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- Fearfully and wonderfully bodged? 18/02/2026
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Category Archives: Theology
Temporarily over on BioLogos
I’ve been a bit remiss in updating this blog. But in the meantime I’ve a new essay on the BioLogos website. It would have been here but they asked first…
Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology
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Will you, won’t you?
Britain must be one of the only places in the world where you can hear a radio programme in which 3 philosophy professors discuss free will with an informed chairman. Free will poses a difficulty for naturalism because although we consciously make decisions – especially moral ones – every day, it is difficult to account for them. The determinism of natural law would suggest free choice, and so moral accountability, to be impossible. Yet introducing the only other naturalistic mechanism, randomness (by invoking quantum physics for example) would, even if plausible, still exclude moral responsibility because ones will would be the “victim” of external random forces. So there seems no … Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology
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Did the Puritans Start the Seti Project?
This quote about life on other planets was sent to me by my friend Penman, a regular poster on the Biologos site. It is by Richard Baxter, one of the greatest of the 17th century Puritan writers and preachers: I know it is a thing uncertain and unrevealed to us, whether all these globes be inhabited or not. But he that considereth, that there is scarce any uninhabitable place on earth, or in the water, or air; but men, or beasts, or birds, or fishes, or flies, or worms, and moles, do take up almost all; will think it a probability so near a certainty as not to be much … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Theology
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Romans 5 and Pre-Adamic Man
One of the passages that causes some difficulties for “old Earth” views of mankind, and especially of the origin and nature of sin, is Romans 5. But not only can these difficulties, I believe, be overcome, but the passage can cast considerable light on how spirituality and sin might come into a world in which the human race is acknowledged to have existed for many millennia. My essay on the subject here
Interpreting Genesis myth legitimately
Let’s talk about myth. John Walton’s work on Genesis 1 shows that ANE myth is to be understood functionally, not physically. Genesis 1 describes 7 days in which Yahweh organises the earth as his temple with mankind as his priests. Walton points out how irrelevant this makes it to the evolution debate. It is more to do with revelation than manufacture. Let’s go further. As an account of human evolution, the Mesopotamian Eridu Genesis is rubbish. It mentions men created as kings, as temple-builders, and the first (named) cities: 100K (or 4.5 bn) year anachronisms as far as physical creation is concerned. Wrong – actually it was written to explain … Continue reading
Catching up
Over the last few months the BioLogos blog has helped me think through an approach to creation that does injustice neither to science or the Bible, taken as the directly inspired word of God. In particular John H Walton’s book on Genesis 1 is a must-read to discover how a functionally conceived view of creation is the literal meaning, removing at a stroke many apparent contradictions with science. During my postings on that blog I have put my thoughts in a number of essays, to which I would have linked individually here if the blog had existed at the time. Instead, here are the links all together, in no logical order. … Continue reading
Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology
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