Category Archives: Creation

Can God use ateleological processes to meet his aims? – 2

Posted on 21/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

If God is the universal author of natural events in the way described in the previous post (following the position of classical thinkers like Aquinas in denying the univocity of God and affirming his concurrent acton in the world) we would expect that, in their own domain, natural processes should give a complete explanation of events. God is evidenced by such explanations, not by their absence. God acts from within nature. And so they are right who say that it is a wrong approach to look for gaps in knowledge to demonstrate God, for that is to limit God’s activity to the miraculous.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 32 Comments

Can God use ateleological processes to meet his aims? – 1

Posted on 20/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

Darwinian evolution is an atelological theory of origins. Theism is the belief in a “Hands On” God who acts for clear purposes. On the face of it, then, the title of this piece is an oxymoron. Purposeful purposelessness is a flat contradiction. And so in such a context, it would appear that “guided evolution” can only mean the miraculous imposition of intention on the unintentional. That would make biology intrinsically supernatural, with the concomitant that its directedness would be evidence for God as evolution’s principal efficient cause.

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

Unmediated experience

Posted on 17/04/2015 by Jon Garvey

In my youth I was a keen photographer – and I mean I started processing my own films when I was twelve. But there was a stage in my teens at which I stopped carrying my camera everywhere because I realised I was no longer participating in events, but just recording them through a viewfinder.

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Arguments for the framework view of Genesis – part 2

Posted on 15/04/2015 by James Penman

Summary: The nature of the language in Genesis 1 tells strongly against the view that it is a straightforward historical account. Quite simply, a straightforward historical account would not be written as Genesis 1 is written. The style and genre are not that of historical prose.

Posted in Creation, James Penman, Theology | 7 Comments

Arguments for the framework view of Genesis – part 1

Posted on 13/04/2015 by James Penman

Among views of Genesis 1 held by Reformed thinkers, the Framework view has attracted much positive interest over the past hundred years or so. It is not, however, a novel view, as we shall see. The basic idea is that the week of Genesis 1 is a “literary framework”. Its highly artful, complex, quasi-poetic form shows that it isn’t a simple historical narrative; no one would communicate such a narrative in such a form. It is an “exalted prose hymn”. The material of the prose-hymn is arranged into the shape of a week, but it portrays God’s creative activity in a topical or thematic way rather than strictly chronologically. E.g. … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, James Penman, Theology | 9 Comments

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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