The Hump of the Camel

My brother likes to be useful to the world by participating in BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) projects, in which the computing power of the broad masses is used for processor-heavy tasks like screening data from the SETI program (a hiding to nothing) or testing climate change models (potentially immensely valuable).

When I was visiting him recently, I displaced the BOINC screen-saver in order to check the news, and found an item purporting to have mathematical evidence that the universe is a hologram. The idea of the cosmos as an illusion (of what, for whom?) is a common conceit, usually in the form of its being a computer simulation like the Matrix.

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In a previous article I briefly reviewed Loren and Deborah Haarsma’s book on theistic evolution. The version of theistic evolution presented as their own preference, allowing for several other models, seems basically to endorse Jacques Monod’s dipole of chance and necessity, but viewed as a theistic mode of design. The initial “deposit” of the creation could be sufficient, the book suggests, to have produced the whole natural world, without the need for further divine activity, though their theology happily grants the possibility of the latter. But the position is that the fine tuning of the original laws and conditions makes known evolutionary mechanisms sufficient to guarantee the sort of bisophere we have. Stuart Conway-Morris’s theory of convergent evolution is cited in support of this sufficiency. Continue reading →

In my last post I looked in more depth, through the writing of Karl Giberson, at the “free process” idea of creation that has been so prevalent at BioLogos since I became a visitor and contributor there maybe three years ago. I want today to look at the views of Deborah Haarsma, BioLogos President for the past year. This has been prompted by Ted Davis’s invitation to me, on one of his BioLogos threads about Robert Boyle, to read the book she and husband Loren co-authored (Origins – Creation, Design, and Evolution), which he thought would accord with my own viewpoint. He asked me to feed back my conclusions there, but I have more space here. Continue reading →

I’ve not really had much to do with the writing of leading theistic evolutionist Karl Giberson, except for noting his occasional public outbursts against Evangelicalism’s failure to embrace his ideas fully. But I probably should have done, because he was Executive Vice President of BioLogos from 2009, and since his departure from them has written a book with its founder, Francis Collins. And, I discover, he has much shown more forthrightness in his writing about the “Free creation” than the curious coyness of BioLogos (to the point of temporarily shutting down comments rather than addressing my questions about it not long ago). Continue reading →