Author Archives: Jon Garvey

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About Jon Garvey

Training in medicine (which was my career), social psychology and theology. Interests in most things, but especially the science-faith interface. The rest of my time, though, is spent writing, playing and recording music.

Wot a pretty world we live in

The same day as someone said to me (not untypically now) that there’s not much good news about in Britain, someone contacted me out of the blue to point out a numerical error – or rather outdated information – in an old post. His update was actually a reminder that if we lift up our eyes to the natural world, we always see good news of abundance, variety and beauty.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 1 Comment

End times postponed – or not?

It’s strange how, as so many of us have noted, society seems to be divided into at least a couple of quite distinct and watertight realities. One is that fed to us by the mainstream media, and the other by alternative sources of one kind or another, seemingly with few connections between them.

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

Confusion over temples produces confusion over worship

In Chapter 16 of my Generations of Heaven and Earth I spend eighteen pages contrasting the Old Testament tabernacle/temple, based on the Genesis cosmic temple of Genesis 1 and emphasising the separateness of God from his creation, with the New Testament (and New Creation) temple in which all barriers are dissolved in the body of Christ.

Posted in History, Theology | 4 Comments

RIP Günter Bechly

I’ve been saddened to hear of the untimely death (in a road accident) of my favourite palaeontologist, Günter Bechly, over in Austria. You can see a report and an appreciation over at Evolution News and Views.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 1 Comment

What the Bible should have said #28

Judges 20: a nation confronts gang-rape 4 So the Levite, the husband of the murdered woman, said, “I and my concubine came to Gibeah in Benjamin to spend the night. 5 During the night the men of Gibeah came after me and surrounded the house, intending to kill me. They raped my concubine, and she died. 6 I took my concubine, cut her into pieces and sent one piece to each region of Israel’s inheritance, because they committed this lewd and outrageous act in Israel. 7 Now, all you Israelites, speak up and tell me what you have decided to do.” 8 All the men rose up together as one, … Continue reading

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

Religion without a covenant

Another holiday, and another Islamist atrocity. If reports so far are to be believed, the perpetrator in New Orleans was, once more, a recent convert seeking to prove his credentials by waging war on the infidels – meaning Christians, Jews, atheists, idolaters, and Muslims either apostasising or not sufficiently zealous. Since that includes most people in New Orleans, the indiscriminate slaughter is seen to be a feature, not a bug. It’s maybe not for nothing that in Genesis 16:12 the angel of Yahweh prophesies that Ishmael “will be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he will live in … Continue reading

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Ox and ass before him bow…

Happy Boxing Day, all you labourers going from house to house for your Christmas boxes! Yes, very nice, thank you, driving over to Sussex to our daughter’s family. Missing our turning off the A30 in thick fog was a bit of a bummer, though.

Posted in History, Theology | Leave a comment

The DNA of the babe in the stable

I’ve just read David Mitchell’s book Jesus – the Incarnation of the Word. I bought it after seeing the author interviewed by Seth Postell, an Israeli Christian academic whose work I reference in my own Generations of Heaven and Earth, but it turns out to be pretty seasonally appropriate for a Christmas blog.

Posted in Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Revisiting Genesis cosmology

More seasoned readers of The Hump will remember its emphasis on “origins” before it started to document how the world has finally gone completely mad. One recurring theme was to refute the claim that the Bible, and Genesis 1 in particular, teaches an erroneous “Middle East obsolete science cosmology.” The matter broadly boils down to the proper consideration of genre.

Posted in Creation, History, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 1 Comment

Total insanity is no fun

Tom Lehrer claimed to have given up songwriting because the US political situation had become too ridiculous for satire. Things are so much worse now that satire itself has virtually died (apart from woke virtue signalling posing as satire, and distinguished by provoking vomiting rather than laughter). Likewise, a blog like this, which currently majors on pointing out societal evils, is in danger of having simply to say, “Everything around you is insane – there’s nothing else to say.” But I’ll try for now to keep on at least making some sense of things.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 5 Comments