The question Hans raises regarding the “conservatism principle (CP)” is fair. Does not the CP reveal that once scientific consensus obtains, theologians are then free to adjust their biblical interpretations? But the CP entails more than just recognition of scientific consensus. In the first place, the principle is based on an historical observation, not the…

Thomas Kuhn gained infamy for blowing the whistle on the hallowed status of natural science. He turned the world upside down for anyone who still thinks of science as just the facts ma’am. The truth is far more complex. At any given period, Kuhn argued, members of the scientific community accept a particular way of…

Dear Todd, Thanks for your response to my thoughts about The Quest. I especially like the fact that we have been able to be frank with each other. To summarize what I think is the key point in the exchange, I wrote: As you know from our discussions Todd, I think that when we are…

“Dimidium” sounds like a rare metal, yet it is a planet far away, circling its sun “Helvetios”. Dimidium—more technically called 51 Pegasi b—has something very special to its credit. It is the first planet ever discovered to be circling a sun like ours beyond the solar system. Swiss astrophysicists from Geneva made the breakthrough, hence…

The gap theory helped many Christians in the nineteenth century bridge the chasm between traditional interpretations of Genesis 1-2 and the emerging fossil record. Few people still read the Bible that way, but it was once championed by Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), the Scottish churchman and eloquent gospel preacher. On the other side of the Atlantic,…

In Adam and the Genome, my friend Scot McKnight presents his biblically rooted case for claiming that the term historical Adam is really about a literary or archetypal Adam. It is the argument of Chapters 5-8. To drive the point home the term historical is placed in quotes (“historical”) as he introduces the topic (p….

I have just been reading about the exciting hunt for the Higgs boson— a rather dramatic way to put it, since the scientists involved were not, actually, hunting for a boson, but looking to discover whatever was out there. In this case, however, they indeed found the particle physics had been waiting 40 years for….

“In the beginning,” Genesis declares, “God created the heavens and the earth.” In contrast with other origin accounts, Genesis presents a sovereign God whose speech creates a good, beautiful, and ordered world. But how does Genesis, this “primitive” text, relate to the claims of modern science? Is Genesis to be read as divinely revealed science…