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- The psychology of materialism 27/08/2026
- Immense and eternal, not big and old 19/08/2026
- Cambridge professors and Evangelical beliefs 13/08/2026
- Dickens ex machina 07/08/2026
- Rehashing double causation 06/08/2026
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Category Archives: Creation
The psychology of materialism
Apparently, a recent survey of some 1,700 physicists (who knew there were so many?) asked them their preferred explanation for cosmological fine-tuning. I’m sure all my readers are well aware of the absurdly tight limits of various cosmological constants and boundary conditions of the early universe that seem, to so many ordinary people, to point to a divine Creator.
Immense and eternal, not big and old
“Am I only a God nearby,”declares the Lord,“and not a God far away?Who can hide in secret placesso that I cannot see them?”declares the Lord.“Do not I fill heaven and earth?”declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 23:23-4).
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature, Uncategorized
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Dickens ex machina
I’ve had some further thoughts prompted by my use, in my last post, of Charles Dickens as the quasi-deity creating the world of Oliver Twist. One of the weaknesses of Dickens as a writer, especially in his earlier books, is his use of unlikely coincidence, or deus ex machina, in resolving his plots. It’s not uncommon for his characters to be rescued from difficult situations by bumping into people who happen to have been friends in far-off places and times.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology, Theology of nature
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Rehashing double causation
One of the problems atheists have with theism is the doctrine of double causation. This is usually demonstrated by their belief that finding efficient causes in nature excludes the need for God. Whilst they may find pause for reflection in the Big Bang, every other reference to God in the world is taken to be “the God of the Gaps.”
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology
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The extended God hypothesis
I’m reading Steve Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis as part of a self-imposed refresher course on science-faith matters. My reading follows directly on from another fairly lengthy book on cosmological fine-tuning, A Fortunate Universe, by Lewis and Barnes.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature
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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.
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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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