Creatively Advancing into Novelty
This is a comment I left on Tony Jones’ blog a while back when he posed the questions: what is a “person?” Warning: I quote John Cobb (no surprise there). What is a “person?” Well, let’s start small. Multicellular organisms can loosely be divided into two categories: One type establishes order among cells through their…
“The majority of biologists picture mind as emerging at some stage in the evolution of animals. Before that time there was no mind. From no mind comes mind. Agar proposed the alternative that there has been no moment in evolution when mind made its first appearance. Minds and bodies evolved together even though that body…
The genetic determinism of the “new synthesis” in biological studies in the 1930′s and 40′s proposed to have found the explanatory link between Darwinism’s processes of random variation and selective retention and transitions between generations with the discovery of the gene. It was the gene, via the structure of DNA, that served to pass the…
I enjoy responding to Tony Jones’ blog series “Questions That Haunt Christianity.” Recently he posted a question from a reader named Jesse. Below is Jesse’s question and my response. Jesse asks: Is the trajectory of our human culture/world/society positive or negative? In other words, are we fighting the long defeat until Christ returns to set…
Ever wonder what Socrates meant when he said “the unexamined life is not worth living?” I’ll take a crack at explaining. Basically, when we talk about “purpose” we can talk about two types: first-order purpose (or quasi-purpose) and second-order purpose (self-reflective purpose). First order purpose is basically what distinguishes living things from matter. It is…
“The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is…
I’ve been listening to Michael Dowd’s podcast lately and I’m really liking his naturalistic view of reality. I haven’t read his book yet but I think his spiritual and scientific insights offer a meaningful way forward for Christianity. I totally agree with a couple things he writes in one of his recent blog posts: It…