Category Archives: Uncategorized

There’s something of a clash of the titans going on over at BioLogos, where Dennis Venema is defending his claim in the book Adam and the Genome that science makes belief in a single original human couple untenable. In the blue corner is Richard Buggs, of Kew Gardens and Queen Mary College, London and, ruining the boxing metaphor somewhat, Steve Schaffner (“Glipsnort”) is doing expert computer simulations on the side within his sphere of undoubted expertise.

When I recently posted a YouTube clip of the band Devo, it was based on a vague recollection of a hypnotically quirky song attached to a supposedly subversive philosophy not of revolution, but of devolution. Checking out the back-story, though, I discover that the whole idea was rather ironically purloined from a controversial anti-evolutionist pamphlet-writer of the 1920s, B H Shadduck. The Devo track was, in fact, named for Shadduck’s 1924 pamphlet Jocko-Homo Heavenbound.

At the back of our house we have a one and a half acre meadow on a steep slope. I went out this week to rake out some mole hills before they harden – it makes the mowing easier in the spring. I was surprised to find that one of the pretty roe deer that frequently emerge from the woods to browse there had decided to die – and only a short time before, too, as it was still warm.

With the number of posts on The Hump now exceeding 900 I’ve added a “random post” facility in the sidebar to keep you amused for hours. I must note, given one of our perennial subjects, that “random” here means “epistemologically random”, not “ontologically random”. The widget is in fact governed by some kind of clever algorithm that simulates randomness: the posts actually appear according to deterministic criteria. That doesn’t preclude them, of course, being providentially tailored to your particular interest and needs. Isn’t theology wonderful?

Here is a link to chapter 10 of my book.

Sy Garte has a new piece on his blog about a Chinese paper, published in a Western journal, in which some biological function is dealt with, and its suitability to the wisdom of the Creator is remarked.

Holly (this growing on our spread) – a most fallen plant by Genesis literalist standards, being both poisonous (like the ivy, in fact) and thorny. But it is undiminished, nevertheless, in its Christmas appeal and the allegorical lessons to be learned from the English folk carol first published in the early nineteenth century. And so it’s clearly an integral part of Christ’s good Creation. Have a good Christmas all – we’ll be back soon.