theistic evolution

Karsten Pultz, author of a book on intelligent design in nature (in Danish) Exit Evolution, writes to comment on this recent exchange at ENST between Doug Axe, ID theorist and author of Undeniable, and Hans Vodder, theistic evolutionist, at ENST : In my [Axe’s] previous response to Hans, I tried to show why all attempts to explain life as something accidental require unreasonable appeals to coincidence. Biologists have been charmed into thinking that natural selection demystifies would-be miracles by performing them a bit at a time, but brilliant invention is actually no less miraculous in slow motion. Hans has responded with these points: First, as God can “make” things in a variety of ways, including ways that involve natural processes, I Read More ›

From Nathan Muse at Apologetics 315, a review of Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, It should be noted that the scientific critiques in this volume are not new. The beauty of this project is distilling them into one volume. Even if some readers will not be completely convinced by the scientific critique in these chapters, the reader is given much food for thought. At the very least, a byproduct of this section is showing that the scientific position of TE suffers from being ill-defined and nebulous. There is no agreed upon scope of the evolutionary process and no clear definition of the term itself. Indeed, some have criticized this volume’s definition of TE as not being accurate. Read More ›

It’s risky. The church splitter (fundamentalism) vs. the church closer (theistic evolution). William Lane Craig writes: Two challenges to this doctrine arise from modern science, one fairly old and the other very recent. … I am currently exploring the genetic evidence that is said to rule out an original pair of modern humans. In talking with genetic scientists, I’ve found that there is enormous confusion about this question today. Popularizers have misrepresented the arguments, thereby inviting misguided responses. The issues are very technical and difficult to understand. I’m just beginning to get my feet wet and don’t want to misrepresent the science. I want to know how firm the evidence is and what it would cost intellectually to maintain the Read More ›

Last November, Crossways published a collection of essays, Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique, which is critical of that tendency in theology. Theistic evolutionist Denis O. Lamoureux published a review of the book in American Scientific Affiliation’s Perspectives, “Intelligent Design Theory: The God of the Gaps Rooted in Concordism,” of which this excerpt gives some sense: But the root of ID Theory has now been publically revealed. About one-quarter of Theistic Evolution is a strident defense of a concordist hermeneutic, which ultimately undergirds this antievolutionary God-of-the-gaps view of origins. Evidence of the theological underpinnings of ID Theory is demonstrated by the inclusion in this book of a seven-page scripture index that cites over 1,500 Bible verses. [Note: The Read More ›

From Evolution News: InterVarsity Press publishes some great books and used to be a place to which you could reliably turn for thoughtful, well-researched commentary on evolution and intelligent design. They still have excellent titles on the backlist, including Intelligent Design Uncensored and Darwin on Trial. But in 2016, IVP announced a “partnership with the BioLogos Foundation” that seemed to bring with it a whole new attitude. … Now from InterVarsity there comes along a new book, Mere Science and Christian Faith: Bridging the Divide with Emerging Adults, by BioLogos Advisory Council member Greg Cootsona. While not altogether a surprise, it’s disappointing to report that the book’s case for theistic evolution and its critique of intelligent design, aimed at younger Read More ›

At his blog: Here is the PR / spin definition of theistic evolution: Evolutionary creation is “the view that all life on earth came about by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent. Evolution is a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes in creation.” This view, also called theistic evolution, has been around since the late nineteenth century, and BioLogos promotes it today in a variety of religious and educational settings. And here is the no-spin definition of theistic evolution: As Dr. Stephen Meyer explains it, the central issue dividing Bio-Logos writers from intelligent design theorists is BioLogos’s commitment to methodological naturalism (MN), which is not a scientific theory or empirical finding, but an arbitrary rule excluding Read More ›

Hey, springtime in Philadelphia. Can you get your institution to pay? 😉 From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News and Science Today: Update: The deadline to register for this event is Monday, April 2. We strongly advise registering now to reserve your place. As philosophy, theology, and sociology, theistic evolution is a fascinating and extremely influential phenomenon. Less so as science, since on that score it’s basically a rebranding of traditional evolution for a religious audience. Yet the rebranding effort itself carries many lessons with it. One of the remarkable things about theistic evolution is how resistant it is to counterarguments. Evolution News has spent weeks, concluding today, rebutting a book by prominent BioLogos author Dennis Venema, Adam and the Genome. Yet it would be entirely Read More ›

From Peggy Fletcher Stack at Salt Lake City Tribune: Mormons should be as friendly to evolution as any people on Earth, a Brigham Young University biologist unequivocally declared this week. They believe in “eternal progression,” for example, and that the universe was organized from pre-existing matter, Steven L. Peck told a packed audience Thursday on the Utah Valley University campus. Those are ideas embraced by evolutionary biologists, too. Hmmm. Typical Mormons probably don’t believe what 78% of evolutionary biologists believe: No God and no free will. Could that matter? There certainly are surprises in the development of complex structures, he said. “Things that occur on one level — like DNA mutations — are truly random. And they can bubble up Read More ›

Theology can lead us to some weird places. From Evolution News and Science Today, in a continuing series on Adam and the Genome, As if on cue, science news today reports a remarkable discovery: cave art in Spain from upwards of 64,000 years ago, apparently by Neanderthals. The Wall Street Journal aptly summarizes the takeaway: Neanderthals, once considered the low-brows of human evolution, may have been among the world’s first artists, creating cave paintings long before modern humanity arrived on the scene… “Once considered”? This is timely because in the book Adam and the Genome, which we’ve been reviewing here, theistic evolutionist and biologist Dennis Venema discusses DNA that has been extracted from fossils of extinct members of the genus Read More ›

From Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media, in support of Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design , including evolutionary creation: Deborah Haarsma, president of BioLogos, argued that the scientific theory of evolution is compatible with biblical creation. She made a clear distinction between Darwinistic evolutionism — which uses evolution to disprove God — and the scientific theory, which does not necessarily have theological implications. “Thus, evolution is not a worldview in opposition to God but a natural mechanism by which God providentially achieves his purposes,” Haarsma wrote. She presented the theory of accommodationism — that God spoke in scripture in a way that the Jews and Christians would understand at the time. God has revealed Himself in two books: Read More ›

They withered under study. There’s been a lively discussion between geneticists Dennis Venema and Richard Buggs and about whether the human race must have had more than one pair of ancestors (Venema yes, Buggs no). From Evolution News and Science Today: Earlier, we saw that evolutionary genomicist Richard Buggs has been engaged in a dialogue with Venema about the latter’s arguments against a short bottleneck of two individuals in human history. Buggs is skeptical that methods of measuring human genetic diversity cited by Venema can adequately test such an “Adam and Eve” hypothesis. Buggs’s initial email to Venema thus concluded, “I would encourage you to step back a bit from the strong claims you are making that a two person bottleneck Read More ›

From Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media, on a new book, Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (J. B.Stump, ed), Opponents of intelligent design (ID) usually dismiss the theory as unscientific, an attempt at smuggling religion into science through a back door. They slam it as a “god of the gaps” argument — inserting God into questions where science has not yet found a persuasive answer. In a new book, former geophysicist and author Stephen C. Meyer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, explained why intelligent design is not a “god of the gaps” argument, but a viable scientific theory. “The theory of intelligent design, unlike creationism, is not based upon the Bible,” Meyer wrote in Four Views Read More ›

At Evolution News & Science Today, various reflections are offered on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Adam and the Genome: Genomic science indicates that humans descend not from an individual pair but from a large population. What does this mean for the basic claim of many Christians: that humans descend from Adam and Eve? Leading evangelical geneticist Dennis Venema and popular New Testament scholar Scot McKnight combine their expertise to offer informed guidance and answers to questions pertaining to evolution, genomic science, and the historical Adam. (jacket copy) From ENST: Much of Dennis Venema’s Adam and the Genome Isn’t About Adam and the Genome: While Discovery Institute takes no view on Adam and Eve, the book does offer an opportunity Read More ›

Approx noon EST, Theistic Evolution: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism #13 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Apologetics #46 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Theology From the editorial reviews: — “This volume fills a wide and expanding gap for Christians who continue to struggle with the relationship of evangelical Christianity to the claims of science. Specifically, for those who have rightly rejected the claims of unguided evolution, this book takes on the similar challenge of the possibility of theistic evolution. Scholarly, informative, well-researched, and well-argued, this will be the best place to begin to ferret out reasons for conflict among Christians who take science seriously. I highly recommend this resource.” —K. Scott Oliphint, professor of apologetics and Read More ›

Wayne Rossiter, author of Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God, draws our attention to this BioLogos post by British evangelical writer and editor Robin Parry: God is More Than an Intelligent Designer The problem with Intelligent Design (ID) is its tendency to look for God (or simply a “designer”) in the gaps of scientific explanations. So-called irreducible complexity, for instance, is seen as evidence of this “designer” because science cannot (in principle, we are told) explain it in terms of natural processes. But if future science did actually explain any alleged instances of irreducible complexity, then such instances would cease to be evidence of the “designer”. The problem here is that the “designer”—which almost every ID advocate Read More ›