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Post Archive
Category Archives: Theology
…and the modern virtues don’t work either
A precious little snippet in the news yesterday, which is a quote from a press release by my alma mater, Cambridge University. They have just revoked a visiting fellowship they offered to the controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson, apparently because the Students Union, as “representative” as it was in my own day no doubt, threw some of the meaningless vice-words discussed in my previous post at Peterson, or more likely at the University to imply guilt by association.
Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology
6 Comments
Nowadays, even the sins don’t work properly
The abominable crime perpetrated in New Zealand by, we are told, a lone white-supremacist extremist, led to immediate calls in the mainstream press for a clampdown on rampant Islamophobia everywhere in society. When a thing (“Islamophobia”) is named as if it were a psychiatric disorder, but treated as a deadly sin, it is a little difficult to understand exactly what the neologism means. But the word appears at least, to include any negative opinion of any aspect of Islam, Arab nationalism, or Islamist terrorism shaken together, such negativity being interpreted as the inevitable precursor of crimes such as we saw last week.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
3 Comments
The tree in Berkeley’s square (no nightingale)
George Berkeley is most famous for his immaterialist view of reality, which is nicely, if incompletely, summed up in Monsignor Ronald Knox’s limerick:
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology, Theology of nature
6 Comments
Predictability, reproducibility and determinism in chaos
On a Peaceful Science thread I promised Chris Falter that I’d respond to his argument that chaotic systems are instrinsically indeterminate. The context, of course, as the thread title shows (Every Birth is a Statistical Impossibilty) has to do with the possibility of determination of events by God, as well as by us.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature
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Abstraction and improbability
I’ve been dipping into George Berkeley’s philosophy recently, mainly because his mind-only view of reality resonates with some other thinkers whose ideas on the matter of matter have impressed me over the years, such as Arthur Eddington, Werner Heisenberg and William Dembski.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology, Theology of nature
1 Comment
The Road to Hell is paved with good inventions
N.T. Wright comments, in this clip, on the Postmodern Movement.
Posted in Politics and sociology, Prometheus, Science, Theology
2 Comments
Editing history
Back in early September 2017 I was writing a Hump piece on Aquinas and the special creation of humanity. Providentially I stumbled on a YouTube video posted just the week before in which Tim Keller, Russell Moore and Ligon Duncan discuss their “non-negotiables” on creation.
Posted in Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology of nature
13 Comments
Divine action – smoke, mirrors, or sublety?
1 Kings 11-12 tell the story of one of the most significant events in the history of the kingdom of Israel – that is, the defection of all the northern tribes from King David’s dynasty thus breaking up the chosen people into two kingdoms. Northern Israel quickly lapsed into apostasy and was destroyed by the Assyrians, essentially disappearing from history.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature
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Molinism again
A quick thought here, based on a heads-up to me on Peaceful Science on a thread that, for some reason, doesn’t give me the ability to reply. No matter, because I have more space to reply here.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature
4 Comments
Nasty pests
The environmental message of God’s Good Earth is, in my own eyes, rather muted. Conservation was, after all, a subsidiary theme of the book, though I was pleased that Sir Ghillean Prance, in his endorsement, saw it as a demand for positive action.