Category Archives: Science

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.

The creation accounts of Genesis are the introduction to the five foundation works which make up Israel’s covenant document, the Torah. The centrepiece of that is the covenant on Mount Sinai in Exodus, in which God gives the nation he’s called and rescued the promise of (a) a numerous people (b) a land and (c) blessings from his presence (in return for covenant obedience summarised in the Decalogue and under threat of punishment for disobedience in various places, especially Leviticus). The climax of Exodus is the descent of God to the tabernacle to dwell with his people. One key (and unique) feature is that Israel is called to demonstrate Yahweh’s … Continue reading →