Category Archives: Theology

Computational biologist and theistic evolutionist Joshua Swamidass invited us at The Hump to respond to his online challenge The-100-Year-Old-Tree. My response was longer than the others he has posted, so between us we distilled it down to the form in which it appears on his website. This (following the challenge itself) is my original full version.

This is an expansion of a theme I brought up in a discussion on BioLogos. Ever since evolutionary theory became an intellectually preferred way to view the Universe (long before Darwin and any persuasive scientific evidence – we have to go back at least to Buffon and the Enlightenment philosophy of the eighteenth century) it has been tempting to some to recast theology in the light of evolution. This is still, sadly, routinely done in theistic evolution, as the conflicts that occasionally surface at the ASA, CiS or BioLogos show to those with eyes to see.

Leaving the question of a possible metaphysical makeover for science, fielded in my last post, hanging for now, I’ll follow gravity in returning to the matter of divine action. In any case this was the spin George Brooks put on my article in his flagging of the post at BioLogos, and it has also been discussed recently in another thread there.

BioLogos was ostensibly, as far as I can see, constituted to deal with one main problem. And that is, the problem that Evangelicals, especially in America, did not accept evolutionary theory. This was perceived to lead to two main problems. Firstly, in apologetics, Evangelical Christianity was in danger of being intellectually sidelined, unnecessarily alienating the educated community by denying the evidence of science. Secondly, pastorally, Christians brought up in Creationist churches were liable to be stumbled on encountering the strength of the evidence for evolution when they studied science, thus leading unnecessarily to abandonment of their Evangelical faith.