Coming to Peace with Science by Appealing to the Consensus

In his book Coming to Peace with Science, Point Loma Nazarene University biology professor Darrel R. Falk makes many arguments for common descent and Darwinian evolution. Many of these arguments are evidence-based (some of this evidence is countered in a previous post), but some of his most forceful arguments are not based upon evidence. They are based upon appeals to authority. Consider the following: “We must not be fooled into thinking that minor fluctuations in the data that are accepted as valid by virtually all geologists are relevant to this question.” (p. 70) “Christian and non-Christian nuclear physicists are virtually in 100 percent agreement that the decay rates could not have been significantly influenced by anything throughout earth’s history.” (p. Read More ›

Does Darrel Falk’s Junk DNA Argument for Common Descent Commit “One of the Biggest Mistakes in the History of Molecular Biology”?

Recently I was e-mailed by an individual who had read the book Coming to Peace with Science, by Darrel Falk, president of the BioLogos Foundation. This person was interested in a response to the arguments for human/ape common ancestry in Dr. Falk’s book. Not having read Dr. Falk’s book before, I wrote back that I hadn’t yet read the book but had a strong suspicion that it would argue that shared non-functional (aka “junk”) DNA between humans, apes, and other species is evidence of their common ancestry. This is an extremely common argument from theistic evolutionists–Francis Collins made it in The Language of God (and Collins wrote the foreword to Dr. Falk’s book). Of course in 2010, we’re seeing more Read More ›