Hi, Joshua. Note that I said “scientists”, not biologists, and that I was talking about the whole history of BioLogos since its inception, so I was including all scientists who have written regular columns or frequent guest columns at BioLogos, or who have been on the executive. So I was including Francis Collins (who founded the institution, although he left soon after), Darrel Falk, Karl Giberson, Dennis Venema, Kathryn Applegate, Deb Haarsma, and also frequent guest columnists such as Ard Louis (well, not so frequently recently, but a few years back) and Denis Alexander (ditto) and Francisco Ayala (ditto). Of those, all were in the life sciences except for Deb Haarsma, Karl Giberson, and Ard Louis. It is in columns (and sometimes in responses to readers) by such people (and in less frequent and one-shot guest columns by other evangelical scientists) that one could frequently find confirmation bias in the interpretation of the Christian tradition. Relatively few columns were written by philosophers or even theologians, though Pete Enns who was a Biblical scholar (as opposed to systematic theologian) had a regular gig. Enns focused mostly on Biblical texts, rather than theologians, so the bulk of the biased readings of Christian tradition (inaccurate, wish-driven statements about Calvin, Wesley, Origin, Augustine, the Fathers, Pascal, Barth, Newman, etc.) came from the scientists there.
As for the current situation, it’s hard to tell, because with the cancellation of the regular series by Ted Davis and Dennis Venema, it would appear that BioLogos no longer has any regular columnists, and a high percentage of the columns these days are “reprints” of columns several years old. Most of the discussion there now is about items posted by commenters rather than by anyone actually working for the organization. Deb Haarsma and Kathryn Applegate are still there, but there appear to be no other regular scientific contributors, and even Deb and Kathryn almost never write columns, but are more in the background as administrators. So one doesn’t see as much biased discussion of Christian tradition by the scientists there as one used to, mainly because the few scientists who are still there aren’t writing new material.
So yes, when you consider that the core of BioLogos is now Deb, Kathryn, Jim, and Brad, only two of whom are scientists, it’s true that there isn’t much representation by scientists there. But it wasn’t always so. The place used to be dominated by scientists who were active as columnists (or in Falk’s case, as both columnist and head moderator) and by scientists who popped in to write new guest columns. It was during those days that Jon Garvey and I got to “know” the BioLogos people and their approach to science and faith, and it’s out of that long and not always pleasant experience that my remark arose.
In any case, this discussion between us is becoming an awfully long footnote to my original point, i.e., that philosophy is actually helpful in teaching people to resist confirmation bias (both their own and that of others), even if not all philosophers pay heed to their own teaching in this regard. But we might agree that some of the ID people tend to have a confirmation bias regarding scientific questions, whereas some of the BioLogos people tend to have a confirmation bias regarding theological questions. I’d also add, however, that some scientists of the atheistic variety have confirmation biases in both areas – again not biases springing from academic training in philosophy, but from their commitments as atheists.
An interesting postscript to this discussion might take up the case of Antony Flew, who at the end of his life fought his own confirmation biases against both God and design inferences, and triumphed over them. Flew was a philosopher, so that is relevant to the original posting by Dan above.
