Category Archives: Theology

One reason I’ve not posted for a few days is that my computer blew up. Quite spectacular – smoke and bangs and everything. A failing power supply took out much of the rest, requiring a new system. The old one lasted nearly ten years, so I can’t complain. But even in that time updates to Windows and so on created headaches in keeping the thing functioning. I’ve had to update drivers for hardware rendered obsolete, buy new compatible programs and so on. I frankly dreaded trying to start again from scratch.

My pastor sent me this excellent quote from  The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock, 1680. Since we cannot have a full notion of him, we should endeavour to make it as high and pure as we can… conceive of him as excellent, without any imperfection; a Spirit without parts, great without quantity; perfect without quality; everywhere without place; powerful without members; understanding without ignorance; wise without reasoning; light without darkness… and when you have risen to the highest, conceive him yet infinitely above all you can conceive of spirit, and acknowledge the infirmity of your own minds. And whatever conception comes into your minds, say, this is … Continue reading →

I was interested to hear about Michael Flannery’s 2011 book Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life. I’ve not read it yet, but some chapters are online here. The book is published by the Discovery Institute, clearly because it makes the case that Wallace, the co-founder with Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection, was a forerunner of the Intelligent Design Movement. DI is not the first to make such a claim, though, Stephen J Gould having written an essay to that effect in Panda’s Thumb.

Jerry Coyne has celebrated Amazon’s offer of a free Kindle version of James Shapiro’s Evolution: A View from the 21st Century by asking for comments on the book. (Beware: some people seem to have been charged for their download!) Coyne hasn’t read it himself, but says that Shapiro is “heterodox in his views.” He should know, since they are both at the University of Chicago. Even so, “heterodox” seems an odd choice of words.

Talking about the magical abilities of time, here’s my B B Warfield quote for today, anticipating Bill Dembski by a century or so, and without the maths: “What chance cannot begin to produce in a moment, chance cannot complete the production of in an eternity… What is needed is not time, but cause. Even an eternal process cannot rid us of the necessity of seeking an adequate cause behind every change… We may cast our dice to all eternity with no more likelihood than at the first throw of ever turning up double sevens.” Warfield, of course, never adequately grasped that natural selection can slowly build up even single sevens as … Continue reading →