That’s by design, as chance would have it. Giberson and Collins tell us in The Language of Science and Faith (IVP 2011, pp. 19-20): The BioLogos idea is not radically new, but the novelty of the word gives us a chance to talk about something that has long been disturbing to Christians without having to be constantly reminded of a long negative conversation. Most importantly it gives us a chance to talk about evolution.  [ … ] Theistic evolution is the belief that God created life using natural processes, working within the natural order, in harmony with its laws. So, why don’t we simply use the term evolution to describe our view? We don’t use the term, at least not Read More ›

In “Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education” (The Nation, May 4, 2011), William Deresiewicz reflects on the current discouraging face of higher education as a career choice (not on whether one should have a degree):

Basic physics in this country is all but dead. From 1971 to 2001, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in English declined by 20 percent, but the number awarded in math and statistics declined by 55 percent. The only areas of the liberal arts that saw an increase in BAs awarded were biology and psychology—and this at a time when aggregate enrollment expanded by something like 75 percent. Read More ›

About this odd recent job posting (math fix for neo-Darwinism), Doug Axe at Biologic Institute offers “Oxford seeks mathemagician” (May 5th, 2011): Scientists employ different rhetorical strategies to accomplish different things. That shouldn’t be surprising, perhaps, but for some it is. The reason is that while the public is very familiar with rhetorical shiftiness in some occupations, they tend to see only one side of science—the confident, assertive, authoritative, we-know-what-we’re-talking-about side. Science-speak often comes across with a hint of arrogance, but since science itself depends on the goodwill of the public for its very existence, it usually corrects itself on those occasions when it oversteps its bounds.There are a few peculiar exceptions though, … But the question has been raised: Read More ›

… via Important Name^TM endorsements to repeal the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act ( critical thinking in science education) not to be confused with the 42 Nobel laureates a couple of weeks ago. Repeal would be via SB70.

Here’s Barbara Forrest’s op-ed in support of repeal. UD readers will remember Forrest as the “ID expert” prof who mistakenly slagged Baylor’s Frank Beckwith – in a professional philosophy journal – as an ID supporter. (He isn’t, and the journal’s editors disowned the article.)

Back in the expert’s chair again at Houma Today (April 26, 2011), Forrest offers a similar level of evidence for creationism being taught in Louisiana schools: Read More ›

Here at MercatorNet, William West asks, “Has science buried God?” and answers, “No, far from it, an Oxford professor insists” (5 May 2011). He is reviewing the work of serious Christian Oxford mathematician and ID sympathizer John Lennox.

Lennox goes through all the theories put forward to give credence to the idea that all of this could have happened by chance and, as a mathematician, indicates that such scenarios are basically laughable. He says that the conclusion that a super intellect is at work in the creation of life may not be verified by scientific “induction” or experiment, but it is a valid inference to the best explanation (“abduction”).

He points out that the probability of a purely random origin for any sequence of even the most basic biological significance is “so small as to be negligible”: “It could therefore be argued that the molecular biology of the cell shows the same order of fine-tuning that we saw in connection with physics and cosmology.” Read More ›

In case you wondered, anthropologist Gregory Bateson explains, If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation, and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetables. If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have Read More ›

If so, maybe you are a Christian Darwinist and didn’t know it.

Michael Dowd, impresario of the thirty-three ring circus around Christian Darwinism, describes his own position as “creatheism”:

CREATHEISM: a concept introduced in the early 21st century, grounded in an empirical understanding of the nested emergent nature of divine creativity. For creatheists “God” is a holy name for Ultimate Reality—the all-encompassing Wholeness—that which includes yet transcends all other realities. Creatheism regards Nature as a revelation or expression of the divine, particularly in its emergent creativity. Creatheism understands humanity as a self-reflective aspect of Creation that allows the Wholeness of Reality, seen and unseen, manifest and unmanifest—i.e., God—to be honored in conscious awareness and to guide our own deliberate manifestations of that divine creativity.

What does all this mean exactly? He explains: Read More ›

What do I mean by reality? I mean that which has existence apart from any idea any mind may have of it, and which would exist if there were no mind anywhere to entertain a thought of it. That which is real has being in itself. It does not depend upon the observer for its validity. I am aware that there are those who love to poke fun at the plain man’s idea of reality. They are the idealists who spin endless proofs that nothing is real outside of the mind. They are the relativists who like to show that there are no fixed points in the universe from which we can measure anything. They smile down upon us from Read More ›

“Genome Duplication Encourages Rapid Adaptation of Plants” (ScienceDaily, May 4, 2011) While nearly all animals have two sets of chromosomes — one set inherited from the maternal parent and the other inherited from the paternal parent — many plants are polyploids, meaning they have four or more chromosome sets. “Some botanists have wondered if polyploids have novel features that allow them to survive environmental change or colonize new habitats,” says Assistant Professor Justin Ramsey. “But this idea had not been rigorously tested.” Forcing duplication on wild plants (instead of the centuries old practice of forcing it on tame ones) produced quick results, as it does in tame ones: Ramsey compared the performance of the transplanted yarrows and found that the Read More ›

For one thing, “The end is far” is “science^TM,” not “religion^TM.”

Here, The Atlantic‘s Graeme Wood reports on “What will happen to us?: Forecasters tackle the extremely deep future” (Boston Globe, May 1, 2011), featuring recent Templeton winner Martin Rees and others on deep and distant futures, the theory being that it is now possible to be much more certain of the distant future than in the past:

The community of thinkers on distant-future questions stretches across disciplinary bounds, with the primary uniting trait a willingness to think about the future as a topic for objective study, rather than a space for idle speculation or science fictional reverie. They include theoretical cosmologists like Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology, who recently wrote a book about time, and nonacademic technology mavens like Ray Kurzweil, the precocious inventor and theorist. What binds this group together is that they are not, says Bostrom, “just trying to tell an interesting story.” Instead, they aim for precision. In its fundamentals, Carroll points out, the universe is a “relatively simple system,” compared, say, to a chaotic system like a human body — and thus “predicting the future is actually a feasible task,” even “for ridiculously long time periods.”

Past is past now …  Read More ›

From ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011),we learn more about “if it ain’t broke, don’t …” Horsetail grass decidedly ain’t broke: “Horsetail Plant Developed Successful Set of Tools for Extreme Environments – For Millions of Years” The authors discovered that in many ways the morphology and anatomy of this fossilized Equisetum is indistinguishable from those of species living today in two subgenera, Equisetum and Hippochaete. For example, it was evergreen, grew upright in a single straight stem, and had a double endodermis. Yet, there were some features that did not fit with any extant or fossil species of Equisetum — thus justifying the erection of a new species: Equisetum thermale.”Equisetum thermale appears to be the oldest record of the genus Equisetum and Read More ›

Agnostic Warwick U sociologist Steve Fuller asks some questions in Dissent from Descent,

Modern evolutionary theory, as we have seen in these pages, is subject to vagaries of interpretation just as fundamental as those that ultimately floored astrology. Here is a list:

1. Is the overall process of evolution directed or undirected- Lamarckian or Darwinian? If we deliver a mixed verdict, then when and where does the directed yield to the undirected? Read More ›

Darwin’s argument contains so many questionable assumptions, starting with his views about God, that it cannot be evaluated strictly as a work of hard science. It is not rigorously empirical in the way Mendel’s “Experiments in Plant Hybridization” is. To pick up Mendel’s concise and carefully reasoned paper after reading the circular and often cloudy arguments of the Origin is to enter a different realm of thought. Unlike Mendel’s, Darwin’s case depends on extra-scientific suppositions, the first of which is that the explanation of all natural phenomena is strictly material. – Catholic writer George Sim Johnston: Did Darwin Get It right?: Catholics and the Theory of Evolution (Our Sunday Visitor. P. 23) Has anyone ever said that they “believe in” Read More ›

An unknown poet’s riff on “junk DNA”, arrived by post at the top secret UD bunker in an undisclosed, unimaginable location:

(Would go well to tune of “Way Up on Old Smoky” – here. Try it! )

On top of our genome
All covered with cash,
I see BioLogos
And they’re talkin’ trash. Read More ›

No, we don’t know why, but neither does this person. Not short of an opinion about Uncommon Descent, though:

In typical fashion, Uncommon Descent are hoping for the worst: The “Darwinism” killed his faith. (Must. Control. Rage. Must not stoop to their level…) Let’s hope their just being despicable and there’s nothing to their speculation other than malice. Giberson is a good man and we need him in this fight.

Hard to say why “public theology” student Arni Zachariassen, who is supposed to favour “Thoughtful Theological Reflection” (blog’s title), should be in a barely controlled rage. Did Uncommon Descenters say that Darwinism had killed Giberson’s faith? The consensus here is that he was “a bridge too far” for – that is, not a good fit with – the BioLogos organization.

(Note: – AZ has since clarified his position. See this comment.)

Put another way: Giberson was way better for us than for them. Read More ›