Category Archives: Creation

What is man – no, really?

Posted on 11/08/2017 by Jon Garvey

“Adam” means “man” in Hebrew (as “human” rather than “male individual”), and quite apart from the deliberate wordplay in Genesis it is generally believed to have some kind of etymological link in Hebrew with “adamah“, meaning “red” and hence “red (=fertile and tilled) soil”. This would not be far-fetched, since our own English word “human” appears to derive from a Proto-Indoeuropean (PIE) root meaning “earth”, thus distinguishing men from the gods of heaven. One question for the “genealogical Adam” hypothesis of my last post, in which Adam is an historical figure and universal common ancestor, but not the first man, is how he gets to take the word for all … Continue reading →

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Original sin and the genealogical (MRCA) view of Adam

Posted on 09/08/2017 by Jon Garvey

Despite modern denials, original sin (known in the East as “ancestral sin”) has been assumed by all major branches of Christianity down the ages. I wrote on its affirmation by Irenaeus in the 2nd century here (against many modern writers who pin it all on Augustine two centuries later).

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Of nesting hierarchies

Posted on 06/08/2017 by Jon Garvey

I was collecting some tools from our stable (no longer used for horses) and noticed, not for the first time, a hornet buzzing about there. A careful examination confirmed my suspicion that there was a nest hiding in the corner of the ceiling. I decided that with several grandchildren due to be tromping about in there this month, disturbing a few hundred of these of these not especially aggressive, but certainly large and well-armed creatures was not to be entertained. So I confess I terminated their natural history with an insecticide.

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All and everything…

Posted on 02/08/2017 by Jon Garvey

… but nothing at all to do with the book of that name by George Gurdjieff. Science Daily has an article about an interesting recent paper on genes and disease, that in effect sounds the death knoll for the genetic model of disease and opens a potential can of extremely hungry worms for biology as a whole.

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Two ways

Posted on 29/07/2017 by Jon Garvey

For most of my life I’ve tried to avoid the idea of Jesus as a moral teacher, both because of the gospel of grace and forgiveness versus moralistic self-help, and because of my awareness of C S Lewis’s famous argument in Mere Christianity: A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

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Lies, damned lies, and cladistics

Posted on 25/07/2017 by Jon Garvey

That title is, of course, a gross exaggeration or indeed a calumny (but hey, it sounds good!): cladistics is a tool that is useful according to how it is used. But a major 2009 paper on the evolution of birds addresses some pitfalls in its common use, and points out that: Cladistics should be treated not as a way to test phylogenetic hypotheses but as an exploratory method, useful, if handled sensitively, for comparing and evaluating hypotheses.

Posted in Creation, Science | 9 Comments

Letting teleology into science, or not

Posted on 22/07/2017 by Jon Garvey

fun∙ction: from Latin fungor, (a) I perform, execute, administer, discharge; (b) I complete, finish.

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Understanding the times

Posted on 18/07/2017 by Jon Garvey

I was listening to Bob Dylan’s Talking World War III Blues in the car last week. Those who were of responsible age back in 1963 may remember it’s about Dylan recounting his dream of being the only one alive after a nuclear war to a psychiatrist, who eventually interrupts him saying he’s been having the same dream, only he was the only one left alive (“I didn’t see you around”). It goes on: A lot of time passed and now it seems Everybody’s having them dreams

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Imponderable probabilities

Posted on 14/07/2017 by Jon Garvey

One of those arguments that seems intuitively wrong, but is hard actually to refute, is the claim that the probability of something that comes to exist in nature, particularly something that seems designed, is impossible to calculate. The fact that something exists, they say, makes its probability 100%, and so it cannot be judged unlikely in advance. Thinking mathematically, since any set of values is as rare as any other, for example in the case of parameters in cosmic fine tuning or the DNA sequence of some astonishing creature, there’s really nothing to wonder about in their existence, as opposed to anything else existing instead.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

More natural history from the camel’s eyrie

Posted on 10/07/2017 by Jon Garvey

Last month we brought you the living fossil in my study. This month, for your oblectation, I present the astonishing acrobatic abilities of Megachile centuncularis, which has evolved to make its nest in steel patio tables.

Posted in Creation, Science | 5 Comments