbiologist who has been advancing a new way to look at evolution for many decades. Jon Garvey has mentioned Shapiro a number of times on blog posts, and Shapiro’s ideas have been discussed by many evangelicals interested in faith and evolution, including followers of ID. Shapiro himself is not a theist, and is not interested in supporting ID or any other theological ideas. But his scientific ideas are interesting and somewhat controversial in biology (although they shouldn’t be). And, despite his own views on theism, Shapiro’s approach has highly significant implications for theistic evolution.