Christian thinkers in science

these people are fascinating ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_T._Bakker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Isham

I'll add/write more on this eventually. I hadn't heard of the dinosaur guy before.

molecular evolution

some interesting stuff on molecular evolution, which I hope to come back to

starting with a post by Mike Behe, on a proposed mechanism for the evolution of complex cellular systems like the spliceosome: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/08/irremediable_complexity049851.html

"Overwhelmingly, progress in biology has consisted of finding new and ever-more-sophisticated properties of systems that had been thought simple. If apparently simple systems are much more complex than they initially seemed, I would bet heavily against the hypothesis that apparently complex systems are much simpler than they appear."


also, I will read this eventually: directed evolution and enzyme alterations:
http://www.nature.com/nrm/journal/v10/n12/full/nrm2805.html

discordant beauty

You never know what temporal days may bring

So laugh, love, live free and sing.

When life is in dis/cord

Praise ye the Lord.

-Anberlin

the html on this site has gone weird and formatting is a hassle, so I don't bother when I'm meant to be studying

naturalism as explanation

I'm currently reading a paper by Peter van Inwagen on whether God is an unnecessary hypothesis and am absolutely drinking it up.

Thought I'd share (the insight below is not particularly controversial, but I find it is helping to clarify some things; you've gotta love analytical philosophy. I don't think I've ever seen this stated so clearly and it leads on to a bunch of things that I'm excited about.), partly as a reminder to me in future to read it again when I have time to scribble some thoughts on related things:

Consider the proposition that there exist natural things. This is a fact, and one easily verified by observation. Has it a purely natural explanation? That seems unlikely. How could facts about the properties of natural things and how they are related to one another (which are the only facts a purely natural explanation may appeal to) explain the existence of natural things? The difficulty of seeing how there could be an answer to this question suggests a general principle: To explain the existence of things of a certain type, we must somehow appeal to things that are not of that type.

...

Reflection on the fact that there are natural things suggests that the best course for the proponents of the superfluity argument to take might be to say that they hadn’t got their premise quite right, and to qualify it as follows: insofar as an observed fact has an explanation, this explanation is a purely natural one. That is, perhaps they should concede that some observed facts have no explanation at all, and go on to say that those observed facts that do have an explanation have a purely natural one. They could say that the proposition that there are natural things was a necessary truth, and thus had no explanation – at any rate, no causal explanation. But it doesn’t seem very plausible to suppose that the proposition that there are natural things is a necessary truth. The friends of the superfluity argument would, I think, do better to maintain that the fact that there are natural things is a brute, contingent fact – a fact because there are natural things, contingent because there might have been no natural things, brute because there is no explanation whatever of there being natural things.

How plausible is the thesis that every fact has either a purely natural explanation or else no explanation at all? Theists will certainly not find this thesis plausible. Theists think that at least one observed fact, the fact that there are natural things, has an explanation and has no natural explanation – its explanation being, of course, that there are natural things because God created them. Doesn’t the thesis that everything we observe either has no explanation whatever or else has a purely natural explanation simply assume the falsity of theism?

more here: http://andrewmbailey.com/pvi/Is_God_Unnecessary.pdf

Zeal

Question for the day:

Is zeal without knowledge dangerous or just disturbing/embarrassing in our apathetic world?

meaningful exchanges

The gospel: it’s truly relevant

Intrinsically; part of it.

Selfishness’s final solution

Good news: life which goes on and on

But how can someone communicate

This - 'true but inconvenient'?

Our faux-righteousness is no payment

Grace, free; generously given

Little surprise, faces resistance

All men want to be sovereign

Yet God exchanged divinity’s throne

With servant’s form; that’s upside down!

Crucified so that peace may be known

Take up your cross, the slave is now crowned

What of ourselves, now Death's overturned?

May our lives help make this Truth heard?

ambiguous violence

Man, the London riots.

What's up with that?!

Maybe I'll write more on this sometime.

If you don't believe that people are sinful, check out what's going down over there.

On a lighter note, I found this comment from the Metropolitan Police's spokesman a tad ambiguous:
"Those involved in criminality should be under no illusion that we will pursue you."

standing in my defense

One of my favourite song verses/sections:

Your blood: speaks a better word
Than all the empty claims I've heard upon this earth
Speaks righteousness for me
And stands in my defense

Jesus it's Your blood.



Some day I intend to write more about this; about how and why and that the blood of Jesus the Messiah was shed to rectify my stubborn opposition to the God who created me and is sovereign over the universe.

Your comments, of whatever stripe, are welcome. This is not merely some article of lofty faith for me, but really important to how I live my life and why I do what I do - if I'm wrong about this, I want to know and if you are, I think you should want to as well.