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Christian Darwinism

Ultra-In mag New Yorker: “For our nation and our species, the future depends” on Francis Collins’s success…

One way of looking at it: In light of the appalling treatment of infants under Collins’s regime, he is just the sort of individual that the New Yorker would want to represent evangelical Christians — or any other group that its staff despise. Read More ›

Christian Darwinists must now backtrack re Adam and Eve

Casey Luskin: "When I was reading the rhetoric used by evangelical elites who advocated abandoning a historical Adam and Eve, I was struck by how much of it seemed driven by fear — fear of looking foolish before the world because you challenged evolution and were shown to be wrong." Maybe being right, sticking with their tradition, would have been a bigger problem for them. Read More ›

John West on C.S. Lewis (who was not really a “theistic evolutionist” as the term is understood today)

West: "Indeed, [Ken] Miller insists that 'mankind’s appearance on this planet was not preordained, that we are here… as an afterthought, a minor detail, a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out.'" Needless to say, Lewis did not subscribe to anything similar to this and might not have recognized it as Christian. Read More ›

John West on the tragedy of Francis Collins’s model of science and faith

If Collins stands for “theistic evolution,” reading about it has made some of us feel better about atheistic evolution. At least the atheistic evolutionists don’t pretend that they think human beings have intrinsic value. You know where you are with them. Read More ›

Ten (or so) Anti-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

I have posted the second video in my two part book recommendation series on the YouTube channel. In the previous video I highlighted many books that argue for intelligent design. My view is that proponents of design should face the strongest criticisms possible, and not be afraid of doing so. In line with this philosophy, in this video I talk about just a handful of the many books that attempt to refute ID. Again, I would be interested to know what others think are the best books that attempt to show ID is wrong. Ten (or so) Anti-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

Frank Turek looks at Scientism of the gaps

To summarize Scientism of the Gaps: No mountain too high, no river so wide that sheer chaos cannot contrive to create an inextricably interlinked system that seamlessly navigates it. Even though chaos never works that way in your own life, you must believe — if you are really science-friendly — that it works that way at the foundation of all of life, the entire universe and all that. Read More ›

Francis Collins finally awarded the Templeton Prize

He was always very much their sort of guy; one wonders what took them so long. It seems as though Templeton is returning to an earlier approach here. Collins is definitely a God Squad type, having held the right positions. There was a middle period when some of their awards gave pause for thought Read More ›

Whatever happened to BioLogos (and “Christian evolutionism” in general)?

Maybe BioLogos is more interested in climate change now. National Center for Science Education appears to have gone the same route. A reasonable choice for both, given how Darwinism is faring. Read More ›

Design Disquisitions: A Dialogue Between Peter S. Williams & Denis Alexander

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Dictionary of Christianity and science features ID contributors

… talking about ID. From Zondervan Academic: We are now just several weeks away from the release of the Dictionary of Christianity and Science. We have been encouraged by the response so far—it has occupied the #1 New Release spot on Amazon in the category of Christian Bible Dictionaries & Encyclopedias for much of the past few months. More. Look for entries from Bill Dembski, Steve Meyer, Ann Gauger, Bruce Gordon, Michael Flannery, Mike Keas, Paul Nelson, Wayne Rossiter, Angus Menuge, Guillermo Gonzalez, Michael Egnor, Cornelius Hunter, Rob Sheldon, Jonathan McLatchie, etc. Just think: Apparently, it is actually a reference work. It can tell you what is happening in these areas in newsmakers’ own words. At US$59.99, it is a Read More ›

Design Disquisitions: How/Why I Became a Design Advocate

One of the main pages on my new blog has a brief account of my journey towards accepting ID. I’ve taken a few different stances on the biological origins question in the past so it’s been a bumpy ride for me. This article is mainly autobiographical, but it gives me a chance to lay my cards on the table so I don’t have assumptions made about me and so readers know roughly where I’m coming from. Here’s a snippet: So, how and why did I become an intelligent design advocate? It’s a long(ish) story… I am, perhaps unsurprisingly, a Christian. I was raised in a Christian home and, with the exception of a period of ephemeral teenage agnosticism, I have Read More ›

BioLogos encounters Ark Encounter

BioLogos exists to reconcile Christians to evolution, which today seems to mainly mean Darwinism (“modern science” ). From their prez Deborah Haarsma: When people accept the AiG narrative that these scientific conclusions are essential to Christianity, then their faith is often shaken when they encounter the incredible explanatory power of modern science. In fact, we hear from individuals on a daily basis who have experienced a deep crisis of faith when their young-earth creationist beliefs were exposed as scientifically (and biblically) weak. While we are grateful that BioLogos has helped recover and strengthen the faith of these Christians, we mourn the fact that countless others have drifted away from the faith. Young-earth creationist teaching is causing unnecessary harm to the Read More ›

God of the Gaps and ID

From “Intelligent Design: a Theological and Philosophical Analysis” by Erkki Vesa Rope Kojonen the Journal of Analytic Theology Abstract: “The “God of the gaps” critique is one of the most common arguments against design arguments in biology, but is also increasingly used as a critique of other natural theological arguments. In this paper, I analyze four different critiques of God of the gaps arguments and explore the relationship between gaps arguments and similar limit arguments. I conclude that the critique of the God of the gaps is substantially weaker than is commonly assumed, and dismissing ID́s biological arguments should rather be based on criticizing the premises of these arguments.” Full text. Good luck with that. The main purpose of God Read More ›

Study: Christians for Darwin are mere dogmatists

Closing off our religion coverage for the week (a bit late), we hear from Filthy Monkey Men (an evolutionary anthropology blog by a Liverpool Student with Attitude): Lots of religious people accept evolution, but they typically only do so because they’re following religious dogma, not because they understand the subject So some researchers decided to test this hypothesis by taking trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum. There they conducted a survey, identifying visitors’ knowledge of evolution, their acceptance of the theory and their religious denomination. The goal being to identify whether or not religious denomination was correlated with knowledge and acceptance of evolution; indicating that some groups were indeed fostering scientific understanding. And as you might expect they found a Read More ›