New Evolutionary Discovery

I posted earlier this month that I’m reading a lot about science and faith. An article in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention this morning about a new fossil discovery. The article is here. If you read it, notice that there are already two “camps” of thought in regards as to the direction of common descent. Interesting stuff…

Reading and Listening…

Time for a book and music update. I haven’t found a ton of interesting music in the last few months or so. But here’s a few:

The Bird and the Bee, Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future.

Audioslave, Revelations.

Lo-pro, Self-titled.

I’ve mostly been reading for my Sunday school class, specifically in the area of science and faith. This has been a huge challenge for me intellectually and spiritually. I grew up in a conservative home that forcefully stood up for the belief in a literal Genesis and saw science and faith as contradictory. Now, I know there’s a lot more to the Genesis account than the literalness one finds in a car manual. I also know that the measurable half-lives of uranium, potassium, and stronium put the date of the earth at 4.5 billion years. I believe science and faith can be affirming of each other - though I’m not sure of all the details. I’ll let you know how all of that turns out after I’m done. Anyway, along with frequent cyber-visits to the Faraday Institute, here’s my list I’ve been reading – it’s an enormous hodge-podge of various positions. I don’t plan to immediately adopt one over the others after I finish them all (I’m about halfway through), but I do have a responsiblity to relay each position accurately to the congregation I serve. Ordered by topic:

Intelligent Design:

Gonzalez and Richards, The Privileged Planet

Owen Gingerich, God’s Universe

Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box

Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution

Fazale Rana, The Cell’s Design

Dembski and Ruse, eds., Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA

Creationism:

Grady McMurtry, Creation: Our Worldview

John Whitcomb, The World that Perished

Theistic Evolution:

Francis Collins, The Language of God

John Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology

John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion

David Snoke, The Biblical Case for an Old Earth

Secular Evolution:

Johnjoe McFadden, Quantum Evolution

Brent Dalrymple, The Age of the Earth

Other:

John Haught, God and the New Atheism

Brian Appleyard, Understanding the Present: an Alternative History of Science

Anthony Flew, There Is a God

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the relationship between faith and science as I prepare to teach my class. Are science and faith enemies or friends?