Category Archives: Science

The questioning of natural selection in my last two posts should be seen as a simple lack of conviction that classical Neodarwinianism is robust enough to account for, in a well-worn phrase, the origin of the species. I should emphasise again that theologically, an adequate scientific theory of evolution is perfectly compatible with the providence (ie supervision and direction) of a wise God: the denial of teleology is categorically an unscientific and metaphysical claim. At the same time, the astonishing complexity of life, as its wonders are exponentially proving, makes some kind of teleological mechanism within biology ever more likely, if we are to avoid a high contingency theory that is unsatisfactory … Continue reading →

After publishing my last post I noticed I’d downloaded from somewhere (maybe the Sanford article) a 2008 paper by Austin L Hughes about the methods that are used to detect genes that have been subject to natural selection.

When Winfrith of Crediton, not many miles from the Hump’s rural seat, went to Germany and cut down a celebrated pagan sacred oak around 723 AD, the lack of any resulting thunderbolt from Thor destroyed the entire basis of pagan belief. With the tree gone, there was literally nothing left. A couple of recent interesting papers here  and here look in detail at natural selection and question its ability to do what is claimed of it.

I came across this 1992 symposium when following up a conversation at BioLogos in which I mentioned David L Wilcox. I’ve written about Wilcox before as a like mind in having a high (Reformed) view of God’s providence in nature, linked to at least general support for evolutionary theory (he is, after all, a population geneticist). But apart from his paper here, the whole symposium has interesting things to read.

Over on BioLogos I’ve been courting controversy again after Ted Davis posted another of his series on John Polkinghorne, in which the latter again promotes the free creation, kenotic God theology so prevalent in theistic evolution now. I critiqued it again, in the hope (after two years) of getting someone to justify it.

I’ve just come across a couple of interesting pointers to a forthcoming paradigm shift not so much in biology alone, but in the whole spirit of the age, and not in the diirection of postmodernism either. The first was a programme I happened to catch on TV, which is still available on i-Player for a few days here. It was called Aristotle’s Lagoon, and was an exploration by Armand Leroi, Professor of Evolutionary Developmental Biology at Imperial College, of the wildlife of Lesvos, where Aristotle did much of his work on natural history over a couple of years in the 4th century BC.

It would be mean-spirited of me not to cash in on the centenary of Alfred Russell Wallace’s death, and the opportunity was given by the BioLogos token-atheist Lou Jost the other day on this thread. He was putting down Roger Sawtelle with a post of the standard “You just don’t understand the theory of evolution” genre:

Milton: Paradise Lost, ii. line 996 (though I confess I got it from Martin Magnus on Mars by William F Temple, 1956). The incoherence of the “creation free to create itself” theology of much modern theistic evolution, and especially “the angel of the church at BioLogos“, has been a major theme here on the Hump. So much so that it’s hard to think of the most informative link, but this one is relevant.