Tag: Evolution
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Intelligent Design?
I find interesting the “New Atheism” versus “Intelligent Design” confrontation (most trenchant in the USA), which can have the ‘appearance’ of science versus religion. Prominent new atheists are Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, and on my shelves are “The God Delusion” and “God Is Not Great”, both superbly written, containing plenty I agree…
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“In the Beginning was the Word” …
These are the opening words of John’s Gospel, most probably written around 100 CE. Whoever John was, he tried to convey a late 1st century understanding of the person and significance of Jesus. In doing so, he borrowed the term logos from Greek philosophy. This can indeed mean ‘word’, but also includes a variety of…
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Genesis One as a Work of Literature
Genesis 1:1- 2:3 was one of the last contributions to the opening five books of the Hebrew Bible. It was added when they were reaching their final shape, at the hands of Priestly editors. The following Genesis 2:4 to 3:24 ‘creation’ account is much earlier, with a human-like God strolling around his garden, talking to…
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What is (or are) Real?
Since this is so counter-intuitive, and goes against ‘common-sense’, let’s have another go at asking the question, what is real at the most fundamental level? What can we say about the most basic building blocks of all that exists? This doesn’t seem like an unimportant question, because I’m part of whatever it is that’s real.…
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Let me tell you where I am
To borrow the oft-repeated, regulation ‘death blow’ verdict from ‘Dragons’ Den’, “I’m out” as far as the phrase “Intelligent Design” is concerned. It’s too tied-in to fundamentalist and, in my view, obscurantist religious views. “I’m in”, however, as far as the phrase “intelligence and design” is concerned. To me, “Intelligent Design” (especially with capital letters)…
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A Controversial Verse – Genesis 2:7
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”. Due possibly in part to the King James Version’s rendering of this verse, there exists the idea, (in spite of Darwin), that humans differ radically and categorically from…
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My Religious Paradigm (5) The problem of suffering
In re-thinking my current religious paradigm, I’ve suggested that there’s some evidence of intelligence and design in the existence and form of the universe, and that this means that the notion of a god is not an entirely unreasonable proposition. Whereas Darwin’s Theory of Evolution facilitates the setting aside of such a notion, it doesn’t…
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Rethinking ‘God’ (1) ‘Two Different Universes’
Some people don’t have a problem with ‘God’. I’m not writing for them, but for people who do .… The early chapters of the Bible are not about the creation of the Universe. Firstly, they’re not about ‘creation’, but a reshaping of what already existed. Secondly, what that reshaping resulted in, wasn’t so much a…
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Genesis 1: A Critique (i)
GENESIS 1, a mythical account of the ‘creation’ of the world, is an impressive piece of work. We have a self-confident and authoritative God, unseen but heard, whose mere word, like a verbal snap of the fingers, creates order, structure and life, from what was originally chaotic, barren and inert. The six daily stages of…
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