The Hump of the Camel

Commenting on an Uncommon Descent thread about chance, I used the example of tossing 1000 heads in a row with a coin as being evidence, without any further information, of design. It was the old argument that strictly, even miracles are likely to be indistinguishable from chance except by their having a specific meaning and greater improbability. The division between miracle and chance, as I said there, is theologically somewhat of a false dichotomy, as is all talk of divine intervention. And that’s because classical theology attributes all actions in the Universe to God as first cause. You can’t intervene in what you’re already doing.

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A bit of light relief after all that heavy stuff on creation. You’ll be aware how scientists of a naturalistic bent often claim that their naturalism follows on from the findings of science, rather than being merely a metaphysical or philosophical  assumption grafted on to science. Many of them are deeply suspicious of both metaphysics and philosophy, almost as much as they are of theology. That may be for good reason, for if you read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Causal Determinism you’ll see that there is growing doubt amongst philosophers as to whether fixed laws of nature exist at all, and that those who maintain there are are standardly termed “fundamentalists”! It’s ironic that those in BioLogos leaping out of the frying pan of Creationist fundamentalism end up in the fire of philosophical fundamentalism anyway!

But the question is whether the naturalists’ contention to be metaphysics-free and dependent only on empirical evidence stands up to scrutiny. Continue reading →

At long last I’m in a position to look at the content of most science-faith discussion, that is the material Universe, in the context of what we’ve seen from the Bible about its purpose. That means especially, in terms of (a) the glory of God, (b) his eternal purpose in glorifying Christ through sacrificial suffering and (c) the central role of mankind. We can even say a little about creation in relation to the angelic realm, if I remember. Continue reading →

I never thought I’d write a blog about angels! Like many contemporary Christians I don’t give angels a thought from one year’s end to the other, though accepting their existence. After all, Jesus and the New Testament took a definite stance on them, together with  resurrection, against one of the influential Jewish parties (Acts 23.8). The reasons for ignoring them are probably similar to those poor ones I suggested in relation to forgetting Christ when discussing creation. Nevertheless, I don’t want to engage in angelology, but simply to mention three things that we might learn by considering them in relation to creation. Continue reading →

I want to spend a couple of posts looking at what the Bible teaches about the purpose of creation. This is multifaceted, so bear with me for building the picture gradually and, perhaps, appearing to ignore or downplay certain aspects as I do so. There is method…

My first task is to point out that in the Bible God’s will and purpose in creation predominate over all other aspects of creation itself, especially the material, which of course is the opposite of the scientific approach, in which teleology is absolutely excluded. There’s maybe room for a separate post on just how this, and other key aspects of creation teaching, are absent from the usual science-faith discussions: “evolution as God’s means of creation” is a pretty inadequate concept if it omits much of the creation and all of the reasons for it. Continue reading →