Theological Fragments

I write this fully expecting that no one will make it all the way through the post. This is a long post and somewhat technical, and it’s on a controversial topic: Evolution (not, that’s not why I mentioned monkeys in the title). Let me at least say this: what follows is not a stereotypical argument about Evolution. I am not arguing against Evolution, or in favor of Intelligent Design—in fact, I’m not even comparing the two. The reason I bring up Evolution is because I think it provides a great example of a certain tendency in our culture, the way we compare religious knowledge to scientific knowledge. The following discussion focuses on Evolution and probability, so I have taken on the added liability of discussing math in an already-questionable post. As I said, I don’t expect anyone to read this all the way though. I hope someone will, but ultimately I wrote this just to get the idea out of my head so I could focus on homework. If that’s all I’ve accomplished, it was worth it. Now,

The Show Doctor Who  really is a phenomenal show. True, it is a bit Modernist and morally paternalistic, but I love it all the same. One of the principle reasons I like the show (besides my unreasonably-strong affection for David Tennant) is because Steven Moffat, the head writer, has a very intriguing view of time. Now, I don’t agree entirely with Moffat’s view of causality—I am personally of the school of thought that doesn’t believe the past can be changed (although I must concede that Emmett Brown skirts this issue effectively by positing that a change in the timeline results in the creation of a new dimension [Brown,  Back to the Future Part II , 1989]). However, Moffat takes the very unique approach of viewing the entire timeline from above, allowing single events to affect the past, present, and future. Russel T. Davies, the previous head writer, did this a bit in his seasons, but this was limited in scope—more for the purpose of foreshadowing the season finale than