As introduced in my previous post, I am reviewing the new BBC ‘Evolution’ series, focusing mainly on: (1) its scientific accuracy, and (2) how well it fulfils the public service obligations of the BBC.
As I watched the series, I was disappointed that Chris Packham’s opening words make clear that his aim goes far beyond simply conveying the current state of the scientific field of evolutionary biology. He immediately reaches beyond that, into the realm of philosophy and even theology.
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‘Evolution’ is a new BBC Television series that is likely to influence the beliefs of millions of people around the world. It is presented by the British wildlife broadcaster and campaigner Chris Packham, filmed in seas, deserts and forests. Production values are high, and include 79 minutes of photoreal CGI, imagining what 20 different extinct creatures looked like. It started to air in Britain last week and will be shown globally; for example in the USA as a NOVA series on PBS.
(more…)The intersection between environmentalism and Christianity is one that I think is widely misunderstood. Back in January I took part in an extended interview and discussion on this topic at the Round Church in Cambridge with Dr Jim Paul, director of the English branch of L’Abri Fellowship. It was a nice chance to “think out loud” with a like-minded person and try out some ideas I have been mulling over for a while. It turned into a personal and wide-ranging discussion. There was not time to fully develop each thought, but I hope you find the conversation as stimulating as I did.
For a summary of my group’s latest research on UK broadleaved trees, and a discussion of the positive interaction between my science and Christianity, listen to this week’s episode of the ECO Chamber podcast, from the ENDS Report. My interview starts 30 minutes in.
Yesterday, the journal Science published a study providing evidence that humans are descended from very small population. The authors detect a bottleneck lasting about 100,000 years with an average effective population size of about 1280. They date this to about 813,000 to 930,000 years ago, placing it before the divergence of Neandertals and Denisovans from modern humans. This coincides with a large gap in the hominin fossil record. They suggest it is the period in which the human chromosome number of 23 originated.
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In gave my inaugural lecture as Professor of Evolutionary Genomics at Queen Mary University of London on 16th November 2022, the film of which can be viewed below.
Inaugural lectures are a chance to give a personal view on one’s research field, at a level that will be understood by the whole university and the general public.
My Vice-Principal asked me to be more personal than usual in this inaugural, speaking about my Christian faith as well as my research as a biologist.
I decided to do this by placing side-by-side “tree-of-life” concepts from the Bible and from The Origin of Species. By comparing and contrasting the evidence for these very different trees of life, I tried to help the audience understand how I think through things as both a biologist and a Christian.
Whether or not this worked, you can judge for yourself.
The lecture drew on articles I have published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, Nature Plants, and American Journal of Botany. I describe work by others in Nature and Nature Communications. The Origin of Species provided my starting point on Darwin’s tree of life simile. The works of Richard Dawkins, especially The Greatest Show on Earth and The God Delusion, provided helpful material in both sections of the lecture. On the Biblical tree of life, I used an argument by Peter J. Williams, (whose research recently featured in Nature) developed in his book Can We Trust the Gospels? I also refer to research by Elizabeth Barnes on inclusion in the biological sciences.
I have been a full professor at Queen Mary for over four years now, but there is a back-log of inaugural lectures, and many never happen at all. So it was a great privilege to be invited to give this.
This video summarises my understanding of the current genetic evidence on whether or not humans could have passed through a bottleneck of a single couple at some point in our history.
It is a talk I gave in May 2020 for a group of scientists from across Europe who identify as Christians. This audience came from a range of different disciplines, so I tried to present at a level understandable to any educated layperson.
Everything I say here is preliminary and tentative. I welcome feedback and comments on this talk – especially from experts on human population genomics – especially if I say anything that is wrong. My box diagrams are of course simplifications, but I hope they convey the major concepts with clarity.
Since I gave this talk, a major paper has been published in Nature presenting high coverage genome sequences for populations across Africa. The key analyses mentioned in my video based on the 1000 genomes project need to be re-done on this new, much better dataset. I won’t have time to do that any time soon, but if someone else did, I would be delighted.
Christian viewers should not misunderstood me to be taking or recommending any particular scientific or exegetical position on a harmonisation between current science and the Bible. This talk has a much narrower focus than that. Much research has still to be done.
If you are interested in following the links I mention in the video, my slides can be downloaded as a PDF here.
Here is a 20 minute lockdown video I published on YouTube a few days ago. In it, I make one major point: it is as hard to be an atheist today as it was 2400 years ago. In fact, a little harder.
I have seen a few responses to this video by atheists since I put it up, but so far, none of these have addressed the major point I am making. I hope someone will soon.
The material in this video is similar to a blog I posted a year ago: “Did Darwin make atheism credible“. If you prefer text to video, please do take a look there.