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- Faith in feelings 14/07/2026
- Cognitive dissonance – the midwife of wisdom 08/07/2026
- Conceptual divergence 02/07/2026
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Category Archives: Creation
Cognitive dissonance – the midwife of wisdom
Cognitive dissonance is usually seen as the enemy of reason. For example, in the science-faith field, the old trope is that the Christian indoctrinated in the superstitions of the Bible, when confronted by the facts of science, becomes mentally scrambled and simply fails to perceive obvious realities. This criticism extends to the highest levels, for example in Jerry Coyne’s attempt to exclude Francis Collins from becoming head of the NIH some years ago, on the grounds that he was a Christian and therefore not scientifically reputable. But in fact, cognitive dissonance can often free the mind to pursue truth.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature
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Conceptual divergence
A couple of decades ago, when I still lived in the world of general medical practice, one of the local GP appraisers persuaded me and another GP, John, to run a course on spinal manipulation for the next generation of medics. Both of us had learned the same stuff, from the same pioneering doctors, John Paterson and Loic Burn, when we were young GP partners in the early 1980s.
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Donald Campbell and Darwinian theory
A YouTube video by a member of the engineering team that salvaged and restored Donald Campbell’s jet boat Bluebird from Lake Coniston explores why the boat’s recent return to that lake proved a bit of a damp squib.
Posted in Creation, History, Science
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We meet the Word in the word, not in the world
When I was writing The Generations of Heaven and Earth I made extensive use of John H. Sailhamer’s The Meaning of the Pentateuch. It was somewhere in that large tome, if memory serves, that he wrote something to the effect that theology should not be concerned with historical events, as such, but with the Bible’s record of historical events.
Posted in Creation, Theology
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What I think I know about life in the deep past
Colin Patterson, FRS, was a palaeontologist and proponent of “transformed cladistics” based at London’s Natural History Museum, who raised a controversy in 1981 by rhetorically asking his colleagues at a conference, “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?”
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature
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How Darwinian evolution became plausible (for a time)
Here are some thoughts on what factors provided the fertile ground for Darwinian evolutionary theory to appear plausible when it was published in 1859. This is followed by some of the problems raised at the time the theory was published, showing that they have all become more acute, rather than being resolved, since 1859. The net result is that “variation and natural selection” as the origin of species is now thoroughly implausible, and remains a consensus only by academic inertia.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology of nature
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The generations of pre-adamic man
I came across a short clip of a discussion between the late Michael Heiser and Joshua Swamidass. It is on the Genealogical Adam theory Josh and I developed, he in the mainly scientific Genealogical Adam and Eve, and I in the almost simultaneously published, and primarily theological, Generations of Heaven and Earth.
Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology of nature
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Fearfully and wonderfully bodged?
Back in October 2020, I participated in a Webinar organised by the Christian Scientific Society, which also included Stuart Burgess from the UK, and Fuz Rana, Scott Minnich and David Snoke from the US.
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology of nature
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Immanence narratives for the post-secular age
A nice academic-sounding title for a blog inspired by my post-Christmas reading, by dint of an inspired present from my wife’s academic cousin. It is Planet Narnia, by Michael Ward. Ward’s 2008 book proposes that C. S. Lewis built his seven Narnia stories around a secret scheme that based both their distinctive “atmospheres,” and the varying aspects of the Christ-figure, Aslan the lion, on the astrological features of the seven Ptolemaic planets.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology, Theology of nature
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Was Einstein wrong?
Every once in a while, some sciencey YouTuber posts a video about a new scientific discovery that casts doubt on Einstein’s theory of relativity. I’ve no idea whether any of these have validity, but instead I want to ask whether scientific progress has refuted his view of God – that is to say his theology rather than his relativity.
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