The Fool and the Heretic: How Two Scientists Moved Beyond Labels to a Christian Dialogue About Creation and Evolution (Todd Charles Wood and Darrel R. Falk) How do we handle our differences and disagreements? For example, what about creation and evolution?
Augustine on natural evil Why do we have floods and droughts, and why do animals kill each other? Is it because of the fall? Augustine is sometimes assumed to have believed this.
God and natural disasters Why do we have tsunamis and natural disasters, viruses and pandemics? The existence of natural disasters raises massive questions about God and the world.
The origins of original sin for Augustine Some suggest that Augustine based his doctrine of original sin on a misinterpretation of a single verse in Romans, but this is far from being the case.
Is the groaning of creation good? If animal suffering is not a consequence of the fall, and if it wasn’t the ‘only way’ by which God could have created the world, how can we understand it?
Was the groaning of creation unavoidable? Christopher Southgate argues that a long process of evolutionary suffering was the ‘only way’ God could have created the world. Is his argument persuasive?
Is the groaning of creation a consequence of the fall? This is the first of three posts on Christopher Southgate’s book, The Groaning of Creation. Is Michael Lloyd right to blame animal suffering on the fall?
Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11 (C. John Collins) How should we interpret the first chapters of Genesis? Are they historical? Are they poetic? Are they scientifically accurate? Are they true?
John Goldingay on the historical value of Genesis 1-11 What does Genesis 1-11 tell us about events in the distant past? John Goldingay describes Genesis 1-11 as ‘parabolic history, a picture account of events’.
The Lost World of the Flood (Tremper Longman and John Walton) In this stimulating book, Longman and Walton claim that the Genesis flood was a local flood, but one that was ‘global in its impact and significance’.
Who is to Blame? Disasters, Nature and Acts of God (Robert S. White) We tend to blame God for natural disasters. God is responsible for processes such as earthquakes, but it is usually humans who turn them into disasters.
The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? (David Bentley Hart) David Bentley Hart’s book from 2005 is lucid, brief and profound. It amounts to a sustained attack on the idea that suffering has some kind of explanation.
Finding Ourselves after Darwin This book explores the implications of evolution for human uniqueness and the image of God, for Adam and Eve and original sin, and for the problem of evil.
Animal predation before the fall Ronald Osborn, in his 2014 book, Death Before the Fall, explores whether a ‘very good’ creation could have included elements of ferocity among animals.
Creation: A Guide for the Perplexed (Simon Oliver) Many of our contemporary problems (Simon Oliver argues) stem from the same cause: our failure to identify the world, first and foremost, as created.
Predation and young-age creationism Even within young-age creationism, it is not easy to explain why animals ‘savagely kill and devour each other’. It seems neither plausible nor justifiable.
Spurgeon on the death of animals before the fall The views of the great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon about the death of animals before the fall seem to have evolved during his ministry.
The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil I’m going to be engaging this term with Christopher Southgate’s wide-ranging book, The Groaning of Creation. Here I attempt to summarise the book.
Is Christianity fit to survive evolution? Often people assume that the only obstacle is the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis. But much more is at stake.
The New Creationism What are we to do with the apparent conflict between science and the Bible when it comes to origins? Do creationist scientific models offer any hope?
The first chapters of everything This recent (2014) book on Genesis 1-4 by Alasdair Paine (of St Andrew the Great in Cambridge) is a joy to read. The emphasis is on how the chapters mak...
The Lost World of Genesis One Continuing on the theme of creation/evolution-related books from around five years ago (1, 2), we now move across the pond to Wheaton College, Illinois,...
Debating Darwin Debating Darwin (Paternoster, 2009) is a multi-author book, seeking to debate Darwinism first on theological grounds, and then on scientific grounds. Ea...
Creation or evolution: do we have to keep getting nowhere? It is with some reluctance that I turn to the topic of creation and evolution. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot in years gone by, but I’ve tried ...
Creationist research in palaeontology Leonard Brand is a biologist and palaeontologist. He’s also a young-age creationist. He believes the world was deluged by a global flood just a few thou...
Does free will explain the fall? Have you ever read or heard anything like this? Freedom of choice means that temptations will occur. Robots with no free will are not tempted, they can ...
Creation and evolution: my current thinking I've been pondering the issue of creation and evolution for years, and I thought it was about time to set out my current thinking on the area. This is a...
Evidence for young-age creationism It's not clear precisely what role scientific evidence plays when someone chooses between young-age creationism and evolution over billions of years. Ce...
Creation or evolution: which way forward? I posted this elsewhere a few months ago, but I thought it was worth posting it here too. The Christian church is still a long way from resolving the cr...
Does God have body parts, and did he create in six days? Have a quick look at this, and then read on: Does God have body parts? An idea... We could speak about different "domains" of reality. Some of these dom...
William Lane Craig and the material world "Is the material world all there is?" This was the question posed by Christian philosopher William Lane Craig at the start of his lecture yesterday at I...
An open letter to the British Humanist Association Dear BHA, After re-loading your website home page a few times, I found on it the following quote by Ariane Sherine: "All children should be free to grow...
Intelligent Design: a Bayesian summary This post concludes my recent splurge on Intelligent Design (ID). I have been trying to argue: That ID is basically anti-evolutionism That, as an...
Should Intelligent Design be taught in schools? I don't see why not. Many people in the UK believe in Intelligent Design (that is, they don't believe in modern evolutionary theory), 51% according to o...
Complexity and design The basic argument of anti-evolutionism (Intelligent Design, ID) is that chance processes cannot account for the complexity that we see in living things...
Can science point to an intelligent designer? I find myself in full agreement with the basic presupposition of Intelligent Design (ID): that a world in which an intelligent agent has acted might be ...
Darwinian speculations? One of the quotes Michael Behe showed at Monday's Darwin or Design? evening was the following: "We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitu...
Is Intelligent Design science? Countless hours have been wasted poring over this most uninteresting, pedantic and pointless of questions. Rather than seeking to answer the questions r...
Is Intelligent Design creationism? No. But there is a connection. Intelligent Design (ID), being essentially anti-evolutionism, is half of an argument for creationism. Basic scientific ar...
Michael Behe: what is “Intelligent Design”? Last night I called in at Westminster Chapel for Darwin or Design? An Evening with Michael Behe, hosted by Justin Brierley, presenter of Premier Christi...
John Walton audio resources on Genesis 1 Recently I've been aware of a strong positive correlation between the phrases "John Walton" and "Genesis One". In order to investigate this further, I'v...
Creation or evolution: do we have to choose? This question (also the title of a recent book by Denis Alexander) is one over which evangelical Christians often sharply disagree. Some ("young-earth ...
A Christian approach to science Science conventionally proceeds by "methodological naturalism", meaning that it does not "allow consideration of any hypothesis that implies, e.g., that...
Adam and evolution I could be wrong, but there seems to have been more discussion recently amongst Christians within the evangelical church about how to fit Adam and Eve i...
Are we alone in the Universe? After “Do you want to be the next Patrick Moore?” and “I’m a Capricorn”, the most common response I get when I tell people I work in astronomy is, “Do...
Is atheism compatible with belief in evolution? Perhaps not. Have a read of this extract from Alvin Plantinga's entry on Religion and Science in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (dealt with at...
Questions for the standard cosmological model ...it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established... The words of Albert Michelson, Nobel Prize-winning phy...