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Recent Posts
- Unconstitutional monarchy 02/12/2023
- One of my occasional posts on occasionalism 27/11/2023
- Bad theology exposed in the tabloids 24/11/2023
- A perfect jihad 20/11/2023
- Book review: Busting Anti-Vax Myths 19/11/2023
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Author Archives: Jon Garvey
More on climate
I’m about three quarters of the way through a book, the reading of which was prompted by a brief exchange here, and a slightly longer one by e-mail, with GD, whose professional expertise is as a fuel chemist. The book, The Frozen Climate Views of the IPPC (Clintel Foundation, Amsterdam, 2023), is an analysis of the IPCC’s latest report, AR6, by a range of “questioning” scientists including those who have been expert reviewers and contributors to IPCC reports. Such analysis is essential because – sobering thought – almost nobody in the world has read AR6, or any of the other IPCC reports, in their entirety.
Posted in Politics and sociology, Science
7 Comments
The strange ethics of propaganda
YouTube is becoming all tough and militant (terroristic?) about the use of Ad-blockers. If I open a copy of YouTube in a fresh window now, in the time it has taken me to type these two sentences, twenty five ads have been blocked by Firefox. No, twenty six, as I did the full stop. If I actually open a video, pretty soon some threatening message will now flash up tell me it’s evil not to watch them all.
Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology
1 Comment
The pivot of history
At the purely geopolitical level, war in Israel is a highly significant and concerning matter. But if biblical prophecy is more than the fairy-tales the New Atheists loved to claim, without investigation, before their own demise as a movement, then war in Israel may be of cosmic significance. I have no intention here of going down the rabbit hole of placing the current situation of Israel in 2023 into the prophetic matrix of the Bible. Instead I want to take a look at the wider question of whether there is a basis for taking that matrix seriously, rather than airily dismissing it like the Gnus’ talk of “your imaginary friend,” … Continue reading
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
6 Comments
It’s always ther cloimate wot gets the blame
As I anticipated, our Harvest Festival had a significant section on failure of harvests in poor countries and how we need to help, in this case focusing on Uganda – a country where, but for providential circumstances, I might have worked. I voiced my reservations about the anthropocentrism of harvest thanksgiving nowadays in my previous blog, and I won’t labour the point. What I will mention, though, is another near-universal theme in the kind of video we were shown – that it is the poor who are already feeling the brunt of climate change, witness the increasing droughts being experienced by farmers in Uganda.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science
11 Comments
Providence, raindrops and horsehoe-nails
One throw-away line in a video for the excellent Christian course Discipleship Exploredcaught my attention. The narrator, speaking of God’s care for us, said that “each drop of rain has its intended target.”
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature
2 Comments
Forgetting the gift and the giver at harvest time
It’s the time of year when churches still tend to have some kind of harvest festival. I was reminded of that this morning both by having to get the songs for our harvest service out to the various musicians, projectionists and so on, and even more by my daily reading happening to be Acts 14, in which Paul and Barnabas discourage the Lycaonians from treating them as gods by reminding them that the true God has revealed himself to them because “he has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” Ironically, … Continue reading
Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology, Theology of nature
4 Comments
What’s wrong with the mark of the beast, anyway?
It’s generally thought that the earthly reality behind the book of Revelation’s “mark of the beast,” the infamous 666, was the imposition of emperor-worship by Nero, whose name is argued to add up numerologically to that number. For the Christian, it meant the compulsion to own any other god than the true one revealed by and in Christ.
Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology
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More on soul as the sole reality
I eventually worked through Joshua Farris’s The Creation of Self, as mentioned recently, and have to say I felt it improved towards the end.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology
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Permission to hate, Sir
Standin’ on the gallows,Stagolee did cuss.The judge said, “Let’s kill him,before he kills some of us.”That bad man, that cruel Stagolee (Stagolee, Mississippi John Hurt version).
Posted in Politics and sociology
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The sole soul
the Apologies for sparsity of posts just now, but it’s both the B&B season for visiting grandchildren, and the labour-intensive mowing period for our hillside wild-flower meadow. Nevertheless I’ve had reason, whilst raking a hill-full of grass, to ponder the matter of the human soul.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology
1 Comment