Category Archives: History

Hedging and ditching

Posted on 09/04/2020 by Jon Garvey

Here in rural Devon, most of the field boundaries are traditional “Devon banks,” which are banks of earth and stone originally capped with hedges, in order to contain livestock. Down in our valley, many of the banks are mediaeval. The parish boundary just down the lane, dated by counting the number of tree species that have colonized what was originally holly, probably dates right back to Saxon times. But up here on the hill most of them, including the boundaries of my own property, probably date to around 1820, when the common-land “turbary” was enclosed: a mere two hundred years.

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Hump retrospective 6: worldwide flood

Posted on 02/03/2020 by Jon Garvey

In my “quest” to sort out origins questions, this “old chestnut” problem was really a question of filling in details, rather than finding entirely new solutions, because I was already aware of work by exegetes arguing that Scripture allows for a regional Flood.

Posted in History, Hump Retrospective, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

Cutting edge science and witch trials

Posted on 23/01/2020 by Jon Garvey

Using the Salem witch trials as an analogy in my last post made me aware of the controversial figure of Cotton Mather, the archetypal superstitious Puritan widely blamed for the Salem witch trials.

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Intersectional shamanism

Posted on 20/01/2020 by Jon Garvey

Three cheers for actor Laurence Fox, who on the BBC’s Question Time refused point blank to acknowledge the very validity of the existence of the “unconscious institutional racism” of the British people voiced by a (white) audience member regarding the Artist Formerly Known as HRH.

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

On the importance of real history to the gospel

Posted on 15/01/2020 by Jon Garvey

One of the themes I deal with, fairly briefly, in The Generations of Heaven and Earth is how important it is that the Genealogical Adam hypothesis grounds the Bible in history – real history.

Posted in Genealogical Adam, History, Theology | 4 Comments

Alternative feminism

Posted on 04/01/2020 by Jon Garvey

Thaddeus Russell is an interesting guy, an historian more or less evicted from the academic establishment for contradicting the prevailing progressive agenda. He’s started an alternative “university,” which is interesting in itself as a similar project has been mooted by the English philosopher Roger Scruton, who was also sidelined by an ideologically strait-jacketed academia.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology | 7 Comments

“Alexa, what is the real cost of your switching on my lights?”

Posted on 25/11/2019 by Jon Garvey

Here’s a link to a stunning diagram, and the must-read accompanying long article, called “The Anatomy of an AI system.” I understand it’s won some kind of award for a design as iconic as, perhaps, the London Underground map of Harry Beck; or perhaps closer still, those diagrams of the cell’s biochemical processes that so impressed me with God’s wisdom during my medical training.

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Heads up on “The Generations of Heaven and Earth”

Posted on 18/11/2019 by Jon Garvey

I’ve just checked the proofs on my forthcoming (second) book, The Generations of Heaven and Earth: Adam, the Ancient World, and Biblical Theology, so when it is published by Cascade early next year you can blame all the residual mistakes on me.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, History, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

On Phillip Johnson

Posted on 15/11/2019 by Jon Garvey

The recent death of the founder of the Intelligent Design Movement (and seriously accomplished legal scholar), Phillip Johnson, put me in mind of the fact that I once met him, but had never read his work.

Posted in Creation, History, Politics and sociology, Science | 7 Comments

Religion ghosts in refrigerated truck

Posted on 09/11/2019 by Jon Garvey

I’m not sure how internationally this news was reported, but last month’s “illegal immigration tragedy” in Britain was the discovery of 39 bodies in a refrigerated truck recently arrived in Essex from Zeebrugge. It quickly emerged that, apart from the scale of the incident, it was unusual in that the victims, first identified as coming from China, were all actually from Vietnam.

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