This blog is intended to help with communications during the continuing education course being hosted at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
Session 1 is on October 20 from 7 to 8:30 Eastern time. During the session, I want to try to cover three points:
1. Recent developments in the theory of evolution, including what some are calling the "Extended Synthesis." The basic idea is that recent developments in biology, almost entirely unknown to Darwin, have prompted evolutionary theorists to expand the theory. Earlier this year, MIT press published a new volume devoted to this topic. You may read the opening chapter free. Or you may read background articles from the journals Science and Nature. Let me also recommend articles by Sean Carroll and by Michael Rose and Todd Oakley.
2. Where does evolutionary biology stand today on the question of human evolution? Here is a nice summary of recent research. And here you will find videos and summaries of the latest findings, such as the sequencing of Neanderthal DNA.
3. What are some of the implications of evolution for the rest of life...and for Christian theology.
It is misleading for you promote the "extended synthesis" theory as if it were the consensus theory of evolutuion today, and that therefore critics of the traditonal view don't have to be answered because they are attacking an outmoded concept. It is true it has been criticized as being "wrong in a way that can't be repaired" (Jerry Fodor) and Gould accused the traditionalists of using "evidence-free just-so stories concocted out of thin air." It is also true, however, that Gould's punctualted equilibrium theory never caught on with many and that today's critics remain a few biologists scorned by popular traditionalists. Lewontin called them "mavericks trying to garner prestige for themselves" and Coyne said "to say the modrn synthesis is incomplete or fatally flawed is fatuous." So I think you are going to have to defend the traditional view because that is the one most of us are going to encounter.
ReplyDeleteReply to Thomson: I explicitly said that the "extended synthesis" is a proposal, not a consensus view. As far as your other quotes...all it demonstrates is that scientists argue among themselves. And no, I am not going to defend the traditional view as fully adequate. I am defending it as on the right track; someday, I am assuming, the "extended view" will also be left behind for something more adequate.
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