A Christian Approach to

Biological Complexity

Dr. Ard LouisDepartment of Physics

University of Oxfordwww.cis.org.uk

www.faraday-institute.orgwww.cpgrad.org.uk

Colliding cultures?• Christian sub-

culture(s)• Scientific sub-cultures• culture is often

“caught” not “taught”WordsCustomsTraditions BehaviourBeliefsValuesAssumptions

My main argument: Much of the tension between “evolution” and “faith” is due to unrecognized “cultural assumptions”

My main argument: Much of the tension between “evolution” and “faith” is due to unrecognized “cultural assumptions”

OUTLINE

• Self-assembly: things that make themselves

• What does the Bible say about nature?

• What does nature say about God?

Biological self-assembly

http://www.npn.jst.go.jp/ Keiichi Namba, Osaka

• Biological systems self-assemble (they make themselves)• Can we understand?• Can we emulate? (Nanotechnology)

04/19/23

Virus self-assembly

• Self-assembled from identical subunits (capsomers).

• Characteristic number T.• Capsid T: 12 pentamers, 10(T - 1) hexamers.

viruses

Self-assembly of “computer viruses”

Monte-Carlo simulations: stochastic optimisationhttp://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/user/IainJohnson/

Computer viruses?

Self-assembly with legos?

Science has proven:There is no God

Christian reaction: Fear?

OUTLINE

• Self-assembly: things that make themselves

• What does the Bible say about nature?

• What does nature say about God?• Language and metaphors of

evolution

God created and sustains the world

• “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” Gen 1:1

• “For by him [Christ] all things were created … and in him all things hold together” Col 1:16,17

• “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory … sustaining all things by his powerful word” Heb 1:3

Biblical language of creation

• He makes springs pour water into ravines; it flows between the mountains; the wild donkeys quench their thirst Psalm 104: 10,11 (praising God’s creation)

• “Natural” processes are described both as divine and non-divine actions

• 2 perspectives on the same natural world

‘Science’ studies the “Customs of the Creator”

• If God were to stop “sustaining all things” the world would stop existing• Donald MacKay, The Clockwork Image, IVP

• “An act of God is so marvelous that only the daily doing takes off the admiration”• John Donne (Eighty Sermons, #22 published in 1640)

• “Miracles” are not God “intervening in the laws of nature”: they are God working in less customary ways

Newton and the planets

• “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.”

• Sir Isaac Newton

Leibniz objects“For, as Leibniz objected, if God had to remedy the defects of his creation, this was surely to demean his craftmanship”

•John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion, CUP 1991, p147

Leibniz objects

•“And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God”

God of the gaps• This is a fatal step to

take. For it is to assert that you can plant some sort of hedge in the country of the mind to mark the boundary where a transfer of authority takes place. ….. Either God is in the whole of Nature, with no gaps, or He’s not there at all.

Charles Coulson (1910-1974)First Oxford professor of theoretical chemistry

Interpreting the Bible

• What kind of language?• What kind of literature?• What kind of audience?• What kind of context?

•The antidote to bad interpretation is not no interpretation, but good interpretation, based on common sense guidelines

•G. Fee and D. Stuart, “How to Read the Bible for All It Is Worth”, Zondervan (1993), p17

Biblical or cultural?

Genesis 1-3Genesis 1:1-2:3In the beginning God created the skies and the earth. The earth was without form and void; And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.Day (yom) one: God created day and nightDay two: God made the sky (firmament) between the watersDay three: God made dry land and vegetationDay four: God made Sun and Moon(greater and lesser lamps) & he also made the stars (sic!)Day five: God made Sea creatures and flying creaturesDay six: God made Land animals. God made Mankind (adam) Male& Female in God’s imageDay seven: God rested from his work.

Genesis 2:4-25•In the day (yom) that the Lord made the earth and the skies before any vegetation or rain.•God formed the man (adam) out of the dust of the earth (adama)•God planted a garden eastward in Eden, where He put the man •God made out of the ground every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil were also in the garden•God took man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.•God commanded the man not to eat of the tree of good and evil “for in the day (yom) that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Genesis 1-3Genesis 1:1-2:3In the beginning God created the skies and the earth. The earth was without form and void; And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.Day (yom) one: God created day and nightDay two: God made the sky (firmament) between the watersDay three: God made dry land and vegetationDay four: God made Sun and Moon(greater and lesser lamps) & he also made the stars (sic!)Day five: God made Sea creatures and flying creaturesDay six: God made Land animals. God made Mankind (adam) Male& Female in God’s imageDay seven: God rested from his work.

Genesis 2:4-25 cont.•God said: “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him an ally comparable to him”. The LORD God … brought [every beast of the field and every bird of the air] to the mans to see what he would call them. .. But for the man there was not found an ally comparable to him.•God caused the man to sleep, and took his side to make a woman. The man called her wo-man, for she was taken out of man.•For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

What kind of literature?• Genesis 1-2:3• Phrases that occur 10 times:

• 10 times “God said” (3 for mankind, 7 for other creatures)

• 10 times creative commands (3 x “let there be” for heavenly creatures, 7 x “let” for world below)

• 10 x To make• 10 x According to their

kind• Phrases that occur 7 times

(heptads)• “and it was so”• “and God saw that it was

good”

• Genesis 1:2-3• Phrases that occur 3 times

• God blessed• God created• God created men and

women• Other numerical patterns:

• Intro 1:1-2 contains 21 words (3 x 7) and conclusion (2: 1-3) contains 35 words (5 X 7)

• Earth is mentioned 21 times and “God” 35 times

• -- see e.g. H. Blocher “In the Beginning”, p 33 or E. Lucas “Can We Believe Genesis Today” , p 97

What kind of literature?

SHAPED• Day 1

• The separation of light and darkness

• Day 2• The separation of the

waters to form the sky and the sea

• Day 3• The separation of the

sea from dry land and creation of plants

INHABITED• Day 4

• The creation of the lights to rule the day and the night

• Day 5• The creation of the

birds and fish to fill the sky and sea

• Day 6• The creation of the

animals and humans to fill the land and eat the plants

Day 7: The heavens and earth were finished and God rested

FRAMEWORK VIEW

What genre of literature?• Gen2:4-7 -- more patterns:• These are the generations

a. of the heavens b. and the earth c. when they were created d. in the day that the Lord God made e. the earth f. and the heavens.

• Chiastic structure (C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4 P&R (2006))

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

• A completely different emphasis!

What genre of literature?• More like Revelation than like Luke• But very clear in its teaching e.g.

• God created the world• Creation is good

• I Tim 4: 4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,

What genre of literature?• More like Revelation than like Luke?• But very clear in its teaching e.g.

• God created the world• Creation is good • Man is made in God’s image• Mankind (adam) has fallen into sin• A promise of redemption (seed of woman)• MANY! More things• No problems with perspecuity on doctrine

What genre of literature?

• “a conscious and deliberate anti-mythical polemic which meant an undermining of the prevailing mythological cosmologies.”

• Gerhard F Hasel, “The Polemic Nature of the Genesis Cosmology”, Evangelical Quarterly46 (1974), pp. 81-102.

What genre of literature?

• Is it chronological?• “What man of intelligence, I ask, will consider

that the first and second and the third day, in which there are said to be both morning and evening, existed without sun and moon and stars, while the first day was even without a heaven? • Origen 185 - 254: First Principles, 4.3

What genre of literature?

• Is it chronological?

• “On this subject there are three main views. According to the first, some wish to understand paradise only in a material way. According to the second, others wish to take it only in a spiritual way. According to the third, others understand it both ways, taking some things materially and others spiritually. If I may briefly mention my own opinion, I prefer the third”• Augustine of Hippo (354-430) De Gen. ad litt

VIII, 1. (on the literal interpretation of Genesis)

What does the Bible say about nature?

• God sustains the universe• Language of God’s action• Miracles v.s. “customs of the creator”

• God created the universe• Genesis 1-3 – polemic structured

prose, not a journalistic account.• God’s creation is good.

• Bible is not a science textbook• E.g. John Calvin, Augustine, etc….

OUTLINE

• Self-assembly: things that make themselves

• What does the Bible say about nature?

• What does nature say about God?• Language and metaphors of

evolution

What does nature tell us about God?

• What does the Bible say?• the heavens declare the Glory of God - Psalm 19• What is man that you are mindful of him? Psalm 8• For since the creation of the world God's invisible

qualities —his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:20

Natural Theology

• History of Natural theology:• Paley – Newman – Barth …..

• The fundamental thesis of the book is that if nature is to disclose the transcendent, it must be "seen" or "read" in certain specific ways -- ways that are not themselves necessarily mandated by nature itself. It is argued that Christian theology provides a schema or interpretative framework by which nature may be "seen" in a way that enables and authorizes it to connect with the transcendent.

• --- A. McGrath p x about "the Open Secret"

History of life on earth

Grandeur of God?•humans -- last 2 seconds of 24 hr day•not unlike astronomy: the heavens declare the Glory of God - Psalm 19•What is man that you are mindful of him? Psalm 8

In our galaxy there are 100,000 million stars, like our sun. our galaxy is one of 100,000 million galaxies. In a throwaway line in Genesis, the writer tells us, "he also made the stars" .. Gen 1:16

History of life on earth

Grandeur of God?•humans -- last 2 seconds of 24 hr day•not unlike astronomy: the heavens declare the Glory of God - Psalm 19•What is man that you are mindful of him? Psalm 8

If the earth was 24 hours old, then your life is the last millisecond ..

Evolution?

• EMOTIONAL DEBATE ? Does where we come from

determine who we are and how we should then live?

Natural theology?

• EMOTIONAL DEBATE ? Does where we come from

determine who we are and how we should then live?

Natural theology?

2009 – International Darwin Year

Charles Robert Darwin:

1809 Born into Unitarian family1859 Publishes “Origin of Species”• Biological Complexity arises from:

•Variation and Natural Selection

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and … from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and … from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

OUTLINE

• Self-assembly: things that make themselves

• What does the Bible say about nature?

• What does nature say about God?• Language and metaphors of

evolution

Intermezzo: Defining Evolution• Evolution as Natural History

•the earth is old (+/- 4.5 Billion years)•more complex life forms followed from simpler life forms

• Evolution as a mechanism for the emergence of biological complexity

•generated by mutations and natural selection(note: most Christians agree that God created this mechanism)

• Evolution as a “big picture” worldview (scientism)George Gaylord Simpson: "Man is the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him

in mind. He was not planned. He is a state of matter, a form of life, a sort of animal, and a species of the Order Primates, akin nearly or remotely to all of life and indeed to all that is material."

or Richard Dawkins:"Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

Christian approaches to emergence of biological complexity

• Young Earth Creation Science• Earth is about 10,000 years old• Genesis 1,2 are historical in the modern sense• mainly in the last 50 years

• Progressive Creationism• Earth is old• Complexity came about through miracles • Varied views on exegesis of Genesis

• Theistic Evolution/Biologos• Earth is old• Complexity came about through normal processes of God• Genesis 1,2 are theological (framework view --prose poem)

• Intelligent Design• All the above views are strictly ‘creationists’ and believe in

intelligent design• Capital ID is a more recent movement, could be YECS, PE, or

TE.

Language: Random or stochastic?

• Random mutations and natural selection...(chance and necessity -- Monod)

• Stochastic optimisation• e.g. used to price your stock portfolio .....

Lego blocks or clay?

• Evo-Devo Lego Blocks:• pax6• sonic-hedgehog• shaven-baby• tinman

• Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the

Animal Kingdom. S.B. Carroll (Blackwell Science 2005)

Why so few genes?

C. elegans (19,500) & P. pacificus (29,000)

Drosophila Melanogaster

(13,500)

E.coli (5416)Mycoplasma genitalium (483)

(300 minimum?)

H. sapiens (23,000)

S. cerevisiae (5800)

Why so few genes?We share 15% of our genes with E. coli

“ “ 25% “ “ “ “ yeast

“ “ 50% “ “ “ “ flies

“ “ 70% “ “ “ “ frogs

“ “ 98% “ “ “ “ chimps

what makes us different?

Gene language

Why are there so few genes?

complexity comes from the interactions

gene networks

systems biology

transcriptional network for yeast: Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Nothing Buttery

enough P for 2000 matches

humans are collections of chemicals:

enough Fe for 1 nail

enough Cl to disinfecta swimming pool

enough fat to make 10 bars of soap

Nothing Buttery

enough P for 2000 matches

humans are collections of chemicals:

enough Fe for 1 nail

enough Cl to disinfecta swimming pool

Nothing Buttery

enough P for 2000 matches

humans are collections of chemicals:

enough Fe for 1 nail

enough Cl to disinfecta swimming pool

enough fat to make 0.1 bars of soap

Dawkins on being human

• "The individual organism ... is not

fundamental to life, but something that emerges when genes, which at the beginning of evolution were separate, warring entities, gang together in co-operative groups as "selfish co-operators". The individual organism is not exactly an illusion. It is too concrete for that. But it is a secondary, derived phenomenon, cobbled together as a consequence of the actions of fundamentally separate, even warring agents.

• From Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, (Penguin, London, 1998) p 308.

Prof. Richard Dawkins (Oxford)

Gene language[Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.

Denis Noble -- The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP 2006)

Richard Dawkins --

The Selfish Gene (1976)

Contingency v.s.``deep structures’’: Re-run the tape of evolution?

“Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.” In evolution, there is no direction, no progression. Humanity is dethroned from its exalted view of its own importance

S.J. Gould: “Wonderful Life”; (W.W. Norton 1989)

When you examine the tapestry of evolution you see the same patterns emerging over and over again. Gould's idea of rerunning the tape of life is not hypothetical; it's happening all around us. And the result is well known to biologists — evolutionary convergence. When convergence is the rule, you can rerun the tape of life as often as you like and the outcome will be much the same. Convergence means that life is not only predictable at a basic level; it also has a direction.Simon Conway Morris “Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe”; (CUP, 2003)

Convergent Evolution?

Convergent evolution in mechanical design of lamnid sharks and tunasJeanine M. Donley, et al. Nature 429, 61-65 (6 May 2004)

"For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty." (On Growth and Form, 1917.)

Convergent EvolutionNorth America:Placental Sabre-toothed cat

South America”Marsupial Sabre-toothed cat

Convergent Evolutioncompound eye camera eye

Convergent Evolution?

• Enormous number of examples ... from proteins to vision up to societies to intelligence.

• Are rational conscious beings an inevitable outcome? “

The principal aim of this book has been to show that the constraints of evolution and the ubiquity of convergence make the emergence of something like ourselves a near-inevitability. SCM, “Life’s Solution”, (CUP 2005) pp328

Summary•What the Bible tells us about nature

•Created and sustained•Genesis 1

•What Nature can tell us about God•Natural theology and its critics

•God and Evolution:•Extracting much meaning from these mechanisms is hard …. •Metaphors are important

•Self-assembly (things that make themselves)•“random –v.s. stochastic processes”•“gene language” etc..

•There is much more to discover•Atheism of the gaps?

•What the Bible tells us about nature•Created and sustained•Genesis 1

•What Nature can tell us about God•Natural theology and its critics

•God and Evolution:•Extracting much meaning from these mechanisms is hard …. •Metaphors are important

•Self-assembly (things that make themselves)•“random –v.s. stochastic processes”•“gene language” etc..

•There is much more to discover•Atheism of the gaps?

• The Bible tells us about nature• What nature tells us about God

(natural theology)• Evolution and its metaphors …

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Divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages occurred about 6 million years ago; the times of lineage divergence are not to scale

News & Views: The chimpanzee and us, Wen-Hsiung Li and Matthew A. Saunders, Nature 437, 50-51 (1September 2005) .

Case study 2: common descent of human & chimp?

tapestry arguments in biology: chromosomal

banding:

The origin of man: a chromosomal pictorial legacy. J.J Yunis and O. Prakash, Science 215, 1525 (1982)

Humans have 46 (2 X 23) chromosomes

Apes have 48 (2 X 24) chromosomes

chromosome 2: Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan

tapestry arguments in biology: fusion of chromosome 2?

chromosome 2: Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan

tapestry arguments in biology: evidence from the human

genomeChromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of evolution, having emerged as a result of head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes that remained separate in other primates. The precise fusion site has been located in 2q13−2q14.1 (ref. 2; hg16:114455823−114455838), where our analysis confirmed the presence of multiple subtelomeric duplications to chromosomes 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 19, 21 and 22 (Fig. 3; Supplementary Fig. 3a, region A). During the formation of human chromosome 2, one of the two centromeres became inactivated (2q21, which corresponds to the centromere from chimp chromosome 13) and the centromeric structure quickly deterioriated [42].

Generation and annotation of the DNA sequences of human chromosomes 2 and 4, L.W. Hillier et al., Nature 434, 724 (2005).

endogenous retroviruses

In humans endogenous retrovirus sequences make up about 1% of the genome.

Lebedev, Y. B., et al. (2000) "Differences in HERV-K LTR insertions in orthologous loci of humans and great apes." Gene 247: 265-277.

HERV-K insertions

tapestry arguments in biology: more threads of

evidence •Genetic threads

•SINEs (Alu )•LINEs•Retroviral insertions•pseudo genes (e.g. olefaction)•chromosomal inversions

•Phenotypal similarities•Fossils•The tapestry for: do humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor? seems to most biologists almost unbreakably strong

for physicists, mathematicians and engineers -- these arguments may still seem foreign and vague; where is the “proof”?, how do you know? -- so communities talk past each other

Jewish Commentators• “…the sages agree that the creation of this earth and sky

was a single divine event and not a series of distinct occurrences spread out over six or seven days• N.M. Samuelson, “Judaism and the Doctrine of

Creation”, CUP (1994) p115• “The text does not point to the order of the [acts] of

creation … the text does not by any means teach which things were created first and which later [it only] wants to teach us what was the condition of things at the time when heaven and earth were created, namely, that the earth was without form and a confused mass”

• Rashi (1040-1105), “Commentary on Genesis”• Many more examples, e.g. Maimonides (1135-1204)

etc…

• In understanding the central role of figurative language in the early chapters of Genesis, the Church Fathers were following an already established Jewish tradition of creative and highly flexible interpretation. Early Jewish commentaries on Genesis favoured symbolic readings of the early chapters. Many of the early rabbinic writings were of the view that God created everything instantaneously rather than in any particular period of time. The Targums, the Aramaic translations of and commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures with which Jesus and St Paul would have been familiar, were extremely flexible in how they 47 read (and what they read into) these verses. The highly influential Alexandrian Jew, Philo, a contemporary of both Jesus and Paul, explained at some length how the days of creation, the “image of God”, Adam and Eve, and the garden of Eden were all “intended symbolically rather than literally”, being “no mythical fictions…but modes of making ideas visible”. 6 Such figurative readings continued into the Middle Ages, in the work of rabbis such as Rashi, Maimonides and Gersonides, and some Christian theologians such as Nicholas of Lyra. In the process, allegorical readings of Biblical texts became excessive and it was in reaction to this trend that the Reformers downplayed moral, allegorical and anagogical interpretations (representing three strands of the mediaeval Quadrigaor “fourfold sense of scripture”) in favour of a literal reading alone.7 Even then the pattern wasn’t universal. Calvin, for example, favoured a literal interpretation but recognised that Moses, whom he believed authored Genesis, had “adapt[ed] his discourse to common usage”. 8 Rescuing Darwin Early Jewish commentaries on Genesis favoured symbolic readings of the early chapters.

Science has a servant role in interpretation of the

Bible• All truth is God’s truth, so, properly interpreted, science and the Bible cannot contradict

“The Bible must not be placed under any other authority! …no authority, even one at the apex of the scientific world, may impose his authority on the Bible in order to dictate how it is to be understood, even with the best intentions.”“Instead of an authority, however, a ministerial, servant-role apears possible. ….. The knowledge derived from the observation of reality (`science’) would help us to understand the language of the Bible better.” •Henri Blocher “In the Beginning” IVP (1984) p 25

The Bible is not a science textbook

• The whole point of scripture is to bring us to a knowledge of Christ --- and having come to know him (and all that this implies), we should come to a halt and not expect to learn more. Scripture provides us with spectacles through which we may view the world as God’s creation and self-expression; it does not, and was never intended, to provide us with an infallible repository of astronomical and medical information.

John Calvin1509-1564

Warfield on evolution

• B. B. Warfield (1851-1921). A biblical inerrantist as evolutionist. Livingstone DN, Noll MA, 1: Isis. 2000 Jun;91(2):283-304.

• The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the theologian who more than any other defined modern biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open to the possibility of evolution and at some points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a long career Warfield published a number of major papers on these subjects, including studies of Darwin's religious life, on the theological importance of the age of humanity (none) and the unity of the human species (much), and on Calvin's understanding of creation as proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged reviewer of many of his era's important books by scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote on scientific research in relation to traditional Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing on science generally and evolution in particular retrieves for historical consideration an important defender of mediating positions in the supposed war between science and religion.

B.B. Warfield1851-1921

Writers of “the Fundamentals”

• One of the original “Fundamentalists”• There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that

in its view death entered the animal world as a consequence of the Sin of man.

• When you say there is the “six days” and the question whether those days are meant to be measured by the twenty-four hours of the sun’s revolution around the earth -- I speak of these things popularly. It is difficult to see how they should be so measured when the sun that is to measure them is not introduced until the fourth day. Do not think that this larger reading of the days is a new speculation. You find Augustine in early times declaring that it is hard or altogether impossible to say what fashion these days are, and Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, leaving the matter an open question.

James Orr1844-1913

Aside:Emergence of Humans?

Advice from C.S. Lewis

When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely corporeal God making man as a child makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian philosopher may think of the process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final appearance on this planet for an organism fit to receive spiritual as well as biological life. Both mean essentially the same thing. Both are denying the same thing -- the doctrine that matter by some blind power inherent in itself has produced spirituality. (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p 46)

e.g. at what age is a child spiritually responsible to God?John Stott on “Homos Divinus”

Advice from Billy Graham "I don't think that there's any conflict at all between

science today and the Scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren't meant to say, I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man. ... whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God.”

• - Billy Graham quoted by David Frost• Source: Book - Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man

(1997, p. 72-74)

SUMMARYCOMPLEX MATERIAL!

Evolution as:1. Natural history2. Mechanisms to create biological complexity3. World view (evolutionism)

Metaphors are important The mechanisms of evolution can be beautiful

Biblical Interpretation: important to look at genre of literature

COMPLEX MATERIAL!

Evolution as:1. Natural history2. Mechanisms to create biological complexity3. World view (evolutionism)

Metaphors are important The mechanisms of evolution can be beautiful

Biblical Interpretation: important to look at genre of literature

Writers of “the Fundamentals”

• One of the original “Fundamentalists”• There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that

in its view death entered the animal world as a consequence of the Sin of man.

• When you say there is the “six days” and the question whether those days are meant to be measured by the twenty-four hours of the sun’s revolution around the earth -- I speak of these things popularly. It is difficult to see how they should be so measured when the sun that is to measure them is not introduced until the fourth day. Do not think that this larger reading of the days is a new speculation. You find Augustine in early times declaring that it is hard or altogether impossible to say what fashion these days are, and Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, leaving the matter an open question.

James Orr1844-1913

The Bible and Science

The lesson of Galileo, …, should remind us that careful observation of the natural world can cause us to go back to Scripture and reexamine whether Scripture actually teaches what we think it teaches. Sometimes, on closer examination of the text, we may find that our previous interpretations were incorrect.•Wayne Grudem, “Systematic Theology” IVP (1994) p 273

Wayne Grudem

The Bible is not a science textbook

• The whole point of scripture is to bring us to a knowledge of Christ --- and having come to know him (and all that this implies), we should come to a halt and not expect to learn more. Scripture provides us with spectacles through which we may view the world as God’s creation and self-expression; it does not, and was never intended, to provide us with an infallible repository of astronomical and medical information.

John Calvin1509-1564

Advice from Schaefer

• We must take ample time, and sometimes this will mean a long time, to consider whether the apparent clash between science and revelation means that the theory set forth by science is wrong or whether we must reconsider what we thought the Bible says.

• Francis Schaefer

Francis Schaefer1912-1984

Intelligent Design (capitalised)

some key publications and people•The Mystery of Life’s Origin (1984)

•Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. Olsen•Evolution, a Theory in Crisis (1986)

•Michael Denton•Darwin on Trial (1991)

•Philip Johnson•Darwin’s Black Box (1996)

•Michael Behe (CT book of the year)•Icons of evolution (2000)

•Jonathan Wells•No Free Lunch (2001)

•William Dembski

heterogeneous movement -- will focus on ID centred at Discovery Institute

What is ID• Intelligent agency, as an aspect of scientific theory making,

has more explanatory power in accounting for the specified, and sometimes irreducible complexity of some physical systems, including biological entities, and/or the existence of the universe as a whole, than the blind forces of. . . matter.’[1] That is, intelligent design is a better explanation for entities exhibiting complex specified information (CSI) than are appeals to the inherent capacities of nature (i.e. chance and/or physical necessity). ID suggests that the world contains objects that exhaust the explanatory resources of undirected natural causes, and can only be adequately explained by recourse to intelligent causation.

• (definition from Peter S. Williams)

Irreducible Complexity

This result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science ... The discovery [of intelligent design] rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schroedinger, Pasteur and Darwin.”

•Bacterial flagellum, immune system, etc... are too complex to have evolved

Michael Behe (1996)

Complex Specified Information

• CSI -- information that could not have come there by chance alone?

• e.g. when we see a statue v.s. weathered rock• “Law of the conservation of information”

William Dembski

Intelligent Design

• Philosophical issues:• Definition of science (demarcation) ?• Problems, but why not follow the

evidence?

• Theological issues:• when/why does God intervene?• miracles?• Newman/Barth critique

ID and Christians

• Major issues is -- why these miracles?

“And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God” Leibnitz

e.g. what is the Biblical rationale for supernatural action aiding the creation of the flagellum?

•Miracles occur to serve God’s redemptive purpose• Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin etc...

Intelligent Design (capitalised)

•GOOD• Looking at complex questions in science/philosophy• counteracting evolutionism• middle road, broad church?

•LESS GOOD

• Detached from scripture• doesn’t solve some pressing questions (like death before

fall)• very political

• http://www.discovery.org• William Dembski, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, Paul

Nelson

Calvin on using science• As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that Galileo had any direct knowledge of Calvin's writings.

Nevertheless his understanding of the nature of the language used by the Bible when referring to the natural world is the same as Calvin's as the following quotations from the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina show.

• B1. These propositions set down by the Holy Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the capacities of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. (p. 181)

• B2. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. (p. 182)

• B3. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. (p. 182f)

• B4. ...having arrived at any certainties in physics, we ought to utilize these as the most appropriate aids in the true exposition of the Bible and in the investigation of those meanings which are necessarily contained therein, for these must be concordant with demonstrated truths. (p. 183)

• The first two quotations express the same 'accommodation' understanding of biblical language as Calvin adopted. The third recognises that, as a result of this, the literal sense of the biblical text may sometimes be at variance with the scientific understanding of the natural phenomenon described. In the final quotation Galileo makes the point made by Prof. McKay that one reason why biblical interpreters should take scientific knowledge into account is that it will help them to recognise when the biblical writers are using the language of appearance or cultural idioms, and so help them avoid the kind of misinterpretation made by those who condemned Galileo.

lehttp://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/lucas/lecture.html