15Nov 2021 by Post

Lessons from the Evangelical Debate About Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, Adam and the Genome, Ann Gauger, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, BIO-Complexity, BioLogos, bottleneck, Calvin College, Christianity Today, Daniel Harlow, Deborah Haarsma, Dennis Venema, DNA, Evangelical Christians, Evangelicals, Evolution, evolutionary creation, evolutionary science, Faith & Science, Francis Collins, human origin, Human Origins, humans, In Quest of the Historical Adam, In Quest of the Historical Adam (series), Joshua Swamidass, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Neal Conan, npr, Ola Hössjer, Queen Mary University, Richard Buggs, Science and Human Origins, Scientific consensus, Scot McKnight, The Language of God, theistic evolution, Trinity Western University, UniqueOriginResearch.com, william lane craig
The standard evolutionary account of human origins holds that our population has always been in the thousands and humanity did not descend from an initial pair. Source
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22Oct 2021 by Post

Forbidden Question: Common Descent or Common Design?

Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Cadillac, cars, Casey Luskin, chimpanzees, chromosome 2, common ancestor, common features, Elon Musk, Evolution, evolutionary biology, evolutionary tree, Francis Collins, fusion event, Genome Research, Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design, historical sciences, Intelligent Design, Junk DNA, Matti Leisola, Science and Human Origins, Stephen Meyer, Tesla, University of Cambridge
Think of cars. A Tesla and a Cadillac share many features — but of course, none of that means that Teslas blindly evolved from Cadillacs, or vice versa. Source
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18Oct 2021 by Post

The Tragedy of Francis Collins’s Model for Science-Faith Integration 

abortion, Bible, Casey Luskin, China, Christianity, Christianity Today, Culture & Ethics, Darwin Day in America, Darwinian evolution, Downs syndrome, Ed Stetzer, ENCODE, Evangelical Christians, Francis Collins, gain-of-function research, George W. Bush, Intelligent Design, Jonathan Witt, Junk DNA, Karl Giberson, Kenneth Miller, Mark Galli, Medicine, Michael Behe, Michael Carome, National Institutes of Health, Obama Administration, pastores, premature babies, professors, pundists, Science (journal), The Language of God, The New England Journal of Medicine, University of Alabama-Birmingham, vaccination
The depiction of Francis Collins as someone who has developed a good model for integrating faith and science is in many respects a tragic myth. Source
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08Oct 2021 by Post

Recalling Francis Collins’s The Language of God

Bill Clinton, Center for Science & Culture, China, COVID-19, Darwinian evolution, David French, ENCODE, Evolution, Faith & Science, Francis Collins, John West, Junk DNA, National Institutes of Health, proteins, Religion News Service, The Language of God, The Origin of Species, theology, vaccinations, Wuhan
President Bill Clinton announced, in a speech Collins helped to write, “we are learning the language in which God created life.” Source
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29Jun 2021 by Post

How Science and Faith Relate — Three Options

Alister McGrath, BioLogos, Bruce Gordon, Casey Luskin, Center for Science & Culture, dialogue, faith, Faith & Science, Francis Collins, Michael Ruse, monologue, religion, scientists, theistic evolution, theology, Three Views on Christianity and Science, Tom Gilson
"Dialogue," in practice, can quickly devolve into a monologue where religion is supposed to sit down and shut up the moment there is a point of difference. Source
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03Feb 2021 by Post

More Dispatches from the Science/Religion Classroom

consciousness, cosmology, Darwinian theory, Darwinians, Evolution, Faith & Science, fine-tuning, Francis Collins, geneticists, mathematics, methodological naturalism, natural selection, origin of life, particle physics, Philip Davies, population genetics, Richard Goldschmidt, Richard Lewontin, The Goldilocks Enigma, The Language of God, universe
Students are adept at spotting the incongruities, double standards, and tendentious arguments that often accompany methodological naturalism. Source
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11May 2020 by Post

In Biology, Intelligent Designs that Amaze, Amuse, and Entertain

Alticini, An Uplifting Story, bottlenose dolphins, catapult, dandelions, Darwinism, dolphins, Evolution, fish stocks, flea beetle, flea beetles, Francis Collins, Illustra Media, infrared cameras, infrared radiation, Intelligent Design, International Society for Photonics and Optics, Keith Moorad, killer whales, leaf beetles, Lehigh University, Life Sciences, Michael Behe, National Institutes of Health, night vision goggles, origami, parachute, Pensoft, PNAS, toothed whales, U.S. Navy, Zookeys
A parade of amazing designs from the living world has passed through these pages over the years, and it shows no sign of stopping. Here are some entertaining examples from recent news. Jump Like a Flea, Beetle Flea beetles, or Alticini, are high-jump champions among the coleopterans (beetles) in the insect world. There are some 9,900 species of flea beetles, a “hyper-diverse group” that inhabits environments from deserts to rainforests all over the world. The Pensoft blog shows a picture of one, saying, “Exceptional catapulting jump mechanism in a tiny beetle could be applied in robotic limbs.”  The fascinating and highly efficient jumping mechanism in flea beetles is described in a new research article in the open-access journal Zookeys. Despite having been known since 1929, the explosive jump — which is also the reason behind the colloquial name of this…
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30Nov 2019 by Post

Q&A with Michael Behe: What’s Wrong with Theistic Evolution?

DiscoveryU, Evangelical Christians, Evolution, faith, Faith & Science, Francis Collins, Intelligent Design, Michael Behe, science, The Language of God, theistic evolution
We now reluctantly conclude the past week’s series of Q&A sessions with biochemist Michael Behe, highlighting his 41-part video course for DiscoveryU, “Michael Behe Investigates Evolution and Intelligent Design.” Here’s another challenge he often gets: Why doesn’t Professor Behe go along with famed Evangelical Christian scientist Francis Collins, and others, in opting for theistic evolution? Dr. Behe observes that in reading Dr. Collins’s book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, he found it notable that Collins “does not even try to address the problems for evolution that I and other intelligent design proponents have brought up.” So that is one reason. Behe, like Collins, is a scientist not a theologian. The science of ID, and the scientific problems with Darwinian evolution, are the focus of his video…
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