Monthly Archives: March 2015

Dark arts

Posted on 13/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

For some reason, far too late last night I found myself following a contentious thread on a site I don’t normally visit, because (as in this instance) it tends to be a slanging match between Creationists and Atheists. I was just curious, honest.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science | 37 Comments

Marking the occasion

Posted on 12/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

A year ago I did a piece on the three philosphical models of divine action. This was mainly to show the inadequacy of the “mere conservation” model that seemed to dominate the BioLogos mindset regarding the natural creation, leaving only the category of “miracle” to account for God’s action in the life of the believer, history and (in extremis) nature.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 16 Comments

If Adam wasn’t alone, then what?

Posted on 10/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

A. Leo Oppenheim, writing in the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography on Man and Nature in Mesopotamian Civilization, makes an interesting (and usually unnoticed) distinction between the two “creation stories” of Genesis. The relationship between man and nature in the ancient Near East is nowhere as pointedly formulated as in Genesis 1:26, where it is said that God gave man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” The parallel version of the Creation story (Genesis 2:19) formulates the same relationship differently, and in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 5 Comments

Essences, fuzzy or firm

Posted on 08/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

In this post, on the possibility of “adamic man” living with some other kind of “humanity”, I dropped in a passing comment on the difficulty for Darwinian gradualistic evolution of being able to come to grips the meaning of a word like “human” at all. Merv picked this up (remembering at least one exchange on universals we’ve had in the past): Does the fact that we can’t look at our continuous visible spectrum and point precisely to where it stops being red and starts being orange (other than by arbitrary selection of a cutoff frequency) mean that there can be no sustainable category of “red” colors? It just doesn’t seem … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 25 Comments

Talking with the animals

Posted on 06/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

In the rich discussion arising from this piece (thanks to Colossian Forum for the original stimulus), pngarrison comments: The possibility of Adam and Eve being one couple among a population, with only their descendants being fully human makes no sense to me. Their descendants would be confronted with how to treat the sub-humans who looked like them, made a living like them, possibly talked like them. How would they even tell for sure who was fully human and who wasn’t? If they could tell the difference, would it be o.k. to treat the sub-humans like animals? If they were in the middle East, you end up saying the people in … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

The literal literal meaning of Genesis

Posted on 05/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

This recent highly-commented post, and a local request to teach on the recent insights into the biblical creation story, have put my mind back on to Genesis. I’ve use this illustration before:

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

Hungry for You

Posted on 04/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

I heard yesterday of the sudden and tragic death of a young friend of mine. In 2003 she played flute on one of my songs, which I attach here as a tribute to Claire’s memory.

Posted in Music | 2 Comments