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Monday, July 9, 2012

Tale of Two Scientists

The cover story in the current issue of Christianity Today is a fascinating description of the journey of two Christian biologists and how they have come to two very different conclusions about life's origin and diversification.

One of the men, Darrel Falk, is a theistic evolutionist who believes that the evolutionary process is the means by which God has created all of the forms of life we see today. The other, Todd Wood, is a special creationist who believes that the entire creation occurred within six days as described in the book of Genesis.

Reading their stories they both come across as sympathetic, sincere lovers of science who are trying to "think God's thoughts after Him." I wonder, though, why the author of the article, Tim Stafford, chose not to include a representative of the intelligent design movement in his piece.

Unlike special creation, ID takes no formal position on questions like who created life, how it was done, and how long it took. Their only claim is that whatever the answers to these questions might be it did not happen, contra the Darwinian naturalists, apart from intelligent agency.

Unlike theistic evolutionists, on the other hand, ID advocates argue that signs of intelligent agency permeate the created world, particularly in the enormous amounts of complex information contained in living cells as well as the exquisite fine-tuning of the cosmic values and parameters which constitute the fabric of the universe.

All three agree, though, that whatever happened and however it happened, the notion that life is solely a result of blind, impersonal forces acting randomly over billions of years is simply and profoundly wrong.

In any case, there's a lot in Stafford's article and I encourage you to check it out.