isaac Mao's Library tagged God → View Popular

02 Jun 09

resounding

The new website appears to be a response to the recent launch of the BioLogos Foundation, the brainchild of geneticist Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project and rumoured Obama appointee-to-be for head of the National Institutes of Health. Along with "a team of scientists who believe in God" and some cash from the Templeton Foundation, Collins, an evangelical Christian who is also a staunch proponent of evolution, is on a crusade to convince believers that faith and science need not be at odds. He is promoting "theistic evolution" – the belief that God (the prayer-listening, proactive, personal God of Christianity) chose to create life by way of evolution.
Watching the intellectual feud between the Discovery Institute and BioLogos is a bit like watching a race in which both competitors are running full speed in the opposite direction of the finish line. It's a notable contest, but I don't see how either is going to come out the winner.

08 May 09

Collins recruits quantum physics to make his religious case, and has set up a website called Biologos. The site is funded by the Templeton Foundation, which seeks to find common ground between science and religion.
Many scientists reconcile their belief in God with the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution by holding that God set the universe in motion through the big bang, then stood back and let the laws of nature – including evolution – do the rest. Genesis, they believe, is an allegory explaining how evolution unfolded.

05 Mar 09

05 Feb 09

Bloom says the two systems are autonomous, leaving us with two viewpoints on the world: one that deals with minds, and one that handles physical aspects of the world. He calls this innate assumption that mind and matter are distinct "common-sense dualism". The body is for physical processes, like eating and moving, while the mind carries our consciousness in a separate - and separable - package. "We very naturally accept you can leave your body in a dream, or in astral projection or some sort of magic," Bloom says. "These are universal views."