Dr. Dru Johnson - Evolution, Creation, Randomness, and the Hebraic roots of Science 

Really glad this happened!

I see the Shema behind someone, I click like. I am a simple man.

This is excellent, thank you both

Great conversation. I would recommend Dru read the writings of Origen.

This was very interesting. I think there’s definitely a big mistake churches make by starting with the typical Sunday school curriculum that turns all the characters of genesis into moral paragons with occasional stumbles. It seems like they mostly closer to wicked rebels who occasionally obey God, or naive children who hate instruction. God is the one bringing goodness out of their mistakes.

This was delightful. And well worth listening to it a second and third time for sure.

Absolutely loved this - thanks. The questions you asked are ones I would love to hear more about because they are tricksy little questions! Food for thought 👍

This is good

Aristotle's Revenge (Feser's book) ... material, efficient, formal and final causes. The four causes are a good model for me. Logos, logoi, seems like a good Christian model. Random/disorder is departing from path set out by the Logos. Randomness appears to appear from our own lack of participation - improper "ordering". Once Aristotle's thinking got redeemed and transformed by Christian worldview, the world gets very coherent and comforting. Even McGilchrist's work deals with intention and purpose at the cellular level. Positive and negative feedback networks, based on context and environment, seems to indicate purpose and intention (Logos). You gentlemen make a great convo. Looks like I have another book to read :)

Enjoyed every second

39:17 great connective insights. Yes. Agreed. How much of that is your natural ability and how much have you leaned/honed that in TLC? Genuine question.

These are my favorite videos of yours, Sam. Love the faith/evolution discussions you have. I'm interested in checking out the book Dru mentioned: Joshua Swamidass' THE GENEALOGICAL ADAM AND EVE. I've interpreted Adam as more of an allegorical figure rather than a historical one but if there are legitimate challenges to the idea that humans could not have evolved from a single set of parents than maybe a historical Adam could be back on the table. I may have mentioned him in a comment before but Sy Garte is another interesting Christian biochemist who has argued that we ought to consider teleology much more heavily when studying evolution/origin of life.

3:25 Oh boy. Now I know why Sam is different than everyone else =P I had one course for statistics and it was more than enough for me. The professor wore shorts and flip flops and a button down shirt. He was super smart. He told us engineers, "sorry but there's stats majors in this class that need to be whipped into shape for the next class, so you're along for the ride too." It was one of the top 5 hardest classes I took, if not the hardest...

Sam, have you made a video detailing your particular cosmology?

27:03 I think we can absolutely say that everything that is is good in the final sense. Evil in the final sense is a servant of God.

After this chat, I will be thinking a lot more explicitly about the question of evolutionary selection of the seemingly evil aspects of human nature, and where God fits into that process. It seems to me things like love, selfless commitment, divine beauty, etc are things we discover on our stumbling, painful journey through creation. And these things we discover and hang on to for their self evident inherent good, though they are outside the amoral selection standard of mere survival and reproduction. It's like happening upon the pearl of great price in the field. It does kind of seem to map on to the idea that we gained something by eating the fruit off the tree of knowledge, new information, but catastrophically so, being entirely unready and without discernment. The eventual stumbling into aspects of love and goodness, while wading through a sea of suffering and amoral chains of events, is the long way into God. And while we may have been given the same knowledge in the fulness of time, taking it as we did, this often horrifying process of natural selection is part of the long detour.... Anyway, you two are among the most interesting and sharpest in these circles, so great to see the discussion.

Did not hear about “ micro” evolution from Dru. Six days in Ex 20 and 31 reconcilied.

Just begun watching. Looks like a good one. Perhaps unlike yourself, I have remained persuaded of the broadly "creationist" refutation of Darwinism. A big influence on me early on was the work of John Whitcomb and Henry Morris. They collaborated on an excellent book on the Genesis Flood. Do you know of it? In his lectures on the Bible and Science, Whitcomb painted a picture of the ridiculousness of worshiping the god Chance, rather as the desperation and futility of the baal worshippers whom Elijah confronted.

I would love Dr. Dru’s thoughts on the Evolution of Beauty by Richard O Prum

A comment on "Weinstein's quandary": It presupposes we can NOW use our agency to override negative evolutionary adaptions yet I don't see why this wouldn't have always been the case, at least for homo sapiens.

Where does free will fit into evolutionary understandings of forced compulation? You said that the fact you can find an evolutionary explanation for such behaviour in males means some people think you can't 'blame' people for sexual immorality. That might be a leap? Surely the same argument pertains to much other violent offending or law breaking (in that one can often point to physical / psychological explanations for behaviour, a poor childhood etc, or a tumor causing brain injury or malfunction). We still hold people liable for immoral or unlawful actions. It might make us less condemnatory of the perpetrator, but a violent offender who acts out poor choices due to unfortunate combination of genetics and upbringing, is still going to be convicted and imprisoned etc, and is still responsible for his actions. Is this also therefore open to discussions about determinism and free will? Thanks again for the discussion it was great

35:24 isn’t it simple enough to say that sin lies at our doorstep, it is within us, it is part of us, and our goal of overcoming sin within us IS an essential part of the Christian story/journey?

As far as I can tell, the "randomness" at bottom of the quantum level is the only "randomness" that is arguably not reducible to epistemic limitation. Even at the quantum level, "randomness" probably isn't the right word for it. A better word might be "contingency". More specifically, contingency as the idea that when the universe is split/specified in accordance with a quantum interaction, there is no higher order explanation for which slice of the split our awareness ends up in. In a sense because each slice has it's own awareness (in so far as the system in question is capable of awareness). Though maybe if one was willing to take the notion of something being epistemically beyond any congitive agent whatsoever, then that limitation could be ontologized? That way the higher order "randomness" would be completely indistinguishable from the slice contingency inherent at the quantum level? Not sure. --- For reference, I word it in terms of "slicing" instead of "branching" because it points a bit less ambiguously at what is actually happening to the universe. It's less that the universe forks and more that it gets increasingly subdivided. It's just that because our measuring instruments also get subdivided, things appear to be constantly normalized for any given perspective. (you reference Sean Carrol; he speaks of this framing of Many Worlds, but I don't remember where)

9:10 I believe in relative truth. But not arbitrary. Hi.

56:45 🎉 Biblical law isn’t merely punitive?! 🤠

Unlike pastors? Got some pastor hating going on here

How does "theistic evolution" account for animal suffering? It seems like a much simpler explanation would be that the laws of nature like evolution are independent of God.

6:06 sad. You can get a science degree with zero philosophy.

Yawn!!!