Scriptural Geology
A commentary and review of the book, Scriptural Geology, 1820-1860: An Essay and Review. 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 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.
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.
This article provides a state-of-the-art appraisal of ancient Near Eastern chronologies in Mesopotamia and Egypt. It focuses on recent developments in both fields by assessing the current astronomical and historical bases for these chronologies and addressing the relative nature of chronology before the second millennium B.C. It documents the trend over the past sixty years to shorten the historical chronology of the Near East. Published in Origins n. 58.
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.
Review of the book, Annie's Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution. Published in Origins n. 53.
Because it is based on materialism, science implies (at least hypothetically) that everything should be accessible to experiment and empirical validation. Ideally, there shouldn’t be room for faith in a scientific universe, yet the very nature of that universe demands it.
In two recent publications, Alister McGrath cites John Calvin in support of divine accommodation in a theory of origins. In order to evaluate the validity of McGrath's use of Calvin, it is necessary, first, to look briefly at the concept of divine accommodation and its use as a hermeneutical tool.
Literature Review
A review of Summer for the Gods. Published in Origins n. 51.
Historians of science have suggested that the Judea-Christian environment of western Europe and the belief in a monotheistic God were responsible for the development of modem science in that culture. Today students can still see that Christianity and physics are compatible and that similar assumptions underlie both.
There has been a long and arduous search for a plausible evolutionary mechanism that would produce complex organized life. We shall look briefly at the past two centuries of this search.