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augustine

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Image source: Inkwell Press.

What’s Bothering Augustine?

I began to understand that there was a rich history of the interaction between the Church and premodern science, but not one that is widely known. Read More ›
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Photo credit: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Faith and Science Before Modern Science

Winston Ewert offers a surprising look at how Christians debated science theories in the ancient and medieval world. Read More ›
Augustine
Photo credit: Armin Kleiner, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

An Ancient Argument for the Soul

Sixteen hundred years ago, Augustine tells a friend about a dream a skeptical local doctor had, where a sharp youth asked him some pointed questions. Read More ›
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Photo credit: GerryShaw, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

What Does Your Brain Do? And What Can It Not Do?

A surprising result of pioneering neurosurgery was the discovery that some mental processes could be stimulated in the brain but others could not be. Read More ›
Multiverse
Image credit: Silver Spoon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Is the Multiverse Scientific Fact or Mere Fancy?

Host Robert Lawrence Kuhn asked Professor of Christian Philosophy Nancey Murphy if, in her view, the universe is fine-tuned for consciousness. Read More ›
Cosmos 3.0 episode 1

Cosmos 3.0 Revisits Themes of the Past, with Familiar Historical Mythmaking

At a couple of points in episode 1, Neil deGrasse Tyson employs the “Book of Nature” metaphor, but he never gives its proper historical context. It’s actually a Christian concept. Read More ›
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Cosmic Fine-Tuning and the Problem of Evil

"Cosmopsychism might seem crazy," says philosopher Phillip Goff, "but it provides a robust explanatory model for how the universe became fine-tuned for life." Read More ›
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“Thomists Versus Thomas”

Remarkably parallel struggles go on, as well, in Protestant and Jewish circles, whether the debate focuses on C.S. Lewis or Maimonides, Augustine of Hippo or Samson Raphael Hirsch. Read More ›

Lemur Monkey Falls From the Sky, Robbing Man of Sleep

If they weren’t atheists, you’d think the scientists raising the ballyhoo over Ida were hailing the second coming. Here is yet another icon of evolution. Every time one of these discoveries is made, there’s a huge PR snow job from the Darwin lobby to make it seem like it answers all the questions and objections. I thought Tiktaalik did that. Or maybe Archaeopteryx. It goes at least as far back as Proconsul. Each time the Darwinists seem to forget they already found the missing link — the one fossil to rule them all — and re-find it all over again. At least CBS News was a bit more skeptical than Sky News when they reported it on Friday. While the Read More ›

Alister McGrath on Augustine and Darwinism

Scientist and theologian Alister McGrath has a new essay over at Christianity Today, “Augustine’s Origin of Species.” Knowing how Augustine has often been co-opted by Darwinians as a proto-Darwinist, I came to this article rather skeptical. But I was delightfully surprised. McGrath notes that Augustine’s dominant image of the natural world’s relation to God is that of a “dormant seed.” As McGrath explains: God creates seeds, which will grow and develop at the right time. Using more technical language, Augustine asks his readers to think of the created order as containing divinely embedded causalities that emerge or evolve at a later stage. Yet Augustine has no time for any notion of random or arbitrary changes within creation. The development of Read More ›

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