One Long Argument
Current debate over Intelligent Design is simply the latest installment of one long argument. Published in Origins, n. 62.
Current debate over Intelligent Design is simply the latest installment of one long argument. Published in Origins, n. 62.
Studies of species in the sixteenth century began with numerous suggestions of wide variability, but after Francesco Redi helped to falsify spontaneous generation, scholars began to view species as essentially fixed. Published in Origins, n. 62.
A commentary and review of the book, Scriptural Geology, 1820-1860: An Essay and Review. Published in Origins, n. 62.
A review of the book, Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement. Published in Origins n. 61.
A review of the book Before Darwin: Reconciling God and Nature. Published in Origins n. 60.
A review of the book The Evolution-Creation Struggle. Published in Origins n. 60.
A review of the book Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial. Published in Origins n. 59.
This is a review of the book Origin by Design. Published in Origins n. 59.
This article explores the usefulness of the idea of intelligent design in the context of modern (scientific) efforts to understand nature. Among the questions to be considered are whether intelligent design is a necessary inference from the properties of nature, and whether its incorporation into science would improve our ability to explore and understand nature.
Reaction to the editorial, Chicken Soup, and the article, Recent Developments in Near Eastern Chronology and Radiocarbon Dating, Self-organization and the Origin of Life. Even if biomolecules self-assembled into cellular organization, that would not produce life because life requires non-equilibrium chemical reactions. The editorial by Jim Gibson did not address this point. Correlation of carbon-14 dates with the biblical time scale favors the younger archaeological dates discussed in the article by Michael Hasel.
Whenever religion and science have a dispute about some question of fact, religion always loses. So goes a common belief. The implication is that religion should never make any factual claims, as it has no contact with reality. For some religions, such an assertion is irrelevant, as these religions do not make any claims about the physical universe. But for biblical Christianity, such an assertion would be fatal.
Currently evolutionary geology explains the fossil record as the result of slow processes and change occurring over long periods of time. However, an increasing number of rock formations and fossil occurrences previously interpreted within such an evolutionary framework must be reinterpreted as the result of rapid, or even catastrophic, processes operating on a different time scale.
Since the nineteenth century, OT scholars have generally expressed the opinion that the genealogies in Gen 5 and 11 contain generational and chronological gaps and thus cannot be used, as James Ussher did, for chronological purposes. Such a view, however, is troubling to some scholars, mostly young-earth creationists, who insist that Gen 5 and 11 clearly present a continuous and no-gap genealogy.
Literature Review A review of the book By Design or By Chance? The Growing Controversy on the Origins of Life in the Universe. Published in Origins n. 58.
When all is said and done we are forced to answer the question that Yahweh posed to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?." We are forced to admit that when it comes to origins, the entire human race is ignorant. The only way to pacify our ignorance is by exercising faith. The question is, “In what will you place your faith?”
The concept of a monotheistic God, who is the same yesterday, today and forever, not a plurality of capricious gods, suggested the universality, consistency and coherence of His creation. Among the contingently created beings were humans created in God's own image. This led to "the idea that we lesser rational beings might, by virtue of that Godlike rationality, be able to decipher the laws of nature."
The claim that religion always gives way before the authority of science is discussed and challenged. Published in Origins n. 55.
Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil. Published in Origins n. 55.
Creationism is a robust paradigm, fully capable of undergirding the scientific enterprise in the new millennium. Wider acceptance of creationism by the scientific community in the future will depend, in part, on how well theologians can convince scientists of the priceless value of revealed information.
Paraconformities suggest that little time was involved in the deposition of the sedimentary layers, and these are the layers that harbor the fossil record.