Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Friday, September 19, 2014

The Differences Between "Intelligent Design" and "Evolutionary Creationism" - Part 7



Further Thoughts on “Darwin’s Doubt” after Reading Bishop’s Review (Reviewing “Darwin’s Doubt”: Darrel Falk, Part 2)
http://biologos.org/blog/meyers-inference-to-intelligent-design-as-the-best-explanation-reviewing-da

by Darrel Falk
September 11, 2014

Darrel Falk is a geneticist and past president of BioLogos. Currently he serves as our Senior Advisor for Dialog. Because we value gracious dialog with organizations who do not agree with our perspective, we asked Darrel to participate in the reviews we are running of Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt. Originally his comments were informal, but we thought they were important enough to develop into a blog post. Later, he read an early draft of Robert Bishop’s review, and passed along some thoughts on it as well. We also encouraged him to develop these into a blog post for our series. These two posts will run on our blog today and tomorrow.

Bishop, Falk, and Stearley respond to Darwin’s Doubt from their disciplinary perspectives, and it is important to note that none of them represents some kind of official BioLogos response to the book. We’re interested in presenting a range of responses that scholars from our perspective have made to the book (and Meyer has agreed to respond to them on our blog). As will become apparent, Falk is more sympathetic than Bishop to Meyer’s claim that there is significant revision ahead for evolutionary developmental biology. But like Bishop, Falk doesn’t think the prospects are good for Meyer’s alternative scientific proposal. Today’s post is Falk’s overall impression of the book prior to reading Bishop’s review; tomorrow’s post is his reflection afterwards.

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Part II – Further Thoughts on Darwin’s Doubt after Reading Bishop’s Review

In Part I of this series, I introduced some of my own personal reflections upon reading Darwin’s Doubt. Soon after sending along my reflections of the book to BioLogos president Deborah Haarsma, I had the privilege of readingRobert Bishop’s essay and passed along my comments to Robert and her. Since, as a biologist, I didn’t see the book through the same lens as Robert (an expert in the history and philosophy of science) I’ve been asked to post those thoughts to accompany his. So herewith is a summary of four places where Robert and I may see things through somewhat different lenses.

1. Does Stephen Meyer exaggerate the nature of the rethinking going on in mainstream evolutionary developmental biology?

I don’t think so. Many evolutionary developmental biologists think that we are on the verge of a significant re-organization in our thinking about the mechanics of macro-evolution. The much respected developmental biologistScott Gilbert states: “If the population genetics model of evolutionary biology isn’t revised by developmental genetics, it will be as relevant to biology as Newtonian physics is to current physics.”

That and many other similar statements that I’ve seen in the literature[1] really do suggest that we are on the cusp of some major rethinking about the forces at work in macro-evolution. Those studies will focus more on how biological information is generated, changed, and used, and less on the natural selection filter. Clearly, the evolutionary process itself has been evolving through time and we are seeing that more poignantly than ever before. Although Stephen himself thinks that the tenets of evolutionary biology are essentially bankrupt, I do not think he misrepresents what others think about it. For example he states: “Biologists, Scott Gilbert, John Opitz, and Rudolf Raff have attempted to supplement classical Neo-Darwinism, which they argue, cannot adequately explain large-scale macro-evolutionary change” (emphasis, added). Biologists, he says, are seeking a supplement. Stephen himself thinks they need to start over, but he acknowledges that they do not see it as desperately as he does.

2. The timing of the perceived information problem

Stephen puts considerable effort into showing why he thinks that the well-accepted methods of generating new genes and proteins are ill-conceived. I agree with Robert Bishop that this matter is somewhat beside the point for this particular book. The book, after all, is focused on the Cambrian explosion, which occurred after much of the gene/ protein “tool box” had already been put together through a process spanning 2 billion years or so. However, I do think most of us understand why Stephen did this. He is building a story and he wants the reader to see why he and other leaders of the ID movement think the very core of evolutionary thinking (the method of generating new information) has failed. If, as he sees it, biology can’t explain how new genes were generated in the preceding two billion years, it certainly can’t explain that which results in the generation of a plethora of new body plans in a time interval that is only one to two percent of the time utilized to put the entire cellular tool box together. He has chosen to highlight the effort of Michael Behe in Edge of Evolution and Doug Axe on protein folding. This work has not drawn the applause of mainstream scientists (and for good reason), but that’s not the point. Meyer is trying to build a case for his view that the derivation of information needed to build bodies in any way other than external intelligence is seriously flawed. He’s making his case as strongly as he can and working hard on communicating that clearly to a general audience. I remain amazed at the breadth of his knowledge and communicative skill, even though as I dig into the depths of the scientific papers, I see matters much differently than he does.

3. Generation of new body plans de novo

The big mystery associated with the Cambrian explosion is the rapid generation of body plans de novo. There was never a time like it before, nor has there ever been a time like it again since. Stephen is right about that. Also, as he points out, the big question in exploring the generation of new body plans in that era is how this squares with the resistance of today’s gene regulatory networks to mutational perturbation (i.e. they seem to be almost impossible to change through genetic mutation because virtually all such alterations are lethal). We really have little idea at this point how things would have worked to generate body plans de novo back then given the sensitivity of the networks to perturbation today. As Douglas Erwin elegantly argues in his 2011 paper, there must have been something different taking place as the system was being put in place 550 million or so years ago. I think figuring that out will turn out to be one of the most fascinating pieces of puzzle-solving that molecular biology has ever done. However, unlike Stephen, not only do I think this research is not at a dead-end, I think it will turn out to be among the most exciting frontiers in biological research over the next couple of decades. The work, as most developmental biologists see it, has only just begun, and it is the kind of thing that happens at this cutting edge stage, which makes science so much fun. I’m with Ralph Stearley [pdf] on this: to study the diversity of life and the mechanisms which characterize it is to be enraptured in joy.

4. Living cells as information systems

I agree with Robert that it is quite a stretch to jump from the “failure” of materialistic explanations of the Cambrian explosion (so far) to a scientifically based conclusion that life is intelligently designed. The only case that Stephen makes—so far as I can see—is given that the cell can be considered an information system (and I agree with Stephen that it can), and given that all other known information systems require an intelligence to design them, so the cellular systems that constitute life must be intelligently designed. In building his scientific case, he examines each of the other possibilities that have emerged from biological research and declares, one-by-one, that each has failed. With that only one is left that doesn’t fail his examination—intelligent design. I hope I’m not being facetious, but the main reason that it can pass his test as I see it, is that with one exception it makes essentially no predictions. The one exception of course is that all other information systems will turn out to be designed by outside intelligence. So far that has indeed turned out to be the case; we humans have used our intelligence to design them all.

Concluding Comments

Stephen is right, that none of the other models fit the bill in a fully satisfactory manner yet, but it’s pretty early to declare one to be the winner on the basis of an analogy to human-designed information systems. But more perplexing to me is trying to fathom how this investigation can continue as a scientific project. How will proponents of Intelligent Design take their biological studies from the level of the “best explanation on the basis of analogy” to a project which makes a set of positive predictions? How will they move forward by building a positive research program rather than a negative one based upon the critique of mainstream ideas? What are the biological predictions that will emerge from within their paradigm and how will they test them? I sense the topic for another biology book coming on. If so, and as they proceed, I wish them…joy!

  1. See for example these books or articles by: Gunter Wagner of Yale, Douglas Erwin of the American Museum of Natural History, and Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart of Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.
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Darrel Falk is former president of BioLogos and currently serves as BioLogos' Senior Advisor for Dialog. He is Professor of Biology, Emeritus at Point Loma Nazarene University and serves as Senior Fellow at The Colossian Forum. Falk is the author of Coming to Peace with Science.

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