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.
A collection of short commentaries on scientific papers published in 2003, covering such topics as fish biogeography, chicken teeth, wings of stick insects, evolution as a religion, tests of common ancestry, Black Sea flood, gene duplication, paleoclimate, Permian bacteria alive?, Triassic bird footprints?, historical science, and parallel speciation. 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.
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.
Thirteen biological phenomena are discussed in conjunction with evolution, creationist theories of diversification, and the hypothesis that transposable elements may produce rapid change in species. Published in Origins n. 54.
A collection of short commentaries on scientific papers published in 2001, covering topics such as phylogeny of songbirds, theodicy, mutation rates, genetic load, fossilization process, Permian mass extinction, marsupial fossil in Madagascar, Cambrian Explosion, Ediacaran fossils, quality of the fossil record, philosophy of science, radiohalos, speciation in Galapagos finches.
A collection of short commentaries on scientific papers published in 1999 (mostly), covering topics such as fox domestication, biogeography, a polyploid mammals, gene duplication, inbred cattle, pseudogenes, Missoula Flood, protein evolution, origin of life, dinosaur skin, quality of the fossil record, fossil burrows, Cambrian explosion, Neanderthal DNA, problems in phylogenetics, Australopithecus face, Galapagos tortoise phylogeny, the hoatzin bird, lateral gene transfer, limits to change, shark phylogeny, rift lake cichlids, and homeobox genes. Published in Origins n. 52.
A collection of short commentaries on scientific papers published in 1998, 1999, covering topics such as developmental genes in sea urchins, dinosaur lungs, Archaeopteryx bones, Darwin's finches, parallel evolution, evolutionism, variation in bacteria, genetic load, human origins, Neanderthal DNA, molecular evolution, origin of life, biogeography of Madagascar, fossil record, problems in phylogeny of microbes and whales. Published in Origins n. 51.
A report of the 2000 meeting of the Geological Society of America in Reno, Nevada. Published in Origins n. 51.
Trilobites are complex, elaborately segmented forms with jointed appendages and swimmerets, antennae, compound eyes, and cephalized, or head-to-tail, nervous systems.
The integration of Bible and science is an uphill work that requires careful reading of both the Bible and of scientific data. Because no other natural science has traveled so great a distance down an anti-biblical road, no other science requires this corrective procedure more than biology.
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.
How can we accommodate the paleontological record with Scripture? If our approach to science is as it should be, we can acknowledge that there are still many unanswered questions for all sides, and we should have no fear of deeper investigation in science the data are not all in.
Science/religion issues are important because they have to do with ultimate realities, such as whether a supreme being is above the creation and can supernaturally intervene with events such as miracles, an Incarnation, a resurrection, a new birth, or an Advent.
