classics digests, reflections and reviews
Preface Mark Twain once quipped, “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is a classic. I’m pleasantly surprised that it is not as boring and dry as I expected, but quite the contrary. It’s fascinating to observe how Darwin works, how he collects facts from nature and draws inferences, how he judges between diverse theories and […]
Read moreA Matter of Identity As an armchair Platonist, I find the philosophy behind Darwinian evolution not only intellectually unsatisfactory, but also self-contradictory. On the one hand, it asserts constant change, that, given enough time and proper conditions, anything can change into anything else; on the other hand, it asserts identity, that there is a “struggle for existence” of the individual and/or group. It is a self-contradiction to state that something […]
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Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:9 Preface When I first read the Book of Genesis many years ago, I did it out of scientific curiosity. I was an atheist who believed all religions were superstitions. But, I was very curious why many otherwise highly intelligent human beings believed in the existence of God. So I attempted to examine faith on […]
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When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? Psalm 8:3-4 The Creation Debate All Christians believe that God designed and created the universe and all living things. However, there is a wide range of opinions on how the process unfolded, based on […]
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The Origin of Evolution The word “evolution” came from the Latin word evolutio, meaning unrolling or unfolding, as in unrolling a scroll. Before the codex was developed, the scroll had been the major form of written text in the ancient world. The scrolls were typically rolled up for storage and transportation. So one must first unroll the scroll to peruse the text. For sacred texts revered by adherents of religions […]
Read moreRethinking Evolution Having been raised as an atheist by scientist parents, and spent most of my life in and around scientific research institutes, I’ve always taken the theory of evolution for granted, although I’ve never read Darwin’s book The Origin of Species. Mark Twain rightly defines classic as “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read”. However, the recent widespread debate on the relationship between religion […]
Read moreA speculative, apocalyptic tale in which Martians landed on earth and almost wiped out the entire local population. According to the nebular hypothesis, Mars was more advanced in the life cycle of the planet than Earth, and therefore the Martians were evolutionarily more advanced than humans, having a superior intelligence and no sex or digestive organs. When their planet was no longer habitable, and they were facing extinction, they invaded the […]
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