The Hump of the Camel

Somebody at BioLogos, following a common line, recently expressed hesitation about whether God intended the particular life forms that we have, and based this on what he said was the long-argued question of free-will versus determinism. The idea was that God, by allowing true (ontological) randomness in evolution, was in some way casting his vote for free-will rather than determinism. Continue reading →

I intervened on one of the many current threads against about Intelligent Design at BioLogos yesterday in response to the oft-repeated claim that evolution is not random because natural selection is not random. I suggested that, as per my last post, part of the rational limitation of science ought to be the recognition that it can only construct theories about repeatable regularities, whereas it can merely observe and list the contingent – and natural selection is firmly in the latter category.

I concluded my comment thus:

If science is the study of the repeatable, what makes natural selection any more a scientific process, than is contingent history – which is as much as to say a product of providence?

That it drew considered responses from Merv Bitkofer, Sy Garte and GD (all Hump persons, of course) did not surprise me – but it also more interestingly received a “like” from Joshua Swamidass. Continue reading →