Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Charles Darwin

Science Corner: Observing Black History Month on Darwin Day

drosophila photo
Joseph Graves studied aging in Drosophila fruit flies, which are easier to get licensed images of. (Photo by Martin Cooper Ipswich )

Since today is Darwin Day, some comment seems warranted–especially because I see which science & faith topics are most popular here on the blog. At the same time, I feel pretty conflicted about the idea. While I appreciate Darwin’s contributions to science, I also appreciate why honoring him specifically seems like a deliberate tweak of folks who find evolution challenging. And I think it’s possible to put too much focus on Darwin himself and exacerbate the impression that evolution was just an idea he had that caught on for ideological rather than scientific reasons. So let’s talk about Joseph Graves, Jr., the first African American to earn a PhD in evolutionary biology.
[Read more…] about Science Corner: Observing Black History Month on Darwin Day

Science Book Club: When Science & Christianity Meet Ch 8

Photo of nautilus shell fossil
I thought this was a striking fossil, and hey, fossils are relevant to Darwin, right? (Photo by Tjarko Busink )

Evolutionary biology is a challenging topic; the history of the Christian church’s reaction to it, doubly so. Continuing a theme running throughout When Science and Christianity Meet, David Livingston identifies the human element as a major complicating factor. After all, the church does not respond to evolutionary biology; individual Christians do. And some of those individuals are responding more to Darwin the man than his scientific contributions. And even Darwin the man had many reactions to his own work and its relationship to his own religious beliefs and perhaps subsequent lack thereof. And on and on, down the rabbit hole.
[Read more…] about Science Book Club: When Science & Christianity Meet Ch 8

Book Review: Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science

Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science by Edward Lurie (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1960. Note: reprinted in 1988 by Johns Hopkins U. Press).

Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science by Edward Lurie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Louis Agassiz might well be considered the foremost naturalist of the first half of the nineteenth century. He brought a rigor to the scientific enterprise in America that inspired everyone from cabinet members to farmers. And he also reflects the human dilemma of being caught late in life in a paradigm shift as the work of Charles Darwin won over a younger generation of zoologists, some who had studied with Agassiz.

This is an older work, published in 1960 and a cheap find at a used book sale at our local library! Lurie traces Agassiz from his youth in Switzerland, his clear sense of a plan for his life from age 15 that led to a succession of studies first in Neuchatel, and then in Germany, his efforts to forestall his parents aims that he would settle down to a respectable medical practice in his home town, and fortuitous relationships with Humboldt and Cuvier. It was with the latter that his metaphysical and scientific convictions about special creation and the fixed nature of species were formed. During this time he gained great reknown in Europe with lectures on glaciation and how these wiped out species and how different species were specially created in various locations following the last ice age. [Read more…] about Book Review: Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science

Is Evolution Compatible with belief in God as the Creator?

This is the third in a series of blog posts concerned with Christian questions about evolution. In my last post we saw that science does not rule out God because it is not competent to address the question of God. But, is evolution compatible with belief in God as the Creator? That is the topic of this post.

The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008).

A major concern for some Christians is that there is no need for God in the process of evolution. Ironically, this is also the view of atheists. In his book The God Delusion, the atheist biologist Richard Dawkins claims that evolution is not compatible with belief in a Creator God because of the automatic nature of the evolutionary process. He talks about a book Creation Revisited by another atheist scientist Peter Atkins. In this book Atkins

postulates a hypothetically lazy God who tries to get away with as little as possible in order to make a universe containing life. Atkins’s lazy god is even lazier than the deist God of the 18th-century Enlightenment: deus otiosus – literally, God at leisure, unoccupied, unemployed, superfluous, useless. Step-by-step Atkins succeeds in reducing the amount of work the lazy God has to do until he finally ends up doing nothing at all; he might as well not bother to exist.

A related concern for many Christians is that evolution can only be accepted by accommodating Biblical interpretation to fit contemporary scientific theories. [Read more…] about Is Evolution Compatible with belief in God as the Creator?

Human Dignity, Slavery, and Sex Trafficking

The Symposium 2014: Human Dignity, Slavery, and Human Trafficking. SymposiaChristi. Purdue.

In case you missed attending and/or watching SymposiaChristi’s Human Dignity, Slavery, and Sex Trafficking (Purdue), the Livestream video is available. I read on the Facebook Wall that permanent links will be posted this week. But as you may have more time this afternoon/evening, consider this an opportunity for a head start.

All of the sessions which I had opportunity to see were powerful, challenging, educational, and well moderated. [Read more…] about Human Dignity, Slavery, and Sex Trafficking