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The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis Collins

Biotech pioneers. A philosophical inquiry concerning the genetically engineered mouse

Discourse describing evolution in contemporary popular science writing often posits that humans evolved not from an ape, but from a merely ape-like or generalized primate. Contemporary fossil and genetic evidence, though, have revealed what can accurately be described as an extinct ape species as ancestral to the human lineage. The persistence of ambiguous terms in popular science writing may be interpreted as a form of anthropocentric rhetorical discourse. Nonetheless, while such discourse is often justified in terms of increasing the public understanding of science, it may also mitigate (whether consciously intended or not) religion-based resistance to evolutionary theory.

Anthropocentric Rhetorical Discourse in Popular Science Writing about Human Evolution

American higher education has been in almost perpetual crisis for several generations, with students experiencing fragmentation and loss of coherence across the curriculum. Most liberal arts colleges in the 19th century had a required senior course in “moral philosophy” to integrate the curriculum and prepare students for future leadership, but over a century ago the new science and social science disciplines ended these courses. Students now are trained in disciplinary silos, with little opportunity to integrate their studies after freshmen year general education courses. This paper proposes to reintegrate a student's undergraduate experience by having a required interdisciplinary senior capstone course, modeled on the old moral philosophy course but without its elitist and authoritarian methods. This new course would incorporate university values and the disciplines within it, in small interdisciplinary seminars designed around contemporary problems, which would provide students an opportunity to develo...

Additional excerpts

Moral Philosophy in a Social Scientific Age: A Proposal to Reintegrate the Undergraduate Curriculum.

The perceived conflict between science and Christianity continues to be a strong and prevalent narrative, both inside and outside the church. As three long-time science professors in Christian high...

The Sciences and Christian Formation: Helping Today’s Students Find Deeper Faith in a Science-Dominated World

Evolutionary creation offers a conservative Christian approach to evolution. It explores biblical faith and evolutionary science through a Two Divine Books model and proposes a complementary relationship between Scripture and science. The Book of God's Words discloses the spiritual character of the world, while the Book of God's Works reveals the divine creative process. This view of origins recognizes that the Bible features an ancient conceptualization of nature, and consequently rejects concordism (or scientific concordism). It understands biblical revelation in the light of the Incarnation and suggests that Scripture was accommodated for an ancient Near Eastern mindset. Evolutionary creation holds a traditional notion of natural revelation. The reflection of intelligent design extends to the process of evolution, rejecting the God-of-the-gaps creative method, and declaring the faithfulness of the Creator's evolutionary mechanisms.

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The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis Collins

Citations

Biotech pioneers. A philosophical inquiry concerning the genetically engineered mouse

Anthropocentric Rhetorical Discourse in Popular Science Writing about Human Evolution

Moral Philosophy in a Social Scientific Age: A Proposal to Reintegrate the Undergraduate Curriculum.

The Sciences and Christian Formation: Helping Today’s Students Find Deeper Faith in a Science-Dominated World

Evolutionary Creation: Moving Beyond the Evolution Versus Creation Debate

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