Category Archives: Science

I’ve now finished Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, and it certainly is a very important book. I don’t intend to review it, as scores of important thinkers have done so already, and recently. Ed Feser has gathered these reviews, and reviewed them, starting here.

Well, I’ve been asking that question on BioLogos for nearly 2 years now, and did so again on this recent thread. For the very first time I actually got a reply – even a serious one – from beaglelady, who quoted me a parish newsletter of John Polkinghorne’s in which he cited a sort of free will defence regarding tsunamis: they are the necessary result of regular natural laws, and such interacting laws are (in a manner not explained) necessary for human freedom.

One thing that’s surprising in reading nineteenth century history is that the dominant Christian position when Darwin came along wasn’t Young Earth Creationism. In fact most of the thinking Christians had accepted the findings of geology which, though the likes of Sedgwick and Lyell were opposed on many things, had presented a strong case for a much older earth than Archbishop Ussher’s celebrated biblical chronology.

This is by way of bringing together some thoughts related to “information” and its place in the Universe. Theistic evolutionists of the BioLogos persuasion typically support the idea of cosmic fine tuning, but reject Intelligent Design arguments. This distinction is largely based on the idea, as in John Polkinghorne, that the first relates to the stage of ex nihilo creation, whereas the latter implies God’s “interference” in the natural processes he has set up. Bear that distinction in mind as we proceed.

Atheist Lou Jost asks Eddie on a Biologos: I am unsure why religious people in particular are so excited by Shapiro’s book. It mostly discusses new sources of genetic variation. These only serve to make naturalistic evolution even easier than we had previously thought. More variation means faster evolution. And as far as I can recall, Shapiro’s book does not really offer any other explanation for adaptation, apart from natural selection.

A post on Victor Reppert’s Dangerous Idea raises the question of God’s “accountability” to creation, quoting the reply of Romans 9.20 about pots questioning their maker as, in some way, problematic. What is interesting is the series of excellent replies from (definitely!) Catholic Ben Yachov (who used to post on BioLogos a year or two ago). In effect, he suggests that Reppert’s soul-searching is yet another unnecessary complication from accepting theistic personalism, which I have written about here before. Ben Yachov, being a Thomist very sympathetic to Ed Feser, largely reflects the latter’s thought in this.