Category Archives: Theology

Denyse O’Leary says something on Best Schools  that I too have been intrigued by for some time. Many (though not all) biologists hold to “universal descent from a single cell” as a dogma central to evolutionary theory. That’s odd, because historically even Darwin, at the dawn of knowledge about early life, spoke of life “breathed into a few forms or into one”, really only implying that there has been divergence rather than stasis. Since then, apart from the opinion of those like Carl Woese that the superkingdoms of life represent separate origins, we have a large body of evidence about horizontal gene transfer and symbiotic events at key evolutionary points. … Continue reading →

The final part of Ted Davis’ s somewhat loosely-entitled series  Science and the Bible has appeared over at Biologos. It is really a summary calling for theological engagement with evolutionary science along the lines of Mark Noll’s 1994 book, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. What was rather depressing was less the article itself than some early responses.

The Daily Telegraph today reports some criticism of David Attenborough’s new blockbuster series on Africa. It’s the old complaint about anthropomorphic treatment of animal life, in this case the heart-rending mood music and scene-cutting surrounding a mother elephant’s leaving the herd to stay with her dying calf until all life was gone. Older readers (surely that’s all of us here!) will remember that the same criticism was levelled by serious naturalists about Walt Disney’s 1950s True Life Adventures, and not without justice: they were inspiring entertainment rather than scientific reportage. Similarly, it’s been noted that the American viewer, for other than dispassionate scientific reasons, appears historically to have insisted on … Continue reading →

The Magician’s Twin is a new book about C S Lewis’s relationship to science, and to scientism in particular. It’s a good read. But it’s published by the Discovery Institute, so BioLogos felt the need to produce a series debunking it. Children, children. In fact after an initial post met with a fair amount reasoned dissent, author David Williams significantly revised his planned series, and it became quite a useful discussion board for a time (until I lost my ability to post there and gave up following the thread – though I’m thankfully restored to grace!). But in response there has been some activity regarding C S Lewis on Uncommon … Continue reading →

Overall I think this was my favourite presentation at the Tyndale Fellowship Philosophy conference on design in nature last year. Quirky and original, it contains some fundamental ideas about the interraction of faith and science, and particularly the intellectual flimsiness of materialism. The video has also been posted at Uncommon Descent,  but I know not all of you frequent that site. There’s a nice view of the back of my head around 1:04:40, just before Steve Meyer’s comment.

Thanks to Father Christmas I now have John H Walton’s academic treatment  of Genesis in the context of ANE literature, which I find, as others have already said, to provide a much more solid case for a functional view of the Genesis creation story than his more approachable Lost World of Genesis One. But like the latter book, it should not be misunderstood as making the case for a non-literal interpretation of Genesis, but for a literal, though non-materialistic, account of creation.

On an Uncommon Descent thread, I was taken to task for not expanding on an answer I gave about whether there are things that are not designed. On the basis that God is the Creator of all things I had said the answer was “No.” The immediate challenge to me was whether I included my own sins in that, and I think that was intended to demolish my position. In fact, as I shall go on to show, it simply raises a whole new topic in theology which has been tackled by varying approaches from earliest times.