Category Archives: Creation

Reality, illusion and purpose

Posted on 05/01/2018 by Jon Garvey

In my last post, on occasionalism, I alluded to the recent suggestion that the universe is a “simulation” in the context of the defensiveness people feel over the importance of the secondary causes in our world being “real”: The more powerful objection against occasionalism, it seems to me, is the vague idea that if, in the end, there is no solid basis to physical reality, then God is making us live in a world of illusion. Hence the feelings resonating around the recent suggestion that the universe is a “simulation” in which we are living.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology | 1 Comment

Rising to the occasion

Posted on 02/01/2018 by Jon Garvey

Early last year I did a couple of pieces (the most useful here) on a new formulation of the metaphysical position on divine action of occasionalism, called “divine compositionalism”, being developed primarily within the field of science. I liked it.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 6 Comments

Christmas Gifts

Posted on 23/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

One of the less obvious blessings from which we benefit not only here at the Hump of the Camel, but more widely, is that creation is seriously on the theological agenda at all. Wherever we stand on origins, it’s hard to remember that for much of the twentieth century, creation doctrine was sidelined in most branches of the Church.

Posted in Creation, Theology | 2 Comments

Command, relationship and freedom

Posted on 21/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

Someone has lent me Creation by Claus Westermann, a name familiar to me from my days of biblical studies in the psalms. In some ways it’s a bit disappointing, dating from 1971 and therefore, hailing from Germany, rather too assured of the “assured” results of the documentary hypothesis and history of religions theory. He actually uses that adjective “assured” – I’ve been looking for some source that didn’t use it merely ironically for years!

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Science’s mediaeval assumption

Posted on 14/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

One interesting aspect of Dante’s Divine Comedy (around which to reading I’ve finally got…) is to see the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas being applied just a few decades after his death, when it was still new and controversial. Thomas actually makes an appearance in heaven, but spends the majority of his speech eulogising St Francis of Assisi, which is not improbable given the priority he put on faith over philosophyat the close of his life. One thing that Dante deals with is the Great Chain of Being, a key mediaeval idea which I wrote about here.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 3 Comments

Habit-forming methodological naturalism

Posted on 11/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

All the main participants in the “two person bottleneck” thread on BioLogos have, as I write, gone to lick their wounds in teaching or research. It’s going about as inconclusively as I predicted here.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Mightily Hands On

Posted on 07/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

One of the several taboos that appears to separate theistic evolution (in its modern, “Evolutionary Creation”, form) from the “uncleanness” of Intelligent Design is the idea that God could not be “just another cause within the universe”. This precludes at a stroke allowing God to be involved in any chain of efficient causation amenable to observation (and particularly, of course, scientific observation).

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 7 Comments

Distinguishing the sources of teleology

Posted on 04/12/2017 by Jon Garvey

I mentioned briefly in my last post one of the things that struck me most from reading Perry Marshall’s Evolution 2.0. And that was the fact that intrinsic teleology and external teleology are not mutually exclusive, and yet might not be easy to distinguish.

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How (exactly) science leaves no room for God

Posted on 30/11/2017 by Jon Garvey

On his blog Shadow of Oz, biologist Wayne Rossiter, a principled opponent of theistic evolution, notices a re-posted BioLogos article by, ironically, the editor of Rossiter’s own book critiquing TE, Robin Parry. Rossiter’s post points out the fatuousness of the following argument:

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science | 1 Comment

Why randomness and free-will are not comparable

Posted on 21/11/2017 by Jon Garvey

For some reason, Bilbo started a thread on BioLogos directed at me, in which (as far as I can tell) he argues basically, “If God can create free wills that make decisons without reference to him, why could he not create random processes that similarly cause things without reference to him?” Many cans of worms open because of that, which you can read about on that thread. Here I just want to deal in more depth than is possible there on the question of whether the comparison between free-will and randomness is actually a valid one. I suspect it isn’t, except at the most superficial level.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology | 2 Comments