theistic evolution

Cleaning out the in tray here, and came across this from science writer John Farrell, a while back, at Forbes, on evangelicals (BioLogos types) “coming out” for Darwin in a recent book: While I appreciate the candor in There is more to the challenge of evolution than just accepting the age of the universe and that all species, including humans, are deeply related. … The way the world came to be has to say something about the character of its creator, according to many theologians.many of these essays, the book could have cut even closer to the bone. And how does “evolution” portray the world? As Farrell quotes contributor Schneider, Schneider, in particular, lays out this challenge: worth quoting from an Read More ›

Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, author of In the Shadow of Oz, offers a response to a claim by Washington University (St. Louis) Joshua Swamidass that design in nature cannot be demonstrated (here.): He [Swamidass], like most others, chooses willfully to equivocate on the term and repeatedly move the goal posts. Goalposts? Who told Rossiter there were goalposts? Swamidass writes, “Rather, if specific mechanisms of evolution are true, they make testable predictions about how biological systems behave today. We can test these predictions in biological systems experimentally, and there is an immense body of work that does just this, finding that predictions from some mechanisms are wrong (e.g. neo-Darwinian positive-selection dominated change) and of others are correct (e.g. neutral Read More ›

Here. MCDOWELL: What do you consider some of the greatest successes, and also challenges, in the ID movement? DEMBSKI Unlike creationism, with which it is often conflated, intelligent design shifts the discussion of biological origins from a religion vs. science controversy to a science vs. science controversy. This is a success, even if ID’s critics continue to try to claim that it is religion in scientific garb. There are really two strands to ID’s scientific program. There’s the pure information-theoretic side, as represented by the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, and then there’s the molecular biology research side, as represented by the Biologic Institute and its journal Bio-Complexity.[ii] We continue to push the research frontiers forward on both sides. The biggest challenge Read More ›

Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, author of In the Shadow of Oz, offers some thoughts on Templeton’s bad investment, BioLogos (theistic evolution): Of particular importance is the title of the blog: Why Christians Don’t Need to Be Threatened by Evolution. “For too long Christians in North America have thought the Bible was in conflict with biological evolution. Yet many orthodox Christian theologians of the nineteenth century (including Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield) saw no conflict in principle.” First, that depends on what you mean by evolution. All brands of Christianity incorporate some theory of diversification and speciation that we might call biological evolution. But, if by “evolution” we mean the Darwinian mechanism as scientists understand it, with Read More ›

Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, author of In the Shadow of Oz, notes this podcast he did: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God (July 22, 2016) More. Stand to Reason trains Christians to think more clearly about their faith and to make an even-handed, incisive, yet gracious defense for classical Christianity and classical Christian values in the public square. See also: Wayne Rossiter on teaching Darwin’s unquestionable truths Follow UD News at Twitter!

But you knew that, didn’t you? From Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, author of In the Shadow of Oz, : I’ve jumped to the final (summary chapter, offered by Neil Spurway), because it is one of the more dramatic examples of just how far theistic evolution can go. Here we finally see someone willing to essentially throw in the towel. For starters, he offers “for me a naturalistic account of any aspect of being human is, quite simply, the only sort of account which can be correct.” He emphasizes that many of the things we believe make humans an exception to the animal kingdom (what has been called a “revolution” rather than an “evolution”) are simply points along Read More ›

June 23 is the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, whose father Zacharias, a priest, may have been the first theistic evolutionist, somewhere around 4 BC.. As Luke tells the story, 10And the whole multitude of the people were in prayer outside at the hour of the incense offering. 11And an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. 12Zacharias was troubled when he saw the angel, and fear gripped him. 13But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John. 14“You will have joy and Read More ›

From Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, author of In the Shadow of Oz, From If Apes Could Fly: Review of Darwinism and Natural Theology, Chapter 2 (R.J. Berry): R.J. Berry (former professor of Genetics at the University of London) offers the second chapter in the volume. It begins with a short, but informative biography of Darwin’s life and the events leading up to the Origin. Like Monty Python’s knight on the bridge, Berry continues to hack away at the body of Christian theology while maintaining that we’re all the better for it. The next limb to go is a classic one. Nearly all theistic evolutionists abandon the concept of the Fall of man, in favor of a “falling Read More ›

From Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, author of In the Shadow of Oz,, offers a new series on theistic evolution, starting with Square Peg for a Round Hole: Robinson admits that Dennett has struck a vital spot in pro-Darwinian theology: “His remarks stung: there is indeed a legitimate question about whether the way in which theology engages with Darwinism amounts to anything more than a set of purely defensive and rather desperate moves.” Indeed. He goes on to broadly suggest that Dennett (and secular scientists in general) might benefit from the metaphysics of Christian theism. But this defensive maneuver seems a limp defense. The best Robinson manages in the chapter is the red herring of reversing the tables, Read More ›

John Farrell’s article, It’s Time To Retire ‘Theistic Evolution’ (Forbes magazine, March 19, 2016), cites three prominent Catholic thinkers who reject the term “theistic evolution.” But what Farrell overlooks is that these Catholics hold wildly divergent views on the simple question of whether living things were designed by God. Edward Feser insists that they were, and Stacy Trasancos apparently agrees; Ken Miller says they were not – which puts him in the same camp as Jesuit astronomer George Coyne and Catholic theologian John Haught, two outspoken defenders of evolution who were not cited in Farrell’s article. However, the clear teaching of the Catholic Church is that humans and other living things were designed by God. What I find astonishing is Read More ›

My verdict: The debate would have been a better one without Krauss, who generally behaved like a boor, and who engaged in deliberate dishonesty (see below). Meyer and Lamoureux had a lively but amicable exchange of views. Meyer displayed admirable fortitude in soldiering on, even though he had a splitting headache. Introduction Host Karen Stiller introduces the debate, which is sponsored by Wycliffe College, in partnership with Faith Today, Power to Change, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and the Network of Christian Scholars. Professor Lawrence Krauss will speak first, followed by Dr. Stephen Meyer and finally, Dr. Denis Lamoureux. Professor Lawrence Krauss’s talk Professor Krauss begins by announcing that he wants to clear up a misconception. 3:52 Krauss declares: “The Discovery Read More ›

From Templeton: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth who has spent decades bringing spiritual insight to the public conversation through mass media, popular lectures and more than two dozen books, has been awarded the 2016 Templeton Prize. … He also boldly defends the compatibility of religion and science, a response to those who consider them necessarily separate and distinct. “Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean,” he wrote in his book, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning.More. Naturally, we wondered, so from our files, we found: Britain’s chief rabbi on the Brit riots: Restore civil Read More ›

Science historian Michael Flannery kindly contributed this review: When I started reading Perry Marshall’s book, Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design, I must confess to some consternation almost from the beginning. While Marshall was quick to point out the shortcomings of the neo-Darwinian approach of common descent by means of natural selection through the undirected processes of chance and necessity, he oddly went on to claim that ID, while recognizing many truths about biology that old-school Darwinism denies, ultimately abdicates its responsibility by jumping directly to ‘God did it’. At least in its most simple forms, ID halts scientific inquiry by dismissing too easily the possibility that God may have used a process to develop life on Read More ›

Alister McGrath is a well-known Christian theologian, priest, and author of many apologetic books. In one of them, “The Dawkins Delusion”, he fiercely opposes the pseudo intellectual arrogance of Dawkins’ atheism. In general I appreciate much McGrath’s work in defense of theism. For this reason I sincerely regret the need to criticize some of his opinions about theistic evolution (TE), as expressed in his interview with Nigel Bovey,”The universe is not an accident.” McGrath rightly supports the ontological and logical necessity of a Creator of the universe, who provides to it and to all of its beings all meaning and reality, and makes it something quite other than an “accident”, as the title of the interview makes clear. Bovey asks: Read More ›

At Christian Scientific Society, here: Shadow of Oz, by Wayne Rossiter (Wipf and Stock, 2015) does something that should have been done a long time ago: it takes a direct and critical look at the theology of theistic evolution. Often the debate over intelligent design (ID) has been cast in terms of questioning the theological premises of ID, e.g., accusations of god-of-the-gaps, God making things up ad hoc, etc., but the shoe can be on the other foot: do theistic evolutionists have a coherent theology? Wayne Rossiter takes a close, often iconoclastic, look at the theological beliefs of major theistic evolutionists such as Kenneth Miller, Karl Giberson, Francis Collins, and John Polkinghorne. More. From the publisher: Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution Read More ›