The Hump of the Camel

Continuing the thoughts in my last post, it occurs to me how much of the prevalent TE theology appears to be influenced by the Open Theism propounded first by the late Clark Pinnock around 1980, and by other popular leaders such as John Sanders, Peter Wagner and (over here) Roger Forster. This may have been encouraged by the espousal of the new theology by scientists and other writers on theistic evolution like John Polkinghorne, Francis Collins, Karl Giberson, John Haught and Ken Miller. But some similar view of God seems to inform even those who (as far as I know) would not call themselves Open Theists, such as George Murphy in his emphasis on the God-given independence of creation.
Indeed, it almost appears that theistic evolution nowadays is a joint enterprise with Open Theism, a connection that has not, perhaps, received the attention due to it, though it’s pointed out here , here, and here. Continue reading →

One of the things I find most perplexing about theistic evolution, in the guise of BioLogos, at least, is how unnecessarily skewed against mainstream evangelical teaching much of it is. I don’t think this is the fault of people like president Darrel Falk. In a recent blog, he corrects an item on NPR (“an American Radio network, I believe, M’Lud”) which seems to make belief in evolution antithetical to belief in a historic Adam and Eve. Continue reading →

I’m surprised the new book from James Shapiro has not received more attention that it has so far. After all, as Archaea discoverer Carl Woese says on the cover, “the book is a game changer.” Evolution – a View is basically a general primer of the discoveries about cell and genome structure of the last few decades, and their connection with newly understood mechanisms for evolution. It’s by a leading bacterial geneticist, himself the discoverer of mobile genetic elements in bacteria, and it is grounded in the research literature and extensively referenced. Continue reading →

Since radical re-appraisals of the nature of reality are still buzzing around my head, I’m going to indulge myself by pointing out a small one of my own. It’s been said, quite rightly, that one of the problems with Creationism is that it has unconsciously bought into the agenda of materialism that it seeks to oppose. Thus the Bible is used as an alternative scientific text to give an alternative materialistic theory of origins: the world was not formed gradually by the outworking of the natural laws of the Universe, but suddenly by the outworking of God’s divine fiat, as described in Genesis. The problem with this, again often commented upon, is that Genesis does not set out to be a science text, or more precisely it doesn’t seek to give an account of material origins at all.

The Intelligent Design Movement, though, is careful to indicate that its agenda is a scientific one, namely the exposure of inadequate aspects of Neodarwinism (notably random processes) and the detection of causation by design. That is, to me, a perfectly valid exercise whether or not it succeeds, and maybe all one should hope to achieve within a scientific framework. Assuming, of course, one can get the scientific community not to rule it out a priori. Nevertheless it seems to me that ID too has often unconsciously adopted a key point of the materialist agenda. Continue reading →

I’ve just finished Information and the Nature of Reality, a symposium edited by Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen. I like Davies’ writing, and it seemed worthwhile exploring some of the ideas being generated about the importance of information not only in relation to biology, but to cosmology. The collection also has contributions from philosophers and theologians, so a holistic view is on the table.

In an anthology from leading lights in such diverse fields, I expect to be out of my depth is much of the discussion. Neither is it surprising that definitions of “information” are a bit loose and variable, since nobody can agree on definitions even within restricted fields like genetics. I was certainly attracted by one of the “strapline” concepts, that the traditional description of the Universe as:

Mathematics->Physics->Information

ought, perhaps, to be reformulated as:

Information->Laws of physics->Matter

If that’s the way the thinking is going, it obviously has some interesting implications about the relationship between science and religion. Continue reading →