Category: Evolution
Something’s Fishy With BioLogos’s Description of Fish Fossil Record
In a prior post, I discussed how BioLogos’s website has a page titled “What does the fossil record show?” which is conspicuously missing any mention of the Cambrian explosion, or any other explosions in the history of life. The page also has other errors and omissions. In a section titled “Evidence of Gradual Change,” it states: “At 500 million years ago, ancient fish without jawbones surface.” Actually, the first known fossils of fish are from the lower Cambrian, meaning that their date is probably closer to 530 m.y.a., near the beginning of the Cambrian period. A Nature paper reporting this find was titled “Lower Cambrian vertebrates from south China.” It noted: “These finds imply that the first agnathans may have Read More ›
BioLogos’s Fossil Record Page Conspicuously Missing the Cambrian Explosion
The BioLogos website has a static page titled “What does the fossil record show?,” which would naturally lead one to expect that if you read the page, then you’ll learn what the fossil record shows. What’s odd about the page is that the page makes no mention whatsoever of the Cambrian explosion. This is despite the fact that Robert L. Carroll calls the Cambrian explosion “[t]he most conspicuous event in metazoan evolution”: The most conspicuous event in metazoan evolution was the dramatic origin of major new structures and body plans documented by the Cambrian explosion. Until 530 million years ago, multicellular animals consisted primarily of simple, soft-bodied forms, most of which have been identified from the fossil record as cnidarians Read More ›
Conference Provides Chance for Back and Forth with Biologos President Darrel Falk
After yesterday’s plenary session with Dr. Falk at the Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science, I was looking forward to attending his breakout session and hearing more about his view of evolutionary creation. And I was not disappointed. There were fewer than twenty of us sitting in a U-shape at tables in a classroom, which felt a little bit like we were all having a small class session on theistic evolution evolutionary creation, up close and personal. In addition to the volunteers working with Dr. Falk on a film project (more on that later), Dr. Walter Bradley, conference organizer Larry Linenschmidt, Dr. Dennis Venema, and Dr. Richard Sternberg were in attendance, as well as a few younger thinkers. Falk explained Read More ›
Theists Don’t Have Problems With Gradual Processes…
I’m here at the Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science Conference in Austin, where I’ve enjoyed hearing from Stephen Meyer, Hugh Ross, Darrel Falk, Dan Heinze, and more in presentations to a large auditorium of conference attendees. It’s interesting and I think good to bring together so many different perspectives on science and origins, though sometimes distinctions seemed purposefully blurred so as to preserve unity. An example of this might be Biologos’ Darrel Falk’s plenary session, where he discussed his view of “evolutionary creation” (he doesn’t like “theistic evolution”) as God working through a gradual process. He is right that most of the theists in the room do indeed agree on the point that God is creative and creator, but Read More ›
Randy Isaac on “Evolutionism”
The BioLogos Foundation recently published a scholarly essay (with several accompanying blog posts) titled “Science and the Question of God” by Randy Isaac. Isaac is a physicist and executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA)–a scholarly society of Christian natural scientists. In his essay, Isaac examines, as he puts it, “three schools of thought regarding the possibility of detecting God’s existence through science: Evolutionism, Creationism, and Intelligent Design.” In this and two follow-up posts, I’ll respond to some of the themes of Isaac’s essay. When I began to read “Science and the Question of God,” I worried that Isaac would define ID as an explicit attempt to prove the existence of God. But, happily, Isaac doesn’t make that mistake, Read More ›