Monthly Archives: January 2009

“Study: Learning science facts doesn’t boost science reasoning”

From EurekAlert, a terribly dangerous finding: A study of college freshmen in the United States and in China found that Chinese students know more science facts than their American counterparts — but both groups are nearly identical when it comes to their ability to do scientific reasoning. Neither group is especially skilled at reasoning, however, …

January 29, 2009 – 5:32 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged , | Comments (19)

“Natural Selection Not The Only Process That Drives Evolution?”

I’m wondering what this means for evolutionary theory: However, surprisingly, the patterns of molecular evolution in many of the genes they found did not contain signals of natural selection. Instead, their evidence suggests that a separate process known as BGC (biased gene conversion) has speeded up the rate of evolution in certain genes. This process …

January 27, 2009 – 9:43 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged | Comments (1)

Evolution and Randomness

Peter Williams has commented on Richard Dawkins’s saying this (scroll to “How to Win an Argument…): Natural selection is very much not a theory of chance. Natural selection is really the opposite of chance, it’s non-random survival. To what Peter wrote I would add these questions. (I have raised these questions here more than once, …

January 26, 2009 – 9:37 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science | Tagged | Comments (10)

The Preeminence of Christ

I was reading Colossians this morning, and felt compelled to journal some of my thoughts and responses to one passage. One translation titles this section “The Centrality of Christ,” and it indeed puts Christ at the center, for the highest worship. Colossians 1:15-22 (ESV) He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of …

January 26, 2009 – 7:35 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Deep Social Change, Knowing God | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Question From a Reader: Could Nature’s Existence Be Logically Necessary?

This came to me by email this morning, and there are good questions here. The sender agreed that it would be good to answer here on the blog. I’ve changed her name here, as we also agreed. Hi, I’m a Christian, but I’m having some problems. I was thinking that maybe some naturalists believe what …

January 25, 2009 – 5:32 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Origins and Science, Thinking Christianly | Tagged , | Comments (10)

What Drives Hollywood

Hollywood Trivia: What’s the one occupation an actress a female actor can portray on screen that’s most likely to earn her an Oscar? What proportion of women in the world consider this a healthy role model? What is it that really drives Hollywood? Is it doing the rest of the world a bit of good? …

January 24, 2009 – 6:55 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Arts and Culture | Comments Off

Interesting Discussion on Ethics at Dangerous Idea

Check it out…

January 22, 2009 – 7:04 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Ethics | Tagged | Comments (5)