Monthly Archives: October 2013

Evolution difficulties and theological traditions

Posted on 18/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

Well, the BioLogos thread to which I pointed two days ago has been abandoned by the questioners with, predictably, no reply from the hosts. The same conversation passed to another hopeful thread, a re-post of an old call to Evangelicals to engage courageously in rethinking their comfortable assumptions etc. Unfortunately nobody has been on hand to dialogue with those who did think, and also posted. Poster hanan-d suggested sympathetically (and seriously) that the silence from BioLogos staff is due to their sense of spiritual doubt from cognitive dissonance – they want to retain their faith in God as Creator, but the science suggests blind chance as the cause of living … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Please continue to hold…

Posted on 16/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

It’s time to flag up another long (53 posts, as of now) BioLogos thread  on which the questions I have been raising with the organisation for, now, two and a half years are not addressed. I seem to be in getting into the habit of waiting a week and then drawing your attention to it.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Evolution’s metamorphosis (no caterpillars)

Posted on 14/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

Following on from my post yesterday there is something else significant to be considered if the Neodarwinian paradigm should soon be modified, extended or even swept away altogether. I quoted Jablonka and Lamb’s list of just some of the processes and issues now being incorporated into a twenty-first century view of evolution. Molecular biological insights, new mutational mechanisms, HGT, ecology (including niche construction), behaviour and culture were listed. They might have added developmental issues, epigenetics and other non-genetic inheritance, physiological condiderations as per Denis Noble, symbiosis, hybridisation, etc etc. Some of these are unarguable, others more speculative. But they all serve to make evolution far more complicated, which is, in … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Cousin Caterpillar

Posted on 13/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

One thing I have in common with Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury – apart from bad hair and a beard – is a love of the unique 60s music of the Incredible String Band. He calls their stuff “holy”, and while I wouldn’t go that far, it is because of them that I discovered the metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne, and made diversity and informality an ideal of my own songwriting. One ISB song was helpful in getting me through the changes and challenges of university, a quirky little thing called Cousin Caterpillar

Posted in Creation, Music, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

In the beginning…

Posted on 11/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

… according to the undirected-evolution TEs, God created chance. Like everything else he sustains it in being moment by moment. But he’s somehow still able to catch himself out with it. It’s a bit like being able to laugh when you tickle yourself, or to pick a random number and then be unable to guess it. It’s not so much that it’s remarkable to be able to do it, but remarkable why he’d bother.

Posted in Creation, Medicine, Science | Leave a comment

Prometheus and cosmology

Posted on 09/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

I’m reproducing here a longish post I’ve just done over at Biologos (#82822), only because posts there are ditched after 6 months and I’d like to preserve it. Ted Davis posted a link to an excellent article by Dennis Danielson, on the prevalent myth that the old “geocentrism” implied anthropocentrism. But it also answered a question to me by PNG about sources for TOF’s claim in his blog series on heliocentrism that Renaissance folks preferred the new views because they elevated man to the celestial realm. My post follows:

Posted in Creation, Prometheus, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Crossing the tracks

Posted on 07/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

Hmm – a comment of mine on Uncommon Descent seems to have been promoted into a post. Not sure about the thread’s title, but the answer is “Goddidit.” I feel I’m changing into a design…

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

On an unrelated subject

Posted on 04/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

Do you sometimes get the feeling that there’s a whole world of news Out There which, for some reason, the usual media won’t touch? The BBC Radio 4 news was this morning covering the terrible tragedy of the sinking of a boatload of refugees off Italy.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

Colour vision

Posted on 04/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

The second half of the Attenborough series on vertebrates, which I watched last night, kept the teleology  coming. I guess it’s pretty plausible to say that because marsupial young are at risk of predation and infection, mammals needed to develop a placenta so they could be born well-developed. However, to be strictly ateleological one ought to say that those mammals that happened to develop a specialised uterus equipped for gas and nutrient exchange and massive growth capacity, and a modified lower genital tract, muscular and skeletal structure to allow live birth of large offspring, together of course with greatly enlarged lactation gear and radically altered habits of nurture; at the same … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 7 Comments

Biologos – infinitesimal change or stasis?

Posted on 03/10/2013 by Jon Garvey

It seems to be rather quiet over at BioLogos recently. Two things to note, though, about themes that particularly interest me. On an apparently uncontroversial thread, the failure of those influential at BioLogos to engage with the questions raised by many of us, about its ongoing fudging of the issue of God’s involvement in evolution, was noted.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science | 9 Comments