The Genealogical Adam and Eve is an unusual book in that it arises out of an ongoing civic practice of science (ch. 1). My goal is a better conversation in which we might understand each other. In aspiring to humility, tolerance, and patience, we might make space for our differences. Personally, I am a Christian…

Dr. Joshua Swamidass has undertaken quite a task: to persuade a wide range of readers, both Christian and non-Christian, that Adam and Eve did in fact exist. Specifically, they were created de novo by God only a few thousand years ago, placed in the Garden of Eden, fell into temptation and sin, were exiled, and…

If you have studied logic, you have used them. The English logician John Venn (1834–1923) left a fine analytical tool for later generations of students to employ: the Venn diagram. These figures, which provide a graphical method for representing the logical relationships among sets, propositions, and concepts, were much on my mind as I read…

The disruption of a pandemic clearly shows us the tension that mounts in the face of uncertainties. We also see real danger adopting and acting from dogmatic positions when the data leaves an ambiguity in how best to read and understand it. The danger posed by a reluctance to patiently wait in persistent and mounting…

This is a fascinating and helpful book, important in our day. I am thankful for it. It is not a perfect book, of course. There is only one of those! I cannot agree with everything Joshua Swamidass writes. In fact, that would not be possible because he allows for so many mutually contradictory options for…

Joshua Swamidass’s The Genealogical Adam and Eve is one of the most important books in science and religion published in recent decades. It has won deserving praises from scientists and scholars from different worldviews, and has convinced sceptics (e.g., biologist Nathan Lents) and Christians (e.g., biologist Darrel Falk) to change their views concerning the compatibility of…

What to do with Adam and Eve? The consensus view within the scientific community is that modern humans, Homo sapiens, evolved from primates and that this process took approximately two million years. During this time there arose several transitional species of hominids along with parallel species that were close relatives. With some of these relatives,…

One of the joys of inhabiting an explicitly interdisciplinary space is that one is constantly challenged and stimulated by ideas, critiques, and voices that collectively defy easy conceptual or disciplinary categorization. I consider myself extremely fortunate to exist in such a space, addressing theological questions by drawing upon scholarship not only from specific faith traditions,…

Sarah Lane Ritchie’s Divine Action and the Human Mind is a well-written treatise advocating for a robust theistic naturalism that affirms God’s active presence not only in the human mind, but throughout the natural world. Let’s clarify her terminology since, on the surface, it would seem that “theistic naturalism” is an oxymoron. The standard philosophical…

This volume is an exceptionally valuable contribution to the debate on the relation between theology and science. In what follows I want to take up three major issues that deserve further attention. First, whether her arguments about the success of science are sufficient to trump intuitions driven by such phenomena as consciousness are successful. Second,…

As reflected in the two parts of her book, Sarah Lane Ritchie’s project is twofold. She first critiques the “standard divine action model,” which she grounds in the Divine Action Project (p. 7). According to such models: God doesn’t intervene, and so doesn’t go against natural processes or the laws of nature. Rather, God acts…

There is a tension between scientific accounts of nature and theological accounts of God’s action in nature. On the one hand, the more we learn from science, the more difficult it becomes to find a place for God to act in the natural world. On the other hand, a robust theology of the relational and…