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.

Powers and principalities

Posted on 22/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

I’ve recently been reading a book on the theology of evil. That’s an important topic in its own right, though regulars will know my position that the physical creation is neither intrinsically nor derivatively evil (see several 2011 posts on it starting here, and I’m still waiting and hoping for the publication of a proper paper on it). In this blog, majoring on creation doctrine rather than hamartology, I tend to follow the dictum of the late great guitarist John Martyn: I don’t wanna know about evil I only wanna know about love

Posted in Creation, Theology | 43 Comments

The limitations of (excluding) natural theology

Posted on 20/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

Much discussion recently amongst the usual suspects (including both BioLogos and Uncommon Descent) on a Wall Street Journal article by Eric Metaxas, suggesting an increasing support for theism from modern science. Unfortunately it’s behind a pay-wall, but seems to have majored on cosmic fine-tuning, together with support for the “rare earth” hypothesis.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 25 Comments

Proving divinity and divining proof

Posted on 19/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

As regular readers here will know, I’m no Aquinas scholar, though I’ve found some of his thinking extremely helpful in gaining a better understanding of reality,  especially in the discussion of origins. But even I – and no doubt many of you – have some awareness of the annoyance of Thomists at the misrepresentation of Aquinas’ Second Way of demonstrating God’s existence, by some of the New Atheist writers. Ed Feser, for example, has devoted a few blog posts to it and in his book on Aquinas pours scorn on the “stock caricature”.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology | 2 Comments

Fortune rota volvitur

Posted on 16/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

Not much blogging this week, because I’ve been trying to do an arrangement for massed saxophones of Carl Orff’s totemic opening to Carmina Burana, O Fortuna. It rather tickles my fancy how it contrasts with the last arrangement I did, Driving in My Car by the ska band Madness. The idea was to have some kind of cosmic fanfare for a gig we’ve booked at the end of this year, to accompany the switch-on of our town’s Christmas lights. As you’ll hear from a clip of the original, it might require burning the whole town down to do it proper justice:

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

Work

Posted on 13/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

Last week I was repainting our living room, work that invites having the radio on in the background. And even if it doesn’t, having paint on your hands prevents you switching the thing off. And so it was that I heard three programnmes back to back bearing on similar subjects.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology | Leave a comment

A New Heaven and a New Earth – J Richard Middleton

Posted on 09/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

I first became aware of the idea that the future hope of Christians is bodily resurrection on a renewed earth, rather than spiritual translation to heaven, back in 1971, through an unusual theological source: the British music newspaper The Melody Maker.

Posted in Creation, Theology | 22 Comments

Western values

Posted on 08/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

Dreadful events in Paris yesterday. Amidst ongoing dreadful events in the Middle East, of course. Not to forget an ongoing list of dreadful events perpetrated by anti-creation Islamists over the years. Much of the coverage today is about the need to show fortitude in the midst of attacks on the civilized values of democracy, diversity, tolerance and freedom of speech.

Posted in Politics and sociology | 5 Comments

The bell curves! The bell curves!

Posted on 07/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

After the last post it occurs to me that change ringing is quite a clear illustration of the combinatorial problem in evolution. This is, essentially, that the number of variables involved in any form of genetic evolution based on random variation is so vast that they quickly outstrip the search resources of the universe.

Posted in Philosophy, Science | 17 Comments

In heaven the bells are ringing

Posted on 05/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

This one’s just for fun, to find joy in some mathematical aspects of the creation. I did a post in September about the principle of plenitude, a term coined by historian of ideas Arthur Lovejoy about a pervading concept of mediaeval and early modern thought in which it seemed that God must create everything possible or short change the world and himself. This was seldom stated overtly, being more part of the warp and weft of thought, comparable to the modern tendency to see absolutely everything in evolutionary (rather than, say, static or cyclical terms). The idea was probably at its peak in the late seventeenth century, summed up in … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy | 2 Comments

Y-Adam, mito-Eve and all that

Posted on 03/01/2015 by Jon Garvey

Our regular commenter pngarrison let me know he has just posted a piece on his own blog, explaining the actual genetic situation regarding those often confused concepts of Y-chromosome “Adam”, mitochondrial “Eve”, population bottlenecks and so on. His training is in biochemistry, but with good of experience in genetics too.

Posted in Science, Theology | 6 Comments