Scripture, Cosmology, and Science

A short summary of how the biblical descriptions of the planet and universe are poetic and theological, but not physical, and how the early Christians received this information. See also Jonathan Pageau, Most of the Time, the Earth Is Flat. Orthodox Arts Journal, July 16, 2014.

The Story of Evolution and the Genesis Creation Account

Text of a presentation that focuses on various theories of evolution and the origin of life on Earth.

The Issue of Long Lives in Genesis 5

People are said to have lived hundreds of years in Genesis 5, but why? Many readers of the Bible have used those life spans to count the number of years from Eden and creation. But is that accurate?

A Neuroscientific Reason for Why Retributive Justice is from the Fall,  and Penal Substitution is Immature

The Anastasis Center blog post, Apr 28, 2016, on the Fall and the exile from the Garden. Neuroscientists currently observe that “karmic justice” or meritocratic-retributive justice is the default setting of the most primitive part of our brain. But restorative justice broadly works, even though it requires us to have empathy for even offenders and hope for personal repentance and change. Not only does this become a pastoral challenge, it is an argument against penal substitutionary atonement: It confirms that the fall produced an antipathy towards our fellow human beings that results in people making meritocratic-retributive justice the highest form of justice, even though restorative justice produces better results.

Weird Coincidences, Supernatural Events, Funny Feelings - Is That You God?

A message about experiencing unusual things, and how to interpret them.

Desires, Beliefs, and How We Know Truth: Why Do We Sometimes Not Desire Jesus?

A presentation about how human desire for life, beauty, goodness, love, and justice is suggestive but needs help, and how belief systems present ways of interpreting our desires and also theories of authentication.

Rabbi Yosi ben Halafti, Seder Olam, The Order of the World. Written around 160 CE, this is the first known attempt to read Genesis in a strictly chronological fashion to determine how old the earth is.

Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron. Written near his death in 373 AD. Although Basil accepts the prevailing Greek view that the earth is the center of the universe, he denies that Scripture indicates the shape of the earth (disc, cyclinder, or sphere; Homily 9), and he qualifies Genesis because not all plants have seeds or reproduce by seeds, since they in fact reproduce by various means (Homily 5).

Didymus the Blind of Alexandria, Commentary on Genesis, 1:14, section 92, translated by Robert C. Hill, Fathers of the Church. Didymus argues that the number six is a "perfect number" i.e., it is equal to the sum of its fractions (28 is the next in order). He then says,

"So God, who is responsible for a creation that is perfect, brought it into being in the first perfect number, definitely not for us to claim that six days passed as the sun followed its course six times, the sun not having existed in the first three days, but because the number six was adopted for the sake of reasonableness and harmony." (FOTC pg. 44-5; commenting on Genesis 1:14, section 92).

Augustine of Hippo, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Book 1 Chapter 19 Paragraph 39.  Written in 415 AD.  Paulist Press | Public Domain:

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

“Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [1 Timothy 1.7].” 

Basil and Augustine contrast favorably against the American evangelical Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978):

We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood. (Article XII)

Eugene Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. Wikipedia article. Wigner published his original article in 1960. This link includes the afterlife of his argument.

Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. University of Chicago Press | Amazon page, Aug 1974. Here is a summary of his Critical Realist Epistemology.

T.F. Torrance, The Grammar and Ground of Theology. Grace Communion Seminary, 1981. Lectures given at Fuller Seminary, excellent resource on the interaction between scientific and theological pursuits. Lecture 1 discusses three changes in cosmological knowledge that affected science, epistemology, and theology. He discusses the dualist to unitary view, and the shift from a Newtonian closed system to dynamic-relational-contingent system. Lecture 2 discusses the change from the priority of reason over belief, back to the priority of belief over reason.

Stuart Hameroff, Quantum Computation in Brain Microtubules? The Penrose-Hamero `Orch OR' Model of Consciousness. Royal Society of London Philosophical Transactions A, 1998. See also Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Henry P. Stapp, and Mario Beauregard, Quantum Physics in Neuroscience and Psychology: A Neurophysical Model of Mind-Brain Interaction. Royal Society of London Philosophical Transactions B, June 29, 2005. Quantum physics and neuroplasticity: a space for consciousness and free will? See also Quantum Mind, Wikipedia.

John Polkinghorne, Evolution. ObjectiveBob, Jan 13, 2012. A 14 minute video. John Polkinghorne was a mathematical physicist at Cambridge University who also became a theologian and Anglican priest.

H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry. University of Chicago Press | Amazon page, Oct 3, 1994.

Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria. Harvard University Press | Amazon page, Oct 1, 1996. Cited by David Bentley Hart, in Atheist Delusions, because of the many caricatures of supposed tensions between classical learning and Christianity made of this incident.

Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. Penguin Books | Amazon page, Feb 22, 2005.

Larry Witham, The Measure of God: Our Century-Long Struggle to Reconcile Science & Religion. Harper One | Amazon page, Aug 23, 2005.

Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence that Points Toward God. Zondervan | Amazon page, Sep 2005.

Owen Gingerich, God's Universe. Harvard University Press | Amazon page, Sep 2006.

John Lennox, Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection. High Point Church | Veritas Forum video, Dec 2007)

Denis Noble, The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes.  Oxford University Press | Amazon page, Apr 2008.  Oxford Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology. 

The gene's eye view of life, proposed in Richard Dawkins acclaimed bestseller The Selfish Gene, sees living bodies as mere vehicles for the replication of genetic codes. But in The Music of Life, world renowned physiologist Denis Noble argues that, to truly understand life, we must look beyond the "selfish gene" to consider life on a much wider variety of levels.

Life, Noble asserts, is a kind of music, a symphonic interplay between genes, cells, organs, body, and environment. He weaves this musical metaphor throughout this personal and deeply lyrical work, illuminating ideas that might otherwise be daunting to non-scientists. In elegant prose, Noble sets out a cutting-edge alternative to the gene's eye view, offering a radical switch of perception in which genes are seen as prisoners and the organism itself is a complex system of many interacting levels. In his more expansive view, life emerges as a process, the ebb and flow of activity in an intricate web of connections. He introduces readers to the realm of systems biology, a field that has been growing in strength in the past decade. Noble, himself one of the founders of this field, argues modern systems biology may be the view we need to adopt to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of life.

Drawing on his experiences in his research on the heartbeat, and on evolutionary biology, development, medicine, philosophy, linguistics, and Chinese culture, Noble presents us with a profound and very modern reflection on the nature of life.

Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685. Oxford University Press | Amazon page, Jan 15, 2009.

Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Free Press | Amazon page, Jul 2007 and video, Dec 21, 2010.

Francis Collins and Karl Giberson, The Language of Science and Faith. InterVarsity Press | Amazon page, Feb 2011.

Alister McGrath, Darwinism and the Divine. Wiley-Blackwell | Amazon page, Feb 2011.

Alister McGrath, Surprised by Meaning:  Science, Faith, and How We Make Sense of Things. Westminster John Knox Press | Amazon page, Feb 2011.

V.J. Torley, So You Don't Believe in Adam and Eve? Ask an Atheist for Advice! Uncommon Descent blog, Jun 4, 2011. Reflects on population genetics, etc. See especially options 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10. See also Ian Matthews, Experts Uncover Evidence Of An Ancient War That Lasted 100,000 Years. Newsweek, date unknown, for an illustrated, simple survey.

Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton University Press | Amazon page, Sep 4, 2011.

Jonathan McLatchie, Did They Really Exist? A Biblical and Scientific Defence of Adam and Eve. Apologetics UK blog, Feb 8, 2012. Commenting on population genetics and coalescent theory.

Brian LePort, A Survey of Views on the Historicity of Adam and Eve. The Archives Near Emmaus blog, Jun 5, 2012.

Ann Gauger, On Retrospective Analysis and Coalescent Theory. Evolution News, Aug 6, 2012. On the assumptions and limitations of coalescent theory

Jeff Laird, Neuroscience and Free Will. BLogos blog.

Jean-Claude Larchet, Patristic Views on the Nature and Status of Scientific Knowledge. Mystagogy blog, Mar 11, 2013.

William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument. Reasonable Faith, Jul 29, 2013.

Tom Ingrebritsen, Dealing With Tension Between Science and the Bible. IVCF Emerging Scholars' blog, Jan 8, 2014.

N.T. Wright, Can a Scientist Trust the New Testament?  Information Box | University of Saint Andrews, Feb 17, 2014. This video is Part 1. See also Part 2.

Economist, Faith and Reason: Scientists Are Not As Secular As People Think. Economist, Feb 22, 2014.

We Don’t See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are. Quote Investigator, Mar 9, 2014.

Jonathan Pageau, Most of the Time, the Earth Is Flat. Orthodox Arts Journal, July 16, 2014.

Colleen Walsh, Where Science Meets Creationism. Harvard Gazette, Mar 25, 2015. On geology.

Jesse Carey, What the Man Described as ‘The Next Darwin’ Has to Say About God. Relevant Magazine, Jun 4, 2015.

Sarah Salviander, The Six Days of Creation. Six Day Science Blog. Assumes Genesis 1 describes the entire universe and factors in the "speed" of time based on the size of the universe - very intriguing although I disagree with her interpretation of the scope of Genesis 1

Timothy Larsen, The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith. Oxford University Press | Amazon page, Apr 11, 2016.

April Cordero Maskiewicz, The E Word:  Evolution and Faith. TED talk, Mar 30, 2016.

Jimena Canales, The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time. Princeton University Press | Amazon page, Oct 4, 2016. Einstein's question how can time be measured when all measurements are within time?

David Bentley Hart, Science and Theology: Where the Consonance Really Lies. Renovatio, Journal of Zaytuna College, Jun 5, 2018. Considers especially the notion that human free will does not exist, and argues from both scientific and philosophical standpoints that this theory rests on reductive physicalism. Quantum indeterminacy, which Hart regards as insufficient in itself for human free will, allows for at least some randomness. More serious is the organism-level focus by mathematical biologist Denis Noble, Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity (Amazon book, Jun 2017), who argues that the organism itself cannot be reduced to constituent parts, and still less its atomic and subatomic particles. Hart also argues that mind cannot be reduced to physical matter or energy.

Chris Gehrz, Galileo And The Harmony Of Faith And Science. Anxious Bench | Patheos, Feb 19, 2019. Quotes from Galileo.

Lee Billings, Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prizewinning Physicist Says. Scientific American, Mar 20, 2019. “In conversation, the 2019 Templeton Prize winner does not pull punches on the limits of science, the value of humility and the irrationality of nonbelief”

Christian List, Why Free Will Is Real. Harvard University Press, May 2019. See short article by Christian List, Science Hasn’t Refuted Free Will (Boston Review, Jan 28, 2020) not by quantum indeterminacies, but because larger systems and organisms can behave in ways that are non-deterministically. Weather patterns, for example, have this emergent indeterministic property, observed by statistical mechanics.

Ben Stanhope, (Mis)interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible. Scarab Press | Amazon page, Sep 2020. See Ben Stanhope, The Solid Sky Dome of Biblical Cosmology and the Ancient Near East. Ben S, Jun 19, 2018, including footnotes. Stanhope is very sure that the “dome” theory of the sky and “pillar” theory of earth’s foundations are to be interpreted quite literally.

Sarah Coakley, Evolution, Cooperation, and God. University of Notre Dame Church Life Journal, Oct 15, 2020. “This strategy works so interestingly across the entire evolutionary spectrum (from bacteria right up to homo sapiens) that Nowak would say that cooperation must be counted a third evolutionary principle alongside the classic Darwinian duo of mutation and selection… If there is a God, even ex hypothesi a Trinitarian God of compassion, providential involvement, and sacrificial love, this is the sort of evolutionary process he might well have made.” 

William Lane Craig, What Degree of Evolution Do You Allow for Given the Genesis Account? Dr. Craig, Dec 11, 2020.

Phil Vischer, A Brief History of Young Earth Creationism. Holy Post episode 437, Dec 30, 2020.

Philip Ball, Why Free Will Is Beyond Physics. Physics World, Jan 6, 2021. “There is good reason to believe that causation can flow from the top down in complex systems – work by Erik Hoel of Tufts University in Massachusetts and others has shown as much. The condensed-matter physicist and Nobel laureate Philip Anderson anticipated such notions in his 1972 essay “More is different” (Science 177 393). “The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe,” he wrote. “The behaviour of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviours requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other.” Perhaps this is easier to accept for those working in condensed matter than in high-energy and “fundamental” physics.”

Father Chrysostom MacDonnell, Science and Orthodox Christianity. Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland, Apr 5, 2022. MacDonnell takes the mystical or allegorical interpretation of the creation story to mean not a physical and temporal history, but an idealist or spiritual-archetypal one. This was the approach of Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, although the groundwork was laid by Origen of Alexandria.

Richard Beck, Adam, Fall, and Original Sin, Part 1: Grace Is the Interpretation of History. Experimental Theology, September 1, 2022.

Tim Ritchie, Science and the Sacred Aren’t in Eternal Conflict.  They Are Siblings, Born of Wonder.  WBUR, Mar 21, 2023. 

Exploring Christianity, Christianity and the Beginning of Science

Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p.18 - 19

T.F. Torrance, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge. Eerdmans | Amazon page, 1984. See also Google book.

Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity. Harper One | Amazon page, 2011. See especially ch.14 "The Dark Ages and Other Mythical Eras" and ch.16 "Faith and the Scientific "Revolution"".

David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. Yale University Press | Amazon page, 2009. See especially chapters 3—6.

John Polkinghorne (editor), The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology. Eerdmans | Amazon page, 2010.

James Hannam, Modern Science's Christian Sources. First Things, Oct 2011.

Father Aidan Kimel, Creatio ex Nihilo: The Grammar of Transcendence. Eclectic Orthodoxy blog, Apr 15, 2015.

Wikipedia, List of Christians in Science and Technology (Wikipedia article)

David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. Basic Books | Amazon page, 2009.

David F. Prindle, Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution. Prometheus Books | Amazon page, 2009.

Dennis Venema and Darrel Falk, Does Genetics Point to a Single Primal Couple? BioLogos Foundation, Apr 5, 2010. On the origins of human genetic diversity

News Desk, World's Languages Traced Back to Single African Mother Tongue: Scientists. PRI, Apr 15, 2011.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning. Amazon page, 2012.

Michio Kaku, Is God a Mathematician? Big Think video, Jan 2, 2013.

Max Tegmark, Religion, Science, and the Attack of the Angry Atheists. Huffington Post, Feb 19, 2013.

Max Tegmark, The MIT Survey on Science, Religion, and Origins: The Belief Gap. MIT, Feb 11, 2013.

Peter Richardson, The Science Delusion. Truthdig, Jun 20, 2013.

Ming Wang, Prominent Doctor Says Faith and Science Can Work Together. The College Fix, Jul 22, 2013. On how his commitment to fetal personhood led to a new discovery.

Judith Sheluvitz, Why Do Grandmothers Exist? Solving an Evolutionary Mystery. New Republic, Jan 29, 2013.

Peter Richardson, The Science Delusion. Truthdig, Jun 20, 2013.

Robert Lustig, Fat Chance, Fructose 2.0. University of California TV, Oct 18, 2013. On causal inference vs. scientific proof with randomized controlled trials, at the 1:00:00 mark; a type of evidence which is necessary when you cannot prove something by repeated experiments

Economist, Faith and Reason: Scientists Are Not As Secular As People Think. Economist, Feb 22, 2014.

Giles Fraser, Good Luck, Physicists, With Those Tricky "Meaning of Life" Questions. The Guardian, Mar 24, 2014.

Vince Vitale, God's Not Dead. Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, Mar 8, 2014.

Alan Lightman, Book Review: 'Why Science Does Not Disprove God' by Amir D. Aczel. Washington Post, Apr 10, 2014.

Massimo Pigliucci, Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Value of Philosophy. Scientia Salon, May 12, 2014.

Gary Gutting, Does Evolution Explain Religious Belief? New York Times, Jul 8, 2014.

Robert D. Martin, The Female Climax: An Evolutionary Perspective on the Female Climax. Psychology Today, Jun 5, 2014.

Nury Vittachi, Scientists Discover That Atheists Might Not Exist, and That's Not a Joke. Science 2.0, Jul 6, 2014.

Casey Luskin, Evolutionary Studies Suggest that Atheists, Whatever They Say to the Contrary, Really Do Believe in God. Evolution News, Aug 1, 2014. Notes Vittachi's study citing "karmic justice" (that is, cosmic retributive justice) as the "default setting" for our the "religious part" of our brains. This poses an enormous question. I underscore that this finding comes from the current understanding of cognitive neuroscience. Since that is the case, it helps to explain to me why, when John Calvin developed the idea of penal substitution, that theory played on the "karmic justice" section of the human brain and then served to supplant the theological structure of genuine Trinitarian thought. For the first 1500 years, Christian Trinitarian theology was *not aligned with the "default setting" in our brains. The earliest atonement theory was medical and not penal, the implications for relationships and socio-political ethics was for restorative justice and not retributive justice, and the biblical motif of fire was interpreted as rehabilitative and purifying, not retributive and punishing. So: Christian theology and teaching of this type (firmly held by the Eastern Orthodox, along with Catholics and Protestants like me who are calling for a return to the Nicene period) has to consistently overcome something deeply wired in our brains. It does not take advantage of the brain, or "hijack" the brain, as Dr. Andy Thomson states at the American Atheists Conference 2009 without any "bias" whatsoever (of course!). This serves to explain why the most deeply philosophical forms of both ancient Hindu and ancient Greek cosmology agreed about cycles of karma, reincarnation, and the principle of retribution. That view of the world just makes more sense to us intuitively. It also concurs with the more natural observations of how the world works: in endless cycles and circles. But, Judeo-Christianity, as a belief system, has a higher burden of proof. The only way it can offer an epistemology by which it can be evaluated is in the realm of history. Just as serving on a jury requires us to dig into the unrepeatable history of past personal, human events, so the epistemology that is appropriate to Judeo-Christianity is a historical epistemology. Are there signposts in history upon which it builds the case for a good God who intervenes on behalf of human beings and against human evil? Entertaining as videos like Dr. Thomson's are, nothing conclusive can be drawn from them, except that some practitioners of neuroscience overstate themselves, as they are not even operating in the appropriate academic discipline.

Eric Metaxas, Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God. Wall Street Journal, Dec 25, 2014.

Jack Miles, Why God Will Not Die. The Atlantic, Dec 2014. Science reveals how much we don't or can't know, yet we want closure

Rod Dreher, God is Not Found Through Science. The American Conservative, Jan 2, 2015.

Cathleen O'Grady, Modern Languages Show No Trace of Our African Origins. ARS Technica, Jan 27, 2015.

Stephen Mackereth, God, Science, and the Red Pill. Harvard Crimson, Mar 9, 2015.

Natasha Crain, Are Christians Less Intelligent Than Atheists? Here’s What All Those Studies REALLY Say. blog, Apr 23, 2015.

James Bishop, Former Atheist Astrophysicist, Sarah Salviander, Explains Her Journey to Christianity. Historical Jesus Studies blog, May 23, 2015.

Benjamin L. Corey, Does the Discovery of Earth 2.0 Mark the End of Religion? Patheos blog, Jul 24, 2015.

Cathleen O'Grady, MIT Claims to Have Found a "Language Universal" That Ties All Languages Together. ARS Technica, Aug 6, 2015.

Ben Brumfield, The Universe is Slowly Dying, Study Shows With Unprecedented Precision. CNN, Aug 11, 2015.

Ryan Patrick McLaughlin, The Real Theological Challenge of Evolution. Patheos, Sep 16, 2015.

Olivia Goldhill, Neuroscience Backs Up the Buddhist Belief that "the Self" Isn't Constant, But Ever-Changing. Quartz, Sep 20, 2015.

David Kaiser, How Politics Shaped General Relativity. New York Times, Nov 6, 2015.

Tim Reddish, Learning from History? The Absorption of Scientific Worldviews into Theology. BioLogos, Nov 9, 2015.

Richard Rohr, Quantum Entanglement. blog, Nov 12, 2015. Parallels the unknown relation of Newtonian, Einsteinian, and quantum theories to other areas.

Amanda Gefter, Quantum Mechanics Is Putting Human Identity on Trial: If Our Particles Have No Identity, How Can We? Nautilus, Nov 19, 2015.

Pete Enns, So, Theologian, Want to Know More About Biology? Pete Enns blog, Dec 2, 2015. A list of recommended readings.

David Byrne, How Progressives Stole Christian History. Crisis magazine, Dec 16, 2015.

Sebastian Anthony, Richard Dawkins Gives Science a Bad Name, Say Fellow UK Scientists. ARS Technica, Jan 11, 2016.

Olivia Goldhill, Philosophers Want to Know Why Physicists Believe Theories They Can't Prove. Quartz, Jan 10, 2016.

Dawn Papple, Neuroscience Research: Does Free Will Actually Exist? Inquisitr, Jan 10, 2016.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Why So Many Scientists Are Ignorant. The Week, Mar 8, 2016.

Robin Parry, God is More Than an Intelligent Designer. BioLogos, Mar 31, 2016.

Amanda Gefter, The Case Against Reality. The Atlantic, Apr 25, 2016.

Amanda Gefter, The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality. Quanta Magazine, Apr 21, 2016.

Frank Wilczek, Why Is the World So Beautiful? (On Being, Apr 28, 2016.

Jon Miltimore, World-Famous Scientist: God Created the Universe. Intellectual Takeout, Jun 6, 2016. Physicist Michio Kaku:  “I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.”

Ross Anderson, Fancy Math Can’t Make Aliens Real. The Atlantic, Jun 17, 2016.

James Blachowicz, There is No Scientific Method. New York Times, Jul 4, 2016.

Brian Resnick, Humans and Neanderthals Had Sex: But What Is For Love? Vox, Sep 14, 2016.

Carl Zimmer, A Single Migration From Africa Populated the World, Studies Find. New York Times, Sep 21, 2016.

Fiona MacDonald, Harvard Scientists Think They've Pinpointed the Physical Source of Consciousness. Science Alert, Nov 8, 2016.

N.T. Wright, If Creation is Through Christ, Evolution is What You'd Expect. BioLogos, Apr 24, 2017. A short, excellent 4 minute reflection on Colossians 1 and Genesis 1.

Sirin Kale, Science Has Consistently Underestimated Women Because Scientists Are Sexist. Broadly, Jun 21 2017.

Nicholas St. Fleur, In Cave in Israel, Scientists Find Jawbone Fossil From Oldest Modern Human Out of Africa. New York Times, Jan 25, 2018.

Ian Sample, Neanderthals - Not Modern Humans - Were First Artists on Earth. The Guardian, Feb 22, 2018.

Ron Choong, Interview with Merrill Grant. Academy of Christian Thought, Mar 19, 2018. Introduces Choong's explorations into theology, cognitive neuroscience, archaeology, and history.

Nicole Arce, Massive Genetic Study Reveals 90 Percent Of Earth’s Animals Appeared At The Same Time. Tech Times, May 30, 2018.

Ben James, A Sneaky Theory of Where Language Came From. The Atlantic, Jun 10, 2018. With mention of Noam Chomsky and others who believe that linguistic complexity emerged near-instantaneously.

R. Brian Ferguson, War Is Not Part of Human Nature. Scientific American, Sep 1, 2018. Argues that collective killing depends on cultural and political conditions of large societies that emerged 12,000 years ago. Intriguing, but might diminish the significance of individual murders or homicides.

Robby Berman, The Universe is Dying, New Study Confirms. Big Think, Dec 14, 2018. Shows that the universe is winding down to coldness and death; Jesus' resurrection is the only hope for life

Ferris Jabr, How Beauty Is Making Scientists Rethink Evolution. New York Times, Jan 9, 2019. "The extravagant splendor of the animal kingdom can’t be explained by natural selection alone — so how did it come to be?"

Lizzie Wade, Did Judgmental Gods Help Societies Grow? Science Magazine, Mar 19, 2019.

Christopher Howell, Seraphim Rose and David Bentley Hart: Two Orthodox Responses to Modernity. Public Orthodoxy, May 10, 2019. Highlights their approaches to science and biblical interpretation.

David Gelernter. Stephen C. Meyer, David Berlinski, David Gelernter, and Peter Robinson, Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Discovery, Jul 24, 2019. And Jennifer Kabbany, Famed Yale Computer Science Professor Quits Believing Darwin’s Theories. The College Fix, Jul 30, 2019. Re: David Gelernter.

Bahar Gholipour, A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked. The Atlantic, Sep 10, 2019. “For decades, a landmark brain study fed speculation about whether we control our own actions. It seems to have made a classic mistake.”

Becky Ferreira, There’s Growing Evidence That the Universe is Connected by Giant Structures.  Vice, Nov 11, 2019. 

Peter Wehner, NIH Director: ‘We’re on an Exponential Curve’. The Atlantic, Mar 17, 2020. “Francis Collins speaks about the coronavirus, his faith, and an unusual friendship.” The article goes far beyond the title - touching and personal. See also The Economist, Francis Collins on Science and Faith. The Economist, May 23, 2020.

University of Surrey, Researcher Proposes New Theory of Consciousness. Medical Xpress, Oct 20, 2020. Re: electromagnetic energy in the brain, which semantically and theoretically could be integrated with the Eastern Orthodox teaching of the divine energies.

Inspiring Philosophy, Top Ten Biblical Problems for Young Earth Creationists.  Inspiring Philosophy, Dec 11, 2020.  

Rachel Maddow, 'Science Was Distorted & Rejected': Dr. Fauci On Working With Trump Admin. MSNBC, Jan 23, 2021. Points out how bad science-denial was by Trump and his administration.

PBS Eons, The Genes We Lost Along the Way. PBS Eons, Feb 24, 2021. “Our DNA holds thousands of dead genes and we’ve only just begun to unravel their stories. But one thing is already clear: we’re not just defined by the genes that we’ve gained over the course of our evolution, but also by the genes that we’ve lost along the way.” We have lost the ability to make our own Vitamin C; the uricase enzyme that metabolizes uric acid; bitter taste receptors that once protected us from natural toxins and poisons.

Alan Lightman, We Living Things Are an Accident of Space and Time.  The Atlantic, Sep 8, 2022.  “Even if life existed on every planet that could support it, living matter in the universe would amount to only a few grains of sand in the Gobi Desert.”

Chris Baraniuk, Scientists Can No Longer Ignore Ancient Flooding Tales. The Atlantic, Oct 10, 2022. “Indigenous stories from the end of the last Ice Age could be more than myth.”

Sabine Hossenfelder, Does Consciousness Influence Quantum Effects? Sabine Hossenfelder, Nov 19, 2022. Entertaining and brilliant.

John Horgan, The Delusion of Scientific Omniscience.  John Horgan, Aug 13, 2023.

Kevin J. Mitchell, How Life Evolved the Power to Choose.  Princeton University Press, Oct 27, 2023. 

Luke J. Jansen, The Teleological Menace: Why Biology (Still) Requires God.  Reaching Into Plato’s Cave, Oct 27, 2023.  “Biology is unique among the sciences in its apparently absolute dependence on language that implies a goal, direction, or intention. Does this mean that biology IS goal-oriented, or directed? If so, that has huge philosophical and theological implications!?”

Elizabeth Bruenig, The Evidence That God Exists. The Atlantic, Mar 26, 2026. “Searching for scientific proof for faith misunderstands faith.”

These are the images used in artistic physical displays. They are survey questions and conversation starters that are topically and thematically organized. They demonstrate how Jesus is relevant to each topic or theme. You can also just view the images on your device. If you would like, see all our Conversation Stations; below are the ones that relate to the topic of Science.

Whose Justice? (and instructionsand Christian Restorative Justice Study Guide)

Whose Justice? for Harvard Law School

What Can We Do About Evil?(and instructions and conversation tree) and smaller version and brochure version

Is a Good Friend Hard to Find?(and instructions and conversation tree)

Que Podemos Hacer Sobre La Maldad? for the Asociacion Dominicana de Estudiantes Evangelico, 2014

What Story Do You Live In? (and associated message)

Does the Good Outweigh the Bad? (and instructions)

Find Your Heart's Desire? (and instructions and theological essay)

How Much of an Atheist Are You? (and instructions)

Your Body: Does it Have a Purpose? (and instructions) 

What Are You Here for Anyway? (and instructions)

How Much Truth is in Harry Potter?