Category Archives: Creation

Divine image or pareidolia?

Posted on 11/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

BioLogos is currently doing a series with the strapline: “A continued examination of the genetic evidence that God designed humans by way of common descent.” This is actually more an attempt by Dennis Venema to demonstrate the truth of a Neodarwinian account of human origins than simply an appeal to common descent (still less to divine design), but in fairness it would seem that the description is the result of sub-editing as it does not occur in the articles themselves.

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God, unbelief and universal morality

Posted on 07/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

A recent thread on disputes about the nature of information quickly degenerated into the kind of denegration of religious faith usually (though just as unproductively) seen on apologetics sites, which was why I asked for it to stop. Debating such matters is really outside The Hump’s remit – we are here to discuss the implications of holding Christian faith for science; other sites exist to argue about the validity of Christianity itself with anti-theists. I’m not sure why anyone would prefer to debate with apologetics amateurs rather than with the full-timers, other than lack of confidence in ones arguments. But that said, since Christians see morality as a fundamental part … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Theology | 33 Comments

Truth from afar

Posted on 04/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

Rounding off my meanderings in Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions I just want to pick up on a point I mentioned near the close of the last post. Kuhn says that, in his view, it is a mistake to see science, in its various paradigmatic guises, as converging on the Final Truth of reality, preferring to see it as extending from where it is now. In other words he is committed to the value of science, and its progress, but more in terms of its utility in solving problems than in the grand ambition of reaching ultimate truth. In this, actually, he seems to echo part of the mediaeval … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

The eclipse of the camel

Posted on 21/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

Well, a near total eclipse of the sun occurred here in Britain yesterday, and I was in a position actually to take some photographs. To be precise I was pulling up brambles behind our garden fence, so in a perfect south-facing position. Here’s what I got:

Posted in Creation, Science | 10 Comments

Knowing and creating

Posted on 20/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

An interesting interview with one of those proposing non-Darwinian models of evolution, Luis P Villarreal, on Huffington Post. His virus-centred approach is just another one of many recent advances, but it highlights an aspect that in his estimation has been woefully sidelined in evolutionary studies.

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Heaven is up there… sort of

Posted on 18/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

J Richard Middleton has a piece on his publisher’s blog expanding an idea that was implicit, though not stressed, in his book A New Heaven and a New Earth, which I briefly reviewed here.

Posted in Creation, Theology | 4 Comments

Eager beavers and missing lynx

Posted on 14/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

Exciting times ecologically close to home. Just a dozen miles from here, the first wild beavers to be seen in Britain since they were hunted to extinction in the eighteenth century have been granted UK citizenship. Presumably introduced deliberately (as none have been known to escape from captivity) the fate of the half-dozen or so living on the River Otter has been in the balance, as the risk of their carrying infection was discussed.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science | 3 Comments

Dark arts

Posted on 13/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

For some reason, far too late last night I found myself following a contentious thread on a site I don’t normally visit, because (as in this instance) it tends to be a slanging match between Creationists and Atheists. I was just curious, honest.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science | 37 Comments

Marking the occasion

Posted on 12/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

A year ago I did a piece on the three philosphical models of divine action. This was mainly to show the inadequacy of the “mere conservation” model that seemed to dominate the BioLogos mindset regarding the natural creation, leaving only the category of “miracle” to account for God’s action in the life of the believer, history and (in extremis) nature.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 16 Comments

If Adam wasn’t alone, then what?

Posted on 10/03/2015 by Jon Garvey

A. Leo Oppenheim, writing in the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography on Man and Nature in Mesopotamian Civilization, makes an interesting (and usually unnoticed) distinction between the two “creation stories” of Genesis. The relationship between man and nature in the ancient Near East is nowhere as pointedly formulated as in Genesis 1:26, where it is said that God gave man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” The parallel version of the Creation story (Genesis 2:19) formulates the same relationship differently, and in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 5 Comments