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.

Good Friday

Posted on 10/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

I’ve noticed something interesting in Britain during this COVID-19 crisis – perhaps not that surprising, but maybe a significant sign of the times.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

Hedging and ditching

Posted on 09/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

Here in rural Devon, most of the field boundaries are traditional “Devon banks,” which are banks of earth and stone originally capped with hedges, in order to contain livestock. Down in our valley, many of the banks are mediaeval. The parish boundary just down the lane, dated by counting the number of tree species that have colonized what was originally holly, probably dates right back to Saxon times. But up here on the hill most of them, including the boundaries of my own property, probably date to around 1820, when the common-land “turbary” was enclosed: a mere two hundred years.

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

It’s the same the ‘ole world over…

Posted on 03/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

It’s the poor wot gets the blame. I’m increasingly of the opinion that the “precautionary principle” that’s so prevalent in the current crisis, and in many other recent public applications of science, is a highly dangerous one.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 4 Comments

By nature objects of wrath

Posted on 02/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

I’ve belatedly realised one plausible reason why Paul places homosexual acts at the head of his list of the sinful results of denying the true God in Romans 1:18ff. On the face of it, that particular activity doesn’t seem obviously to follow on from idolatry, nor to be uniquely evil.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

A little science is a dangerous thing

Posted on 30/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

Using an electronic copy kindly sent my new Hump commenter MartinV, I’ve been looking at a recent book by John Schneider, The Darwinian Problem of Evil (it’s not released in UK until the end of the month). I won’t do a review, but from the comprehensive Introduction I found it to be a summary of the kind of theodical problems and novel theological solutions against which I reacted at BioLogos several years ago. Although the new book postdates my own God’s Good Earth, I’d see mine as a response to his, rather than the reverse (and indeed, Schneider does not interact with my work).

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature | 2 Comments

The banks of sweet primroses

Posted on 28/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

Well, I guess that a large proportion of my readers around the world will be locked in against the Coronavirus pandemic, in one way or another. A friend in Sri Lanka is facing enforced curfews, and there are massive queues for food when they are lifted, which rather defeats the object.

Posted in Creation, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

Lying for Jesus = lying to Jesus

Posted on 24/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

In my former life as a doctor, I was a GP, but ended up specialising in back pain, for a variety of contingent reasons.

Posted in Medicine, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Cancelling society to save lives

Posted on 18/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

A wise retired surgeon said on a radio phone-in yesterday that, just a few years ago, we wouldn’t even have known about COVID-19 until the pandemic was past its peak, and we would probably have concluded that it was just a particularly bad winter for elderly deaths from respiratory disease. Maybe ignorance is bliss.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

God’s River of Love

Posted on 16/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

Long ago God formed a River of Love. It flowed from the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ, and ran with the clear water of life, a water so powerful that when it washed against those who bathed in it, it turned their rebellion and enmity against heaven into a love that reflected God’s own, and poured out from them to share the good news of forgiveness and healing to other people. As for those who drank of that water, they were enabled to live forever in the very presence of God.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Hump retrospective 8: the origin of spiritual evil

Posted on 12/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

Satan before the Fall Because it’s unfashionable to think about Satan in science-faith discussions (which goes along with the semi-deist viewpoint that reduces the whole of existence to “God” v “Nature”), the question of what the devil was doing before the Fall, in an old earth scenario, gets little attention.

Posted in Hump Retrospective, Uncategorized | 2 Comments