Monthly Archives: November 2019

You can’t exclude human influence from science

The title of this blog could refer to a number of things I’ve discussed here over the years. It could mean the fact that science is entirely a human activity, which could be summarised as asking the near-infinite realm of nature particular questions of human interest, to which it will return equally particular and incomplete answers. Or it could refer to the mysterious effects of mind on quantum events. But in fact in this post it’s about something else: providence.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature | 5 Comments

“Alexa, what is the real cost of your switching on my lights?”

Here’s a link to a stunning diagram, and the must-read accompanying long article, called “The Anatomy of an AI system.” I understand it’s won some kind of award for a design as iconic as, perhaps, the London Underground map of Harry Beck; or perhaps closer still, those diagrams of the cell’s biochemical processes that so impressed me with God’s wisdom during my medical training.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science | Leave a comment

Press credibility

I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I recently rediscovered a book I’d forgotten I’d read back in 2009, Flat Earth News, by Nick Davies. It’s very relevant to my current interest in the propaganda-world in which we now seem to live, and move, and have our being.

Posted in Politics and sociology | 4 Comments

Heads up on “The Generations of Heaven and Earth”

I’ve just checked the proofs on my forthcoming (second) book, The Generations of Heaven and Earth: Adam, the Ancient World, and Biblical Theology, so when it is published by Cascade early next year you can blame all the residual mistakes on me.

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

On Phillip Johnson

The recent death of the founder of the Intelligent Design Movement (and seriously accomplished legal scholar), Phillip Johnson, put me in mind of the fact that I once met him, but had never read his work.

Posted in Creation, History, Politics and sociology, Science | 7 Comments

Hermes delivery on time – DHL late

I saw the planet Mercury for the first time in my life yesterday. Missing it for nearly 6 decades is really sheer laziness, as it’s in plain sight, close to the sun, if you look at the right time, as the ancients well knew.

Posted in Creation, Science | Leave a comment

Religion ghosts in refrigerated truck

I’m not sure how internationally this news was reported, but last month’s “illegal immigration tragedy” in Britain was the discovery of 39 bodies in a refrigerated truck recently arrived in Essex from Zeebrugge. It quickly emerged that, apart from the scale of the incident, it was unusual in that the victims, first identified as coming from China, were all actually from Vietnam.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

Well here’s another clue for you all…

… the walrus was Paul. Back in May I transferred an argument I’d made on a long thread on Peaceful Science to The Hump, after being accused of being a “climate denialist.” I had pointed out the misleading story in a David Attenborough documentary about walruses supposedly driven off cliff-tops by climate change, but actually (according to the investigative work of Susan Crockford) chased off by polar bears, and possibly by the drones being used in filming them.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science | Leave a comment

Model Land and the real world

There’s a very interesting, partly because simply-written, article by Thompson and Smith on the dangers of making predictions from computer models here.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 2 Comments

How the seal got his genes

The atlantic grey seal is the commoner of Britain’s two seal species: we have 40% of the world population. Not only is it a wonderful animal, but something of a conservation success story, the population having escalated after protective legislation in 1914 from just 500 to 120,000.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature | Leave a comment