Holmes Rolston, III is a well-known philosopher who has written extensively on both the philosophy of religion and on philosophical issues to do with the environment. The book under review, Genes, Genesis and God: Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History, started life as the Gifford Lectures given at the University of Edinburgh…
Those who champion theistic evolution accept Darwinian theory as a satisfactory explanation of evolution of nature. They marry the Darwinian theory up with the religious tenet that the natural world is the creation of a transcendent God by claiming that that God delivers the ultimate underpinning for the truth of Darwinian theory. The theologian John…
Reviewing William Dembski’s case for intelligent design.
Metanexus: Views 2001.12.03 5792 words What is embedded or embodied morality? As we try to become more in tunewith, more at home in, this world in which we find ourselves, do we becomeincreasingly guilty of committing the naturalistic fallacy, of convertingour comfortable “is” into an obligatory “ought”? Or do we come closer andcloser to a…
Metanexus: Views 2001.11.30 6334 words At this time of year, many Christians around the world are beginning or havebegun their preparations for celebrating the coming of Jesus of Nazareth ina stable somewhere in Bethlehem sometime at the turn of the eras. Variouslycalled the Little Lent, the Nativity Lent, or Advent, it nurtures theexpectation that the…
Many evolutionists today subscribe to a version of scientific naturalism that claims to be able to explain all aspects of life, including suffering, in purely biological terms and without having to resort to theological understanding at all.
The 2006 best-selling book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, represents an influential strand of anti-religious thinking which suggests that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has discredited the notion that the development of life is part of the purposeful unfolding of a divine plan. Concepts of providence, destiny, teleology, or whatever we want to call…
Mary Kathleen Cunningham, ed. God and Evolution: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 2007). Cunningham has compiled an anthology of readings intentioned to provide original writings from seminal thinkers that do, or have in the past, interact with the interface between science and religion. More pointedly, Cunningham has assembled a variety of writings that principally deal…
That the living world might, in some deep mysterious way, be expressive of a transcendent dimension is largely rejected by contemporary secular thinkers. Most will argue that modern science has demonstrated, at least in principle, that life in all its evolving complexity and sophistication is the inevitable product of entirely natural, unplanned processes. Biological materialism,…
Can it be true that the laws of physics hold, and that God acts in the world? I think so. And I think evolutionary biology (with a dash of physics) can help us see how.