Natural Dissent: The Ethics of Evolutionary Biology
Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection was inspired not primarily by his observations of the natural world, but by Thomas Malthus's theory of scarcity.
Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection was inspired not primarily by his observations of the natural world, but by Thomas Malthus's theory of scarcity.
Review of Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism. Published in Origins n. 58.
Review of the book, Thinking About God: First Steps in Philosophy. Published in Origins n. 58.
The world is not divided into the good creationists and the bad evolutionists. Many scientists have never had opportunity to see reasonable alternatives to a materialistic evolutionary process. Many scientists, though convinced by the evidence for evolution, are unwilling to give up on God and/or are searching for some meaning in life. Do we want to draw these people to us or drive them away?
The argument to design is that nature shows evidence of design but does not attempt to identify the designer. The argument from design is that the design seen in nature is best explained as the result of a specific designer, most often the Christian God. Published in Origins n. 57.
Reaction to the editorial, Chicken Soup, and the article, Recent Developments in Near Eastern Chronology and Radiocarbon Dating, Self-organization and the Origin of Life. Even if biomolecules self-assembled into cellular organization, that would not produce life because life requires non-equilibrium chemical reactions. The editorial by Jim Gibson did not address this point. Correlation of carbon-14 dates with the biblical time scale favors the younger archaeological dates discussed in the article by Michael Hasel.
A review of the book, The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God. Published in Origins, n. 57.
Whenever religion and science have a dispute about some question of fact, religion always loses. So goes a common belief. The implication is that religion should never make any factual claims, as it has no contact with reality. For some religions, such an assertion is irrelevant, as these religions do not make any claims about the physical universe. But for biblical Christianity, such an assertion would be fatal.
Many models have been proposed that tend to blur some of the contrasts between the biblical and naturalistic theories. A number of attempts have been made to develop intermediate models in which elements of the biblical story of creation are mixed with elements of the scientific story of origins. All of these models share the biblical idea that nature is the result of divine purpose and the “scientific” idea of long ages of time, but all suffer from serious scientific problems or are entirely ad hoc and conjectural.
Darwin’s view of God is contrary to the biblical view of God and should give Christians pause before buying into Darwin’s naturalism and attempting to wed it to the supernatural in a theistic evolutionary synthesis.
The goal of this essay is to assess the compatibility of Adventist theology with deep time and the evolutionary reconstruction of the origins of earth history.
One aspect of the person and work of Jesus Christ that has not been explored adequately is the work of the preincarnate Logos in the creation of the earth and universe. This study is an attempt to stimulate discussion relating to a biblical understanding of the work of Jesus in creation.
Life is proposed to have originated by random processes in a chemical soup. The validity of this idea can be tested by looking for life ini cans of chicken soup, which contain all the chemicals needed and so ought to provide an ideal environment for life to originate, if the theory is valid. Published in Origins n. 58.
Literature Review A review of the book By Design or By Chance? The Growing Controversy on the Origins of Life in the Universe. Published in Origins n. 58.
A review of the book,Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity. Published in Origins n. 58.
Design in nature can be detected using criteria similar to those for searching for extraterrestrial life, such as purpose, extreme improbability, or specification. Published in Origins n. 56..
There is more to design than complexity. I am proposing that it is time to advance beyond an analysis of complexity, fruitful though that has been. We are able to expand the scope of design arguments to include the existence of beauty, which points to design of a different kind.
Did God create the world and its environs in six days or did He use a natural process through billions of years? Two studies help to answer this question: an examination of methodological naturalism in the light of recent contributions made by the Intelligent Design movement and an examination of Scripture as revelation.
This paper examines exegetically the Hebrew text of the biblical Creation story, paying close attention to its sounds, rhythm, words, syntax, literary structure in relation to its parallel text, and its literary genre and style, without ignoring its literary extrabiblical environment. Published in Origins n. 55.
A review of the book, Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution. Published in Origins n. 55.