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.

Has the Lord not brought it about?

Posted on 24/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

The most significant commentary I’ve seen on the Afghanistan crisis is this prophetic article from American Doug Wilson.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 6 Comments

Blue man bad

Posted on 18/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

Have you noticed the convenient and universal scapegoating that’s going on over President Biden’s Afghanistan debacle? In normal times, a cock-up on this scale would indeed be seen both as a major scandal, but also as a complete aberration or (like the Vietnam withdrawal) as an historical inevitability. In living memory, presidents of greater or lesser competence have come and gone, with their errors usually well-covered, or in some cases (think, for example, of Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco) seen as blots on otherwise decent records. To err, after all, is human.

Posted in Politics and sociology | 5 Comments

Sheep with and without shepherds

Posted on 16/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

I confess I’ve been troubled, for longer than the Coronavirus issue, at how Christians, including even my own local brethren, seem to have been amongst those most easily deceived by the lies surrounding us in the world. For in the Bible, Satan’s deception during the end times is represented as what distinguishes the elect from the reprobate (and not the bloody-minded from the law-abiding).

Posted in Medicine, Theology | Leave a comment

Noble lies are still lies

Posted on 13/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

A US poll on COVID vaccination refusers gives the interesting result that the proportion of refusers is high in the least-educated classes, but highest amongst those at PhD level. It is, of course, rather tempting to identify the lower refusal rate amongst the moderately educated with what some would call “midwits,” but the real significance, it seems to me, is how those educated and interested enough to research the issue are discovering something suspicious. That seems to accord with experience of many I’ve encountered here on The Hump and elsewhere.

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology | 2 Comments

The phenomenological cosmos of childhood

Posted on 09/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

In The Generations of Heaven and Earth I make a case for the Genesis 1 creation story being in essence a phenomenological, rather than an ancient “scientific,” account of the world, though that is complicated by the author’s concept of this creation as a temple reflecting the form of the wilderness tabernacle and/or the Jerusalem temple.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature | 4 Comments

How I got suspicious

Posted on 08/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

All I really want to do here is link to an excellent explanation of where we all are, and where we’re all going, politically and socially. At least before it’s taken down from YouTube…

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

UK risk of COVID death v. vaccine death August 2021

Posted on 06/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

OK, I just have to increase the circulation of this graphic from the excellent statistician John Dee. It shows the risk of actually dying from COVID today in Britain, compared with the risk of dying from the vaccine. Brief explanation below the fold, but it’s very basic number crunching of official data and references are given.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 2 Comments

Would I be struck off the medical register in 2021?

Posted on 05/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

I retired before the GMC got round to enforcing re-validation, a kind of elderly drivers test for doctors supposedly left behind by the march of scientific progress and dementia, if not addiction to golf. Subsequently I removed myself from the medical register to save money. But since COVID I’ve been wondering if I’d even be able to pass a re-validation test now, though I think I would have done so easily back in 2008.

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

Scurvy knaves as the products of worldviews

Posted on 02/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

In my last post I finished off by speculating whether the ambitions of technocrats like Klaus Schwab for a new world order, dangerously near to fulfilment because of the apathy of the majority, might in part be based on the materialist worldview which regards free-will as an illusion.

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

Democrats or autocrats?

Posted on 01/08/2021 by Jon Garvey

It seems to me that the biggest question in this lockdown business is this: are governments like the UK’s conservative government under Boris Johnson freedom-lovers constrained by a pandemic to impose temporary restrictions on many of our God-given liberties, or are they (for one reason or another) intent on centralising power in the longer term? This question seems to be the thing that differentiates the “mainstream” from “the dissenters.”

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | Leave a comment