Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Biologos

This entry is perhaps not directly related to issues of disability but relates to a couple of meetings I attended this past weekend. Both meetings were attended by Dr. Frances Collins, past director of the Human Genome Project, and currently the head of NIH. He impressed me as a brilliant man, a humble man and a man of faith. He formed the Biologos forum, and then turned over leadership to Dr. Darrel Falk, when he took over NIH. In a nutshell, this group is attempting to put the facts of science, evolution in particular, together with the Christian faith. This is a task that is very threatening to very many people.

In a conversation with Dr. Collins, I asked him whether this moment in time where the Church is being confronted by the facts of science is tantamount ot a "Galilleo moment." His reply was "Yes."

Biologos talks about understanding God from two books. Obviously, the Bible is God's revelation of himself. However, they also point to the world, to nature. Citing Psalm 19, they also look to God's revelation of Himself in the world.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
I honestly am not entirely sure what I think about Biologos and the efforts to combine the facts of evolution with the Christian faith. I know that as a Christian, I have absolutely no fear of truth, including the truth of science (eg. the Earth revolves around the Sun).

I would recommend the Biologos website to you for you to draw your own conclusions. I would also recommend that you visit the website with a very open mind.

God bless,
McNair
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4 comments:

  1. Mark10:29 AM

    Fascinating! I, as a Christian, share your fearlessness of truth, from science or from God (e.g. the universe appears to be billions of years old). I've heard Dr. Collins speak on the radio, Dennis Prager show, on more than one occasion; he is brilliant.

    Like you, I also had a scientific education and have rarely been bothered by seeming conflicts between biblical and scientific explanations. Ps. 19 resolves them well for me. By that I mean science is expert at descrbing, explaning, and predicting caused events (the moon orbits the earth, and both orbit the sun; it's going to rain in Seattle tomorrow), but has little to say about uncaused events (Let there be light).

    Thanks for the link to Biologos. It's worth explorinf if only because it is such a cool word.

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  2. Randy5:43 PM

    Have been reading a book " The Science of God" by Gerald Schroeder that provides another great perspective.

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  3. Dennis Venema10:01 PM

    Hi Jeff,

    I really enjoyed meeting you and the (brief) conversations we had. Thanks for the work you do, it is so needed for the church.

    Best,

    Dennis

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  4. jordan V12:58 PM

    I have realy been enjoying the Biologos site. It has inspired a lot of really good conversation between my wife and I. She took a class at Briercrest about the relationship between Christianity and Science that spent a great deal of time on the issue of evolution.

    Really interesting stuff.

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