Parchment & Pen Blog

“The history of Science is the history of bad ideas.” This is a quote that I heard recently. I think that it is a rather tongue-in-cheek way of expressing our (post)modern culture’s current attitude with respect to the authority of science. During the modern period, science was king. The scientific revolution produced hopes of a [...]

In a recent debate on the topic of design, I expressed amazement at all the huffing and puffing by anti-design proponents. Though they assert that a design hypothesis is “unscientific,” they say things in other places that make me suspicious. That is, many of these naturalists express profound astonishment at the universe’s precision-tuning for life, [...]

1. Young Earth Creationism The belief that the universe and all that is in it was created by God around ten-thousand years ago or less. They insist that this is the only way to understand the Scriptures. Further, they will argue that science is on their side using “catastropheism.” They believe that world-wide biblical catastrophes [...]

I recently received an email from someone who asked me what I thought of Francis Collins’s 2006 book, The Language of God. Let me say, first, that I have great appreciation for Collins. A committed Christian, he is head of the Human Genome Project and has done pioneering work in genetic research. I can identify [...]

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is the highly anticipated Ben Stein documentary concerning the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. The ID movement describes a belief among many scientists that the supposition and/or conclusion of an Intelligent Designer makes more sense out of science than the alternatives. IDers have had a strong and rising presence in the Christian [...]

Are young earth creationists actually leading people away from the Gospel? This is not necessarily the argument that made by Vance McAllister at the Euangelion blog, but he does bring up some very good points. In a blog well entitled “Creation v. Evolution: the danger of misplaced dogmatism,” Vance challenges readers to consider the debate [...]