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Alas, the Alaotra grebe has gone extinct. Scientists (including me) have not seen extinctions on this scale since the dinosaurs disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous. It joins a rather heartbreaking list. Here is a list of some bird extinctions since about 1500. Continue reading Goodbye Alaotra grebe, it was nice knowing you BYU’s own Jack Sites has for over thirty years documented the decline of lizards due to climate change. Check out the recent paper he coauthored in Science and the write-up and video at BYU. Another example in the overwhelming landslide of peer reviewed published papers documenting worldwide ecological collapse due to anthropogenic induced planetary . . . → Read More: BYU herpetologist documents declining lizard populations due to climate change I just returned from the MS4 conference. It is the fourth year that a group of philosophers of science have gathered to try to tease apart the implications of computer simulation in science. My interest in computer simulation is in its uses in ecology (see the abstract for my paper if you are interested), but for me, some of the most captivating work of this kind is being done on climate models, in which simulation is used to try to sort out the implications of our warming planet. Philosophers try to pick out what science is doing, it examines its assumptions and attempts to cut the lines of demarcation between what is good and bad science. Science studies the world, philosophers study the science. Sort of like judicial review in laws (don’t take this too far, scientists hardly ever pay attention to what philosophers are saying). Continue reading The models of climate change So you want to be a conspiracy theorist? It’s simple and easy, and my one-stop, Ten-step Guide will help you get started. It certainly doesn’t matter what you want to be a conspiracy theorist about. I can help. Let’s get started. We need an example, so let’s just say you want to be a ‘Extrasolar Planet‘ denier. You know, those planets orbiting stars not in our solar system? Well, no one is denying the science behind them, yet, so it’s fertile ground in which to start a conspiracy theory. So where to begin? Continue reading So you are interested in becoming a conspiracy theorist? Here are few pictures from my talk to show some of the evolutionary convergences I was talking about: Continue reading The implications of evolution for key LDS Doctrines: My SMPT paper part IV Continuing . . . Below are the points seem to cause some confusion and may need the most work in framing a detailed reconciliation. Here I sketch of where I think these pivot points lie. I’ll start where I feel there is little tension between science and our religion and that the hermeneutics of each seems not to pose any major difficulties in providing narratives that are comfortable lying side by side. Continue reading The implications of evolution for key LDS Doctrines: My SMPT paper part III The relationship between Science and Theology I begin with a controversial claim from Haught,
Continue reading The implications of evolution for key LDS Doctrines: My SMPT paper part II So during the last month because of trips to Indonesia and Senegal and the SMPT conference, I’ve been rather inactive on my blog. Time to repent. The following is the text from my SMPT paper. It will be posted in four parts. Just this week, researchers reported the results of the DNA analysis of a 40,000 year old finger fragment. It was a previously unknown species of human. It’s last common ancestor with humans and Neanderthals was over a million years ago. This forensic reconstruction and the skull going around are from Homo erectus, a hominin that lived about 1.5 million years ago. Our last common ancestor with the Neanderthals was about a half million years ago. Do such things have implications for Mormon Theology? Continue reading The implications of evolution for key LDS Doctrines: My SMPT paper part I Here to whet your appetite are the first few paragraphs of my Dialogue article in the Spring 43 (1) issue called “Crawling Out of the Primordial Soup: A Step toward the Emergence of an LDS Theology Compatible with Organic Evolution.” If you want to read the rest, pick up the new issue! In this paper I try to take a stab at identifying the tensions that appear as one tries to reconcile LDS theology and Darwinian evolution and gesture toward some possible solutions to these quandaries. Also, I will speaking at the SMPT Conference on March 26 on “The Implications of Evolution and Consciousness for Key LDS Doctrines.” From Peck (2010): Wesley J. Wildman, a liberal evangelical Christian, contributed this issue’s sermon as part of the ongoing “From the Pulpit” series. Provocatively titled “Narnia’s Aslan, Earth’s Darwin, and Heaven’s God” (see pp. 210–17), it details some of the waste and brutality of natural selection that are inevitable accompaniments of evolution. “Surely such a loving, personal Deity would have created in another way,” he queries, “a way that involved less trial and error, fewer false starts, fewer mindless species extinctions, fewer pointless cruelties, and less reliance on predation to sort out the fit from the unfit” (214). In conclusion, he poses the far-from-rhetorical question: “What sort of God could, would, and did create the world through evolution?” (217). He shows that evolution has striking implications for theology—including LDS theology, I would add. Continue reading A peek at my paper attempting to reconcile evolution and LDS theology
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