I've gotten some more feedback on one of my Journal Club posts, from Sean Carroll and Chris Hittinger, the authors of the Nature paper on gene duplication that was the focus of one of my recent reviews of an article from the recent scientific literature. Chris identified some minor imperfections, and I've revised the original post in response to his comments. This got me thinking.

Recently I made a few comments on Greg Laden's Blog over at ScienceBlogs, in which I expressed some, um, concern regarding an aroma of ugly anti-Christian thuggery. The context was a silly (and banal) article on the "War on Christmas," which is some idiotic dustup in the so-called Culture Wars. I've bashed Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion repeatedly on this blog. I'll probably do it again.

My recent post on the so-called problem of evil has generated some interesting comments that are worth addressing in a separate post. The comments raise questions of a somewhat personal nature, but because I write as a Christian, I think the issues are fair game.

One of my main goals in this blog is to help non-scientists (Christian readers in particular) understand science and God's world, by reviewing and explaining recently-published scientific research.

Well, I guess I should start with some contrition. I have gotten cheap laughs referring to Richard Dawkins as an idiot, such that students of mine have twice referred to him simply as 'The Idiot,' knowing they'd be perfectly well understood.

What is the evidence for common descent? To even ask the question, it seems to me, is to suppose that common descent is a proposal, or a hypothesis, and that a certain body of evidence supports the proposal. And that, of course, is quite true: common descent is a scientific theory, and a certain body of evidence supports that theory.

Well, it's August 3, 2007, and I'm setting up my blog. It's called Quintessence of Dust, and it will deal with issues of science and Christian faith, focusing on genetics, development, evolution, neuroscience and topics related. I'll regularly address intelligent design and creationism, among other scientific issues that attract the attention of evangelical Christians. My main theme will be scientific explanation.