Literature Reviews: Can Science Refute Design?
Review of Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism. Published in Origins n. 58.
Review of Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism. Published in Origins n. 58.
Ever since it was discovered in 1861, Archaeopteryx lithographica has been a controversial fossil. Its remarkable finding has provided certain credibility to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Archaeopteryx has a mixture of characteristics found in birds, reptiles, and theropod dinosaurs, and for that reason, scientists are divided regarding its origin, flight capacity, and position in the alleged evolutionary sequence from reptiles to birds.
Poor design in Rubisco can now be added to the growing list of failed Darwinian arguments from ignorance.
The world is not divided into the good creationists and the bad evolutionists. Many scientists have never had opportunity to see reasonable alternatives to a materialistic evolutionary process. Many scientists, though convinced by the evidence for evolution, are unwilling to give up on God and/or are searching for some meaning in life. Do we want to draw these people to us or drive them away?
In this article, the multivariate technique of classical multidimensional scaling is introduced to baraminology. Published in Origins n. 57.
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.
Many models have been proposed that tend to blur some of the contrasts between the biblical and naturalistic theories. A number of attempts have been made to develop intermediate models in which elements of the biblical story of creation are mixed with elements of the scientific story of origins. All of these models share the biblical idea that nature is the result of divine purpose and the “scientific” idea of long ages of time, but all suffer from serious scientific problems or are entirely ad hoc and conjectural.
Darwin’s view of God is contrary to the biblical view of God and should give Christians pause before buying into Darwin’s naturalism and attempting to wed it to the supernatural in a theistic evolutionary synthesis.
The goal of this essay is to assess the compatibility of Adventist theology with deep time and the evolutionary reconstruction of the origins of earth history.
The known history of birds appears consistent with the idea that they were created. These new and spectacular avian fossils suggest is that the original creation produced a much greater variety of birds than previously imagined.
Revelation, rather than reason, is the source of explanation and truth for those who believe in God and his revelation in Scripture. The Bible's words and inner logic, however, still need interpretation. That is why we need to place all Christian theologies, including Adventist theologies, under careful methodological criticism to make certain we understand biblical thinking on its own terms and not from hermeneutical presuppositions defined by philosophy, science, and culture. Only then can we say in practice that the Bible is the foundation of truth.
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.
This paper examines exegetically the Hebrew text of the biblical Creation story, paying close attention to its sounds, rhythm, words, syntax, literary structure in relation to its parallel text, and its literary genre and style, without ignoring its literary extrabiblical environment. Published in Origins n. 55.
A review of the book, Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution. 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.
While Christians may be convinced that design in nature points to a Creator-God, the general scientific community has not been persuaded. Perhaps more scientifically respectable work on intelligent design of the kind done by Behe and Dembski will encourage evolutionary scientists to look beyond purely naturalistic mechanisms to explain the complexity and meaning of life.
The molecules of life suggest no need for Christians to become sycophants to materialistic philosophy posing as science. On the contrary, science liberated from the artificial constraints of materialism provides an elegant mechanism for study of the creation and logically points to a wonderful Creator.
First we will briefly look at the role creation plays in Scripture and its significance to biblical faith. We will then consider the relationship between faith and natural science before pointing out some aspects that can help us, I trust, to live confidently despite some open questions and to uphold the biblical truth of creation amidst theological pluralism.
Animals can change in small or even large ways to adapt to their surroundings, but humans were created as God’s perfect climax to all that had thus far been created.