Christian Darwinism

Over at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne says that Karl Giberson has left Christian Darwinist site BioLogos:

I am informed that Karl Giberson, formerly Executive Vice President of The BioLogos Foundation, has left the organization. He has disappeared from their posted list of “team members,” hasn’t yet been replaced, and confirmed to me by email that he resigned.

Sources speculate that for a site that tried to provide a bridge for Christians to cross over to Darwinism, Giberson was a bridge too far: Read More ›

Here’s Warwick U’s Steve Fuller, author of Dissent over Descent (2008) on Francis Collins’s curious affection for C.S. Lewis and other thinkers who assumed the reality of the mind, while believing just about anything else that Darwinism throws through the mailbox: Theistic evolutionists … Simply take what Collins calls “the existence of the moral law and the universal longing for God” as a feature of human nature that is entrenched enough to be self-validating. But is their dismissal anything more than an arbitrary theological intervention? If humans are indeed, as the Darwinists say, just on among many species, susceptible to the same general tendencies that can be studied in the some general terms, then findings derived from methods deemed appropriate Read More ›

Why are they

?? fronting Darwinism to Christians “You can have Jesus and Darwin too”, apparently unaware of the fact that many once-virtuous, still faithful evolutionists  are checking out of Darwinism into the great unknown, due to evidence? Why doesn’t the evidence that Darwinian mechanism probably doesn’t work as  advertised mean anything?

= Why do Christians need to be the last people on the planet to believe in and defend the big Darwindunit? Read More ›

Warwick U’s Steve Fuller, author of Dissent over Descent (2008):

Our first witness is the poster boy Francis Collins, the born-again Christian who led the US National Institutes of Health’s drive to map the human genome. His recent bestseller, The Language of God, recounts how his bohemian upbringing resulted in a spiritual emptiness that only came to be filled upon reading C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity as a graduate student in biochemistry. This small fact is telling. Lewis, a colleague of J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford, is often recommended to open-minded people to ease them into the Christian faith. Read More ›

I was invited to review Karl Giberson and Francis Collins’ newest book, THE LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE AND FAITH, at patheos.com. Below are the first few paragraphs as well as a link to the entire review. —————————– BioLogos and Theistic Evolution: Selling the Product “There’s nothing wrong with selling one’s ideas. But it needs to be done honestly, and that’s just what I don’t find in this book.” By William A. Dembski, April 27, 2011 Editor’s Note: The following is the first piece in a four-part conversation between Dr. William Dembski and Dr. Karl Giberson, concerning Giberson and Francis Collins’ new book, The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions. Find more resources and discussion surrounding the book Read More ›

Stopped counting.

Rev. Michael Dowd, in his own words a “religious naturalist” andalso “evolutionary Christian mystic naturalist” wants us to know about “Evolutionary Christianity”:

FEATURING MANY OF TODAY’S MOST INSPIRING CHRISTIAN LEADERS AND ESTEEMED SCIENTISTS—INCLUDING NOBEL LAUREATES, TEMPLETON PRIZE-WINNERS, AND LUMINARIES FROM NEARLY EVERY DENOMINATION.
HOST: Rev. Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution, which was endorsed by 6 Nobel Prize-winning scientists and religious leaders across the spectrum.

On the one hand:

Episode 3: Denis Lamoureux – “Beyond the Evolution vs. Creation Debate”Denis Lamoureux, a leading evangelical contributor to the public understanding of evolution, is a professor of science and religion at the University of Alberta. He is a council member of the Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation, and author of I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution.

– How the “intelligent design” movement dishonors God and distorts science
– Why and how the church is sometimes its own worst enemy, and what to do about it
– How evolution can strengthen and deepen conservative, Bible-centered faith

On the other hand: Read More ›

Here, commenter bornagain77 notes, in response to a discussion of a one- or two-dimensional universe (the latter recently proposed by a  physicist  for our own early universe),

Though I have severe reservations about this ‘theory’, I think the ‘flatlander’ example you alluded to is excellent for illustrating the ‘higher dimensional’ nature of the spiritual realm …

Indeed. Consider Giberson and Collins’ comment on Dembski’s work:

It is abundantly clear that death and suffering had been present for literally billions of years before the appearance of humans. So how could  human sin be responsible for this? This claim collapses and can only be rescued by desperate moves, like the claim that later events can  cause earlier ones. Surprisingly, there are those so eager to make human sin the explanation for all the evils of natural history that they make  this paradoxical claim. William Dembski, for example, make this argument, in The End of Christianity. – Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins, The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions (InterVarsity Press, 2011), pp. 131-32.

A lot comes down to how one thinks about God. Read More ›

(

Apologies, Reb.)

In “The Language of Science and Faith,” Giberson (soon to be in an online dialogue with Bill Dembski) and Collins argue that God has given nature “freedom”: This is their proposed solution to the problem of evil in nature:

When God, as a loving Creator, withdraws from complete sovereign control over his creatures and grants them freedom, this means – in ways often difficult to understand – that those creatures can now act independently of God. They are free to not be robotic automatons, puppets or trained attack dogs. In the case of the Holocaust – the classic example of human evil – we always do exactly what Dembski says we never do: we shift the responsibility for that evil from God to the Nazis. Such reflections have long characterized Christian thinking about the problem of evi. All we need to do now is enlarge this general concept to include the sorts of things that nature is doing on its own.Not all Christians are comfortable with the idea that nature has freedom, of course. …

Actually, not all Christians can even make rational sense of the these assertions. Read More ›

At CNN, we are informed by Biologos vice prez Karl Giberson that a busted Vit C gene in humans, chimps, orangutans, etc., is

… but one of many, many evidences that support the truth of evolution – that make it a “sacred fact” that Christians must embrace in the name of truth. And they should embrace this truth with enthusiasm, for this is the world that God created.

Here’s my problem (Toronto-based Canuck hack): I dunno.

First, the amount of sheer nonsense talked in the name of evolution is appalling, and even a founder of the discipline of evolutionary psychology has just abandoned his big theory (none too soon, I would say).

Second, practically no one who is not on autopilot believes Darwinism any more, and that is the principal theory of evolution. It is the only theory of evolution our culture recognizes, the one courts enforce, for which taxes are collected, on behalf of which inquisitors snoop, sneak, snipe, and snitch.

If all this is “sacred”, everyone who could benefit civilization must prefer the profane. And, historically, everyone who has benefited civilization has, under these circumstances, preferred the profane. That’s why we keep running into non-Darwinian atheists.

For a traditional believer in any type of ethical monotheism, the logic is simple: Read More ›

In “Jesus would believe in evolution and so should you” (CNN, April 10, 2011) Christian Darwinist Karl Giberson, BioLogos vice-prez, enlightens: Science is not a sinister enterprise aimed at destroying faith. It’s an honest exploration of the wonderful world that God created. We are often asked to think about what Jesus would do, if he lived among us today. Who would Jesus vote for? What car would he drive? To these questions we should add “What would Jesus believe about origins?” And the answer? Jesus would believe evolution, of course. He cares for the Truth. Here’s Southern Baptist seminary prez Albert Mohler’s response.

Southern Baptist seminary prez Al Mohler’s response (April 19, 2011) to Giberson’s CNN Belief blog, “Jesus would believe in evolution and so should you” (April 10, 2011) is here:

… he throws the Bible under the bus. In language hauntingly reminiscent of Reverend Clarence Arthur Wilmot [novelist John Updike’s classic liberal reverend], Professor Giberson describes the human authors of the Old Testament as “ancient and uncomprehending scribes.”In his new book, The Language of Science and Faith:, written with Francis S. Collins, readers will find this strange paragraph: Read More ›

Well, I seem to have done it again, inspiring much debate concerning the philosophical and theological implications of materialistic Darwinism versus design and theism. Disclosure: I am a former militant, Dawkins-style atheist, but now one of those dreadful born-again Christians who attends a semi-charismatic church every Sunday, plays keyboards in the praise band with much joy and fulfillment, and is actively engaged in Christian apologetics. ID was a major factor in my conversion, but it was by no means the only one. I earn my living as a software engineer in aerospace R&D. My professional specialties include designing guidance, navigation and control software for precision-guided airdrop systems, and finite-element analysis of nonlinear dynamic systems. One my hobbies for many years Read More ›

After a laundry list of stuff in nature that is bad for humans (so?), we are told, “We must not, of course, ascribe the origin of these sinister features of the natural world to God.” (P. 133). Instead, Science has shown with remarkable clarity that nature has built-in creative powers. (P. 134) But if nature exists by the will of God, how exactly does that get God off the hook? (quotations from: Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins, The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions (InterVarsity Press, 2011.)

… we hope readers will agree with us that the relevant part of our origins is not the story of how we acquired the specific details of our body plan – ten fingers, two ears, one nose – or how we lack a marsupial pouch to carry our newborns, or why potty-training takes so long. Nothing about these details is critical to what makes us human. Our humanness is embedded more holistically in our less tangible aspects and could certainly be embodied in creatures that looked nothing like us. [ … ] Many may find this thought unsettling and strangely at odds with their understanding of creation, which celebrates that God created us “in his image.”We suggest that this is Read More ›

… as the God of the Gaps. Has anyone ever noted an ID theorist to use the term “gaps”, to support an argument for apparent design? Can anyone attest that Collins has ever read an actual ID theoretic work? See also here and here where Collins appears to have backed away from an earlier claim that so-called “junk DNA” proves that there is no design in life.