Category Archives: Creation

Cosmology through the ages #2 – Patristic

Posted on 16/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

The three Patristic writers most associated with cosmological considerations are Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria (c200-264), Basil of Caesarea, one of the Cappadocian Fathers (c329-379) and Maximus of Constantinople (c580-662). I shall concentrate most on Basil for my purposes here.

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Cosmology through the ages #1 – Biblical

Posted on 14/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

In June I did a post  to show that ancient cosmologies, including that of Genesis, were not so much old-science, or even pre-science, as altogether indifferent to the physical and therefore a-scientific. It occurs to me it would be interesting to go on to show how cosmologies have changed over the millennia, and where we end up today. This has already helped me clarify issues in the science-faith discussion, so maybe it’ll give you some points to ponder as well.

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The Third Way and God

Posted on 12/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

I’ve not yet commented on the new project called The Third Way, but my recent mini-series of posts on natural selection seems a good reason to do so. It was launched this May by James Shapiro, Denis Noble and Raju Pookottil, and has already attracted some notable names from various fields, some of whose work I have read, including Eva Jablonka, Gerd Müller, Eugene Koonin, Stuart Newman and Robert Austin – 29 names in all at the time of writing.

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Levels of certainty

Posted on 10/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

The 2009 Rescuing Darwin survey, to which I referred in a previous post,  was linked to a long essay by Nick Spencer and Denis Alexander, both theistic evolutionists by persuasion. Their own spin on the survey results is evident from early on in their essay (and perhaps even in the project’s title):

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Deep time – what’s the story?

Posted on 08/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

When one draws back from the “evolution is a proven fact” polemic, and aims to pin things down more rigorously, the least-contestable parts of the received scientific wisdom, vague as that is overall in the public arena, are the great age of the earth, and the succession of species (as opposed to common descent, which has some strong evidence but of a more inferential kind). Deep time’s strongest theological suit, in my book, is that a careful reading of the Bible makes no statement about the time of the creation – the chronological evidence of histories and genealogies actually takes one back to Adam, and it is an inference that … Continue reading →

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More on selection, optimization and doubt

Posted on 05/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

I want to expand a little on why I have conceptual problems with standard Neodarwinian evolution as a more-or-less complete explanation for the origin of the species, touching again on optimization, which I dealt with recently in the context of formal causation.

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Thinking through theistic evolution

Posted on 03/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

I only recently encountered a large-scale 2009 survey of UK views on evolution and creation, called Rescuing Darwin (a strangely unconfident title for his Bicentennial Year). I won’t review it fully because the detailed analysis produces a confusing and not particularly clear picture, like the US survey recently discussed by Debbie Haarsma on BioLogos. For those interested, I will just quote the headline figures, as they are rather surprising for what is a far more deeply secularised society than the US.

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Creation and Magic

Posted on 31/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

The discussion on God’s “magical” activity on a previous thread managed to jettison the theme of the thread, and the overall theme of the blog too, that is the doctrine of creation. But it’s actually worth devoting a post to the subject of magic, because in many ways it is a magical understanding of the cosmos that the biblical creation doctrine subverted.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 31 Comments

Form, health and optimization

Posted on 29/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

One of the things that used to intigue me when I was in medicine (in those occasional philosophical moments) was the fact that, though I spent my life combating disease, it was rather hard to pin down what health actually is. The 1946 WHO definition of health is very worthy, but totally impractical: “A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Whilst I had a pretty holistic approach, I wasn’t going to sort out people’s social lives, and for some reason it was officially frowned upon to improve their mental well-being by sharing the gospel with them. But I knew reliably, … Continue reading →

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Great journeys

Posted on 27/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

I’ve mentioned the swallows nesting in our stable in passing on a couple of posts. They’re now on their second brood (on a second nest, atop a second light-fitting, for some reason – failure to find a valeting service locally, perhaps?). It’s astonishing that within a month or so those parents, and both new broods, will be making their way to South Africa.

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