Monthly Archives: January 2016

Denton, Falk and theodicy

Posted on 30/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

  Eddie Robinson drew attention, on BioLogos, to ex-BioLogian Darrel Falk’s favourable review of Michael Denton’s new book Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. Eddie praises Darrel’s generosity, and I’d add that he shows considerable courage, given the flak he took for his previous generally favourable review of another Intelligent Design text, Stephen Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt, a year or two ago even from his own Theistic Evolution constituency. I see even the first reply to his Amazon review is warning him off supping with the devil, and on past form expect some of the same response at BioLogos (or at least claims that Falk didn’t write what he wrote!)

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

Soft scientism in western Christianity…

Posted on 28/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

…or “at least you can rely on science.” Materialism is the belief that only material entities and processes exist, and virtually all Evangelicals reject it, in principle. Nevertheless it’s now pretty well recognised, if only by readers of The Hump, that living in a materialist society makes it easy to take on board materialism’s assumptions even when opposing it.

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

That’s another story

Posted on 25/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

Maybe you picked up on the recent story about the ancient origin of folk tales: a typical headline was this from CNN: Some fairy tales go back thousands of years, study says. Now, most of us aren’t that familiar with the science of folklorology, so we’d perhaps be inclined (as most of the press were) to assume that if the experts in a field come up with a conclusion, the rest of us should just take the results at face value – especially since this particular study was published by the Royal Society.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 2 Comments

Location, location, non-location

Posted on 21/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

The last two blogs, on Genesis cosmology, were partly written in interaction with a discussion on BioLogos on that subject, to which I contributed just a couple of posts. One thing Eddie questioned in my presentation there was the perception that I might be elevating “the heavens” as a special, more holy part of creation.

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Letting the air out of Genesis 1

Posted on 18/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

Here’s the phenomenological treatment of the Genesis creation account I promised you, if you’re interested in the cosmology of the Bible. You’ll need to read my piece on “air” first to see where I’m coming from, but you might also want to take a look at a two-part scholarly article here and here  by Andrew Perry, of Durham University.

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A short history of air

Posted on 16/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

Another BioLogos thread on the relationship of Genesis 1 to “modern science” got me thinking more about the phenomenology of that, and other ANE accounts like Enuma Elish. By this I mean to bypass, for now, the (more important) questions of “meaning” and “genre”, simply to try and get a better picture of what kind of world the ancients saw when they looked out of the window. It becomes quite interesting.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science | 4 Comments

On the resurrection…

Posted on 14/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

… and on a good number of other matters too, from Creation to Scriptural Inspiration…

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When creation is not good enough

Posted on 13/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

I found myself astonished by the sheer scale, and immediacy, of media outpouring over the death on Monday of David Bowie. I don’t know what it was like elsewhere in the world, but from the first “We heard half an hour ago…” on the non pop-culture BBC Radio 4, pretty well the whole radio output of the day seemed to be replaced by every available media person’s appreciations, however trivial. Here was the BBC news: “I’m sorry to have to cut short your thoughts on tomorrow’s national doctors’ strike, but you’ll appreciate that in the light of David Bowie’s death this specially extended programme…”

Posted in Music, Politics and sociology, Theology, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

How hard can prevention be?

Posted on 11/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

One of the more glorious moments of my not especially glorious medical career was that I was, quite accidentally, instrumental in catalyzing a medical conference on prostate cancer screening in our town. Here’s how it happened.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 10 Comments

The rate- (or purpose-) limiting step of Creation

Posted on 07/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

I was struck by a succinct observation by poster StephenB on an Uncommon Descent thread about theistic evolution: For guided evolution, the design precedes the process. For Darwinian evolution, the process precedes the design (appearance of).

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 7 Comments