Reading Time: 2 minutes It’s entirely possible that Shakespeare’s innumerable rhetorical gems popped into his head willy-nilly without bidding, and he jotted them down for later use. He might not have had any particular character in mind. Then, as needed, he consulted his notes and inserted soliloquies and speeches and insults and profundities and short lines into the mouths […]
natural selection
Will new scientific evidence shake up theories about evolution?
Reading Time: 5 minutes For skeptics and the scientifically-minded, there is nothing at all controversial about evolution. And by the term “evolution,” what is generally understood is “evolution by natural selection.” Evolution by natural selection is the main evolutionary process by which we explain the diversity of all living organisms. This process is somewhat blind. In simple terms, organisms […]
Is ‘survival of the fittest’ a tautology?
Reading Time: 8 minutes I was recently posting about my book series Survival of the Fittest, with the first book, Metamorphosis [UK], detailing a global pandemic that changes its human victims into viral victims who are competing with established humanity for survival. The second book Adaptation lays out the groundwork for a divergence in some groups of the surviving humans, as well as within […]
The argument from misunderstanding evolution
Reading Time: 7 minutes In my last post, we looked at four (bad) arguments for the existence of God presented by Tim Keller in Chapter 8 of The Reason for God. I call them the Argument from Inexplicability, the Argument from Fabricated Probabilities, the Argument from Wishing, and the Argument from Regularity. As I’ve often pointed out, not only are […]
Survival of the Fittest: Tautologous and Unfalsifiable?
Reading Time: 14 minutes Yesterday, I ran a piece on the idea that you often hear from creationists that “survival of the fittest” (SoF) is a tautology that carries no meaning. I hopefully dealt with this in some way in that previous post. However, I would like to take the opportunity to add a few ideas and to discuss a connected […]
Why evolution can’t have a driver
Reading Time: 6 minutes The organization BioLogos is dedicated to reconciling God and evolution. I love the idea of helping more people accept evolution. Yet here I am all conflicted. I’ll explain why, but let’s keep this between us. Evolution by natural selection, properly understood, is fatal to traditional Christian belief. It doesn’t just snap one branch of the religion. Challenging the idea […]
Faith and Reason Are Not Really Friends
Reading Time: 8 minutes You may not find this as fascinating as I do, but I recently came across a video put out by The Gospel Coalition, a think tank for Calvinists co-founded by Tim Keller, a Presbyterian pastor and author who herein verbalizes his own reservations about human evolution. What stands out most to me is that while […]
C.S. Lewis and the Argument from Spilled Milk
Reading Time: 5 minutes I see a quote from C.S. Lewis circulated quite a bit, and I’d like to give my response to the argument it presents. Perhaps when I am done explaining what’s wrong with it, you will start to see why Lewis admitted later in life that: Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work […]
Evolution Is A Descriptive Model, Not A Prescriptive One
Reading Time: 9 minutes Biological evolution is a remarkably cruel process. Evolution selects against the least fit among an environment’s populations and species over time. By selecting against the unfit, it kills the infant and disabled animals in the herd, and species that are prey are subject to deaths that are particularly violent and gruesome. As if that isn’t […]
Are Man’s Powers Divinely Gifted?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Several years ago, I participated in a discussion about how Man had influenced the evolutionary process. The premise was that since no other animal had ever had the capability to do this, it must be the result of a gift from God. Sy says: “I now realize that while Darwinian evolution might have been the […]