Christian Darwinism

New atheist and PhD neuroscientist Sam Harris on theistic evolutionist John Polkinghorne:

… here is Polkinghorne describing the physics of the coming resurrection of the dead:

If we regard human beings as psychosomatic unities, as I believe both the Bible and contemporary experience of the intimate connection between mind and brain encourage us to do, then the soul will have to be understood in an Aristotelian sense as the “form,” or information-bearing pattern, of the body. Though this pattern is dissolved at death it seems perfectly rational to believe that it will be remembered by God and reconstituted in a divine act of resurrection. Read More ›

At HuffPost, Jonathan Dudley (“a seminary graduate now training to be a medical scientist”) allows us to know that “Christian Faith Requires Accepting Evolution” (06/18/11), because (among other things)

Many think the widespread rejection of evolution doesn’t really matter. Evolution is about what happened in the past, the argument goes, so rejecting it doesn’t have an impact on policies we make today. And aside from school curricula, they may be right.But the belief that scientists can discover truth, and that, once sufficiently debated, challenged and modified, it should be accepted even if it creates tensions for familiar belief systems, has an obvious impact on decisions that are made everyday. And it is that belief Christians reject when they reject evolution.

In doing so, they’ve not only led America astray on questions ranging from the value of stem cell research to the etiology of homosexuality to the causes of global warming. They’ve also abandoned a central commitment of orthodox Christianity. Read More ›

Steve Fuller, reviewing Conor Cunningham’s Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong (Eerdmans, 2011) for Times Higher (24 March 2011), comments,

Let me start by conceding the central, most controversial thesis argued in this book: that neo-creationism and ultra-Darwinism are opposing offshoots of the same modernist root. Both read the Bible literally and take nature itself to possess a crackable code. Neither wishes science and theology to exist in separate spheres. To be sure, William Dembski and Richard Dawkins, say, differ radically on what should happen once the two are brought together: one infers natural theology, the other atheistic naturalism. These are the terms on which the ongoing “Darwin wars” are fought.My disagreement starts with the suggestion in the subtitle that Read More ›

Steno tells us that Jay Richards’ (ed) God and Evolution won World Magazine’s Book of the Year (American), as did Norman Nevin’s (ed) Should Christians Embrace Evolution (British).

Don’t miss Marvin Olasky’s thoughtful discussion of why these two books deserved to lead. First, because

Think about the three main intellectual influencers of the 20th century: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin. Two of the three—Freud and Marx—have lost most of their influence. The exception is Darwin. Two years ago his millions of fans celebrated the bicentennial of his birth, which was also the 150th anniversary of his famous book On the Origins of Species.He highlights the role of the Templeton Foundation in fronting Christian Darwinism, which most Christians actually do not and cannot accept.

Or, as I like to say, “Your church would make a nice little block of condos, but why are you giving it money in the mean time? Shouldn’t you be buying shares?” Read More ›

Here.

The BioLogos crowd seems to have a hard time critiquing intelligent design without casting aspersions on the character and motives of those with whom they disagree.

Darrel Falk, after briefly granting in the video that intelligent design proponents are motivated by “wonderful reasons,” turns right around and sticks in the stiletto. What’s the real reason intelligent design proponents won’t admit they are wrong, wrong, WRONG? Well, according to Falk, ID proponents won’t admit they have been refuted because “everybody is embarrassed because they have invested so much money, they have invested so much personal ideology, reputation, even ego… It’s pretty hard to say, ‘I guess I was wrong.'”  Sean Carroll offers a similar assessment for why ID scholars won’t shut up despite being scientifically bankrupt in his view: “So for, you know, PR reasons, or political reasons, or whatever it might be, they keep talking.” Read More ›

One of the most common objections to design thought is the idea that it is about the improper injection of the alien  supernatural into the world of science. (That is itself based on a strawman misrepresentation of design thought, as was addressed here a few days ago.)

However, there is an underlying root, a common distortion of the origins of modern science, which Nancy Pearcey rebutted in a  2005 sleeper article as headlined, that deserves a UD post of its own.

Let’s clip the article:

Read More ›

Interesting timing if you consider the recent, controversial “simian Adam and Eve” article in Christianity Today (June 2011),which featured him: In the same quarter, process theologian Karl Giberson left from the Christian Darwinist think tank BioLogos and resigned from his teaching position at Eastern Nazarene (Boston). Neither move appears to have been announced. BioLogos issued a statement May 16, but this was some time after Darwinist blogger Jerry Coyne had noted Giberson’s disappearance from BioLogos (May 3, 2011).

Rumours certainly swirled, with Coyne suggesting “big trouble at BioLogos,” and wishing “good riddance to their science-polluting ways!” Another rumour drafted Uncommon Descent into the “despicable” role of wicked glee, for which there was no shred of evidence. Indeed, we’d always thought that Jerry’s “Uncle Karl” was better for us than for BioLogos …  after all, Southern Baptist point man Al Mohler had weeks earlier accused Giberson of “throwing the Bible under the bus.”

Giberson confirmed for us independently (June 4 2011) that, while writing books, he is looking for another position. Digging a bit, we also find that there has been some ferment in Giberson’s religious denomination, around the usual issues of the Word of God vs. the word of mod, and around him specifically. Some people are rejoicing at his departure: Read More ›

… chimes in with them as they were portrayed in the recent article in Christianity Today (June 2011).

Maybe they aren’t really like that, to judge from Falk’s recent sponge over.

But Ruse is. At Huffpo, he says: Read More ›

Harris’s view is interesting, in the light of the recent Christianity Today cover story on the Christian Darwinists of the BioLogos institute, which Collins founded: Read More ›

The founder of “Evolutionary Christianity” writes, There is a world of difference between a pre-evolutionary and an evolutionary understanding of “biblical inerrancy.” With a God-glorifying understanding of deep times, one need not make an idol of human words as a carrier of God’s Word. Rather, from an emergent perspective, we can see that the Bible accurately reveals how the authors and editors of the books of scripture understood themselves, their world, and the nature of Ultimate Reality two or three thousand years ago. Those understandings include many powerful insights we can use today, woven in amongst much that is primarily historical or symbolic value, and even some components that modern sensibilities rightly find morally offensive. It is up to us Read More ›

It would be useful to know, in light of the recent Christianity Today cover story on Christian Darwinism in general and Francis’ Collins’s BioLogosin particular. Here, for example, in Karl Giberson and Francis Collins’s The Language of Science and Faith, they inform us,

We suggest that Darwin’s theory of evolution, now that it has been confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt by science, offers the sane sort of help in understanding the Genesis creation story as Galileo’s work helped his generation to better understand the psalmist’s references to the mobility of the earth. (p. 89)

Are the following not reasonable doubt? Read More ›

Noticing what Steno did here, that animal rights activist philosopher Peter Singer is moving toward the idea that morality has an objective basis, anti-ID Catholic philosopher Ed Feser responds. Noting that Singer is looking for an “intuitive” basis for morality, he writes,

Moral intuitions track objective moral truth in only a very rough, general, and mutable way. Practically they are useful – that is why nature put them into us – and they might provide a useful heuristic when philosophically investigating this or that specific moral question. But intuition does not ground moral truth, it is not an infallible guide to moral truth, and it should never form the basis of a philosophical argument for a controversial moral position.

But that won’t work. Read More ›

In “Going ape: Ultraviolence and our primate cousins,” New Scientist’s News Editor, Rowan Hooper, reviewing a book on ape violence, riffs,

Josephine Head, also of the Max Planck Institute, describes how she tracked a trail of blood from where chimps had been vocalising loudly the night before, and made a horrible discovery: the spread-eagled body of an adult male chimp, his face battered and bruised, throat torn open and intestines dragged out. Read More ›

Some were surprised when I linked Christianity Today’s new semi-simian Adam and Eve with involuntary euthanasia. But the link is much more direct than some suppose.

There is, first, the whole, huge question of adjusting our thinking from the idea that we are descended from Adam and Eve to the idea that we are ascended from them. That is essentially a different religion from Christianity, and I was indeed surprised that Christianity Today failed to observe the fact. Would they have given over their pages to the proposition that perhaps Christians should be Buddhists? It would make more sense. Buddhism is not a dishonorable creed; far from it. Christians don’t think that Buddhism reflects ultimate reality. But there is world of difference between, say, Buddhism and Darwinism. Darwinism not only doesn’t reflect ultimate reality, it defaces it.

But here I want to focus on the argument for euthanasia. It was succinctly captured in the title of a movie some years back: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

I rarely meet a convinced Darwinist who does not support euthanasia (and abortion, and human embryonic stem cell research).

I rarely meet Read More ›

Yes, this, one, on why there is no Adam or Eve. Just ancestral primates who happened to become us  (and a key editor is mad at me (?) for complaining about the new spin.)

Meanwhile, Canadian Christian Darwinist Denis Lamoureux pffftt!! At BioLogos. No, really.

Here’s president Darrel Falk:

In general, our experience has been that theologians are in one of two camps. Either they work within the framework of a non-historical Adam and Eve or they believe the scientific conclusions will eventually prove to be deeply flawed and humans were not created through an evolutionary process after all.

Good strategy that. Backtrack after the damage is done.

Sources tell me Lamoureux wasn’t having any of that reasonable doubt stuff. Can’t reproduce what he wrote, as it has been sponged. Read More ›