Tag: Francis Collins
Francis Collins, Karl Giberson, and Books and Culture Promote Misconceptions About Intelligent Design, Falsifiability & Junk DNA
In the media, it’s not unusual for an interviewer and interviewee to hold similar views on whatever subject they are discussing. Radio show hosts and podcasters, for example, commonly interview friendly guests. But imagine if Paul Allen interviewed Bill Gates on the merits of Microsoft, and then published the interview as an independent journalistic article in Wired magazine. Not only would it would read like a paid advertisement, but critics would begin wondering if Wired was in business to promote Microsoft products. The Microsoft example is of course fictional, but something like it happened recently when Karl Giberson (executive vice president of the BioLogos Foundation) interviewed Francis Collins (the president of BioLogos), and then published the interview in Christianity Today‘s Read More ›
Clarity and Confusion: Stephen Barr Answers My Questions
Stephen Barr at First Things has responded to the three questions I posed to him in our online dialogue about evolution, God, Christianity, and intelligent design. Parts of Barr’s response are helpful in clarifying the points in contention; other parts continue to leave me perplexed. For those who have not been following our exchange, it began after Barr took issue with this article I wrote for The Washington Post criticizing proponents of theistic evolution such as Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins (who was just nominated by the Obama administration to be the head of the National Institutes of Health, and who was one of the notable supporters of President Obama’s repeal of the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell Read More ›
God and Evolution: A Response to Stephen Barr (part 3)
This is the final installment of three posts responding to Stephen Barr. The first post can be found here, and the second post can be found here. The Collins/Barr Approach: A God Who Misleads? Stephen Barr identifies himself with the position of Francis Collins who argues that although evolution looks like “a random and undirected process,” it nevertheless could have been guided by God. “Evolution could appear to us to be driven by chance, but from God’s perspective the outcome would be entirely specified.” [Collins, The Language of God, p. 205.] Barr takes me to task for highlighting Collins’ use of the word “could” because I implied that “Collins is not sure whether God did in fact know beforehand. Anyone Read More ›
Junk DNA RoundUp (and Rebuttal): How Neo-Darwinism Creates Junk-Hypotheses, Then Resists Their Demise
Sometimes after explaining how the now-defunct junk-DNA mindset was encouraged and fostered by neo-Darwinian evolution, evolutionists respond by asserting that nonetheless some individuals from their camp explored function for junk-DNA. This, they claim, absolves their neo-Darwinian camp from any charges of science-stopping, and shows that the neo-Darwinian paradigm did not hinder research into junk-DNA. But if a 2003 article in Science is any indication, then it seems that the neo-Darwinian paradigm did indeed impose a taboo on research into function for junk-DNA. As the article stated: Although catchy, the term ‘junk DNA’ for many years repelled mainstream researchers from studying noncoding DNA. Who, except a small number of genomic clochards, would like to dig through genomic garbage? However, in science Read More ›
Where’s the Dialogue? Alas, Colleague of Francis Collins at “Biologos” Doesn’t Offer Any
When talking with friendly journalists, theistic evolution proponent Francis Collins typically insists that he wants to initiate a “dialogue” about faith and evolution. But Collins and his colleagues at the Biologos Foundation seem curiously averse to engaging in real dialogue. A case in point is a cranky blog entry posted this week by theistic evolutionist Karl Giberson, Francis Collins’ colleague at Biologos. Giberson, whom I debated at Biola University a few months ago, denounces Discovery Institute’s new Faith and Evolution website as “slick, well-resourced, rhetorically clever, profoundly misleading, and almost completely devoid of any real science.” Whew! Giberson’s own post might be charitably described as “almost completely devoid of any real substance.” Giberson goes on to claim: