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.

Romans 5 and Pre-Adamic Man

Posted on 02/03/2011 by Jon Garvey

One of the passages that causes some difficulties for “old Earth” views of mankind, and especially of the origin and nature of sin, is Romans 5. But not only can these difficulties, I believe, be overcome, but the passage can cast considerable light on how spirituality and sin might come into a world in which the human race is acknowledged to have existed for many millennia. My essay on the subject here

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | 1 Comment

Diversity Rules, OK?

Posted on 02/03/2011 by Jon Garvey

Online comments on the recent case in which a Pentecostal couple were rejected as foster-parents tend to degenerate into the usual slanging matches over homophobia. But what the judges’ ruling seems to concern is not homosexual orientation as such, but equality and diversity legislation. They cite regulations to ensure that children “are provided with foster care services which value diversity and promote equality”. This is considerably more open-ended than the question of harming sexually confused children. Mr and Mrs Johns themselves insisted that they would love any child unconditionally, but would not consent to endorse the homosexual lifestyle. They also pointed at that the issue was scarcely likely to arise in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics and sociology | 1 Comment

Science and Conformity

Posted on 28/02/2011 by Jon Garvey

This article gave me that “I told you so” feeling. Before I retired in 2008 I railed against younger doctors for advising parents to use alternate ibuprofen and paracetamol to bring their kids’ fevers down. My grounds were that fever is physiological and useful, not pathological (surprising how many docs haven’t clocked this), that drugs (especially NSAIDs) have side effects, and that no evidence existed that using two antipyretics does more than one. Indeed, at the time there was no actual research to show that using even one to reduce temperature reduced the only significant complication of fever, convulsion, though it’s highly probable they would.

Posted in Medicine, Science | 1 Comment

Interpreting Genesis myth legitimately

Posted on 28/02/2011 by Jon Garvey

Let’s talk about myth. John Walton’s work on Genesis 1 shows that ANE myth is to be understood functionally, not physically. Genesis 1 describes 7 days in which Yahweh organises the earth as his temple with mankind as his priests. Walton points out how irrelevant this makes it to the evolution debate. It is more to do with revelation than manufacture. Let’s go further. As an account of human evolution, the Mesopotamian Eridu Genesis is rubbish. It mentions men created as kings, as temple-builders, and the first (named) cities: 100K (or 4.5 bn) year anachronisms as far as physical creation is concerned. Wrong – actually it was written to explain … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Theology | 1 Comment

Catching up

Posted on 27/02/2011 by Jon Garvey

Over the last few months the BioLogos blog has helped me think through an approach to creation that does injustice neither to science or the Bible, taken as the directly inspired word of God. In particular John H Walton’s book on Genesis 1 is a must-read to discover how a functionally conceived view of creation is the literal meaning, removing at a stroke many apparent contradictions with science. During my postings on that blog I have put my thoughts in a number of essays, to which I would have linked individually here if the blog had existed at the time. Instead, here are the links all together, in no logical order. … Continue reading →

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

Hello, and welcome

Posted on 27/02/2011 by Jon Garvey

Hi there. I finally got round to creating a blog, partly because a few people asked me to, but mainly because I accidentally moved my website from MS hosting to Linux hosting. It meant rewriting all the scripts on the website, but had a built in WordPress facility which it seemed a pity to waste. I’ll no doubt have something substantive to say in due course, but here I’ll just explain the name . The hump belongs to Potiphar, my alter-ego, who has always done my writing for me. The title is, I am told, a position in the Kama Sutra but I know nothing about that sort of thing … it does … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments