The Hump of the Camel

A recent report in the New York Times has been widely linked, including this summary at Evolution News. It deals with an inter-disciplinary squabble over recent claims by geneticists about human origins, which do not tally with the results in the rival field of palaeontology. Continue reading →

There’s an excellent series by James Barham providing a (mainly) layman-level overview of the way that biological science is likely to be headed, on The Best Schools. The link takes you to part VII, and you should scroll down to find links to the whole lot so far near the bottom. You’ll see that he encompasses James Shapiro’s work in one article, which should interest some of my usual readers. Continue reading →

Yahtze is an entertaining family dice game. The highest scoring throw is all five dice the same, for which you get 50 points, and 100 bonus points if you throw another in the same game. I think the odds of a Yahtze are 6^4, or 1:1296. The odds of throwing two Yahtzes are that number squared. Correct my maths if it’s wrong – but by any calculation it’s not a highly probable outcome. We used to play it when camping with the kids, since it used less skill than other games and so caused less tantrums. There’s nothing worse than mums and dads throwing tantrums. At times, though, It used to give me some parental qualms. Continue reading →

Mike Gene has noticed my recent post and, I’m glad to say, was happy with how I developed his idea. It’s always nice when people agree with you. Continue reading →

I liked Mike’s recent post on Shadow to Light. Michael Ruse has restated the rather tired assertion that any guidance God put into evolution would overturn its known unguidedness (every instance since it began having been studied, I suppose, in detail and shown to be unguided?). Any cheating by, say, God’s guiding quantum events would be “messing with science”. Continue reading →

A guy calling himself “Francis” over on BioLogos took it into his head to get personally insulting in reply to one of my now infrequent posts there. I’ve neither the time nor patience to tease out exactly where he’s coming from – I think it’s blind literalism of the order “If the KJV was good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me” type. But it may be Tridentine Catholicism, or even Pentecostal “Only those baptized with the Spirit know God’s will, and they always agree with me.” Plain trollery is another possibility, but whatever the motivation he was quick to play, unsolicited, the old “plain folks versus hifalutin’ college boys” card. Ten years plus in pastoral ministry taught me to refuse to play that game. But one thing he wrote is a useful starting point for me here:

“How would you value the theological opinion of a blue-collar fisherman versus that of a highly-educated/trained theology teacher (i.e. Pharisee)?”

The one-line answer is that anyone who does a three year full time theology course with Jesus is no longer just a blue-collar fisherman, if he ever was just that. But the truth hidden in the question (usually just as applicable to the homespun types as to the graduates they despise) is that with Jesus, theology and religion were indistinguishable. Continue reading →