A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - 5 Creationist Persecution of Theistic Evolutionists – the Real ‘Cancel Culture’        While the creationists’ allegation of persecution and censorship has been shown to be grossly overblown, the reality is that creationists have been swift both to suppress the teaching of evolution through political power, and to drive out of their faith communities anyone who accepts evolution. Examples of anti-evolution legislation in America are numerous and range from the 1925 Butler Act which prohibited the te ..read more

A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - 3  The Evolution of Information – Even More Creationist Errors        While CVA’s article is replete with gross misunderstandings of evolution, their assertion that “no one has ever observed an information-increasing genetic change of one type of organism to another, let alone the whole process of microbes-to-man evolution over millions of years” does warrant a complete takedown as it ably demonstrates just how poorly-researched CVA’s attack on evolution is, something that is sadly characteristic of ..read more

 A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - 2 Historical Science Makes Accurate Predictions     In the section “Normal Operational Science Vs. Historic Science”, CVA expands on their argument asserting that The study of microbes-to-man evolution is a “historic” form of science that is very different to normal “operational” science which is done in the present and involves observation, experimentation and can be repeated.  Man’s achievements in the operational scientific fields gives us confidence to board an aeroplane, or undertake a MRI scan to see wh ..read more

  A Refutation of God-Directed Evolution, the Bible and the BASF - I   Introduction   Young earth creationists attempt to dismiss evolutionary biology, cosmology, and geology by asserting they are somehow inferior to experimental sciences, or by pitting them against “operational science” which they claim is ontologically superior to the historical sciences. As such, it is a slightly less risible version of Ken Ham’s “were you there?” chant which he teaches to children as a way of refuting evolution. Needless to say, credible philosophers of science do not accept the YEC distorti ..read more

A few years ago, I referred to a fundamentalist Christadelphian website Christadelphian Answers which had made the regrettable mistake of linking the admirable goal of providing a Christadelphian apologetics site with evolution denialism. I hadn't thought of it for some time until looking at an old post on a Christadelphian forum ostensibly dedicated to evolution denialism that referenced a Christadelphian Answers article that claimed to provide a case against common descent. When I tried to look up that post, I found the link dead; evidently, Christadelphian Answers is no more. One of course ..read more

When By One Man, an anti-evolutionary screed by Colin Byrnes and Matt Jamieson was released a few years ago,  I made the conscious decision to avoid commenting on it, reasoning that letting it sink into oblivion rather than give it the oxygen of publicity was by far the best option to take. Health issues also played a factor in not reviewing it as the last thing my mental health needed was to wade through yet another factually-inaccurate tendentious anti-evolution rant. In addition, given that the lack of truly new anti-evolution arguments meant that I was posting only intermittently, I s ..read more

Ancient Israelite Cosmogeography   Introduction   The recently released images of our universe captured by the James Webb space telescope bring home just how ancient and vast it is. Currently, the universe is believed to be 13.8 billion years old, and while we don’t know how large the entire universe is, the observable universe is estimated to be around 93 billion light years in diameter, and consists of around 200 billion galaxies. The current view of the universe as an unimaginably vast expanse containing hundreds of billions of galaxies is a fairly recent view, dating back aroun ..read more

A few days ago, I ran across a collection of Christadelphian fundamentalist essays on a somewhat eclectic range of subjects, whose main unifying theme appears to be areas where fundamentalist theology come into collision with the modern world. One long, rambling article attempted to cover evolution, but unsurprisingly failed to engage the scientific evidence for evolution, taking refuge in that old fundamentalist standby, the appeal to the "shifting sands of science" trope. Amusingly, the anonymous author used that exact phrase, Science is changing all the time. What may be considered today to ..read more

I have often considered writing a book on evolutionary creationism from a Christadelphian perspective and for a Christadelphian audience, but a number of good friends have advised me against that. Given the number of excellent books on the subject that already exist and the relatively few Christadelphian-specific theological points that such a book would make, there is much wisdom in that advice. Besides, as the author of Ecclesiastes noted, of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. What I believe is useful is providing a selective bibliography of books ..read more

Two recently published articles caught my eye today. One reports on the analysis of Initial Upper Palaeolithic human remains from Bulgaria that showed recent Neanderthal ancestry [1], the other reports on the analysis of a skull from the Czech Republic which showed the individual to have been one of the earliest people in Europe following the expansion out of Africa [2]. Dating between 42,000 to at least 45,000 years, it is worth noting that we have here yet more evidence for the antiquity of modern humans far outstripping the ~6000 years limit given by a fundamentalist interpretation of the B ..read more