Category Archives: History

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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Stop changing the question

Posted on 19/10/2019 by Jon Garvey

A Daily Telegraph YouTube clip is entitled “Boris Johnson: Brexit is the biggest thing I’ve done professionally.” In fact, it is the interviewer who asks if it is the biggest thing he’s done professionally, and Boris hesitates a little bashfully before replying: “I wouldn’t deny that – I think it’s a very big thing for our country.”

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Forgetful history

Posted on 07/08/2019 by Jon Garvey

A correspondent with whom I’ve been discussing the Genesis Flood mentioned the interesting case of the Umm al Binni Lake in Iraq, which appears to be a recent meteoric impact crater, dated on the basis of the sedimentary history of the region to historic times. This would mean between 3000 and 2000 BCE, and it possibly corresponds to evidence in the region of widespread wildfires and floods from a likely airburst c2350BCE, called the Middle East Anomaly.

Posted in History, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Big oil = big chums!

Posted on 11/05/2019 by Jon Garvey

My thread on Peaceful Science, “Media Science” has gone, so far, to over 400 comments, but despite the stern admonitions from the skeptical scientist types there to “follow the data, not the propaganda,” none of them has even attempted to address the subject of the post, which was the data about the misinformation about walrus deaths being due to climate change on a David Attenborough documentary.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science | 6 Comments

Simplifying good government

Posted on 08/05/2019 by Jon Garvey

When I was a medical student, I got to meet the wife of one of my then-favourite Sci-Fi writers, James Blish, after she’d had a minor accident on a London bus. This was around the time of the author’s declining health, so it must have been a particularly stressful time for Mrs Blish.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science | 2 Comments

Short memory and easy distraction

Posted on 06/05/2019 by Jon Garvey

As I mentioned in a previous post, in a Radio Times article puffing the recent David Attenborough Doom Documentary on climate, he drew attention to the deforestation of the Philippines and Borneo. These are indeed serious problems, though not upon consideration any result whatsoever of climate change. Rather they result from various economic and social factors, including the high premium placed on timber for biomass as a result of misguided measures taken to prevent climate change .

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Just because you’re paranoid…

Posted on 28/03/2019 by Jon Garvey

… doesn’t mean they aren’t after you Regular readers will have noticed something of a political slant to the last three posts. What immediately triggered it was the realisation of a sudden shift in the position of the UK Baptist Union – representing probably the largest of the mainly Evangelical denominations in Britain. Only three years ago it issued a statement reaffirming the biblical view of marriage, and urging those dissenting ministers who were inclined to perform SSM to desist “for the peace of the body.” Now one of the two candidates for President is a gender-queer pansexual activist, pushing a theological position that gender itself is unchristian.

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

In the footsteps of Judah’s spiritual collapse

Posted on 25/03/2019 by Jon Garvey

I’ve just read another very interesting book. In the Footsteps of King David describes the excavation of Khirbet Qeiyafa in Israel, just up the valley from the ancient Philistine city of Gath.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

Nowadays, even the sins don’t work properly

Posted on 18/03/2019 by Jon Garvey

The abominable crime perpetrated in New Zealand by, we are told, a lone white-supremacist extremist, led to immediate calls in the mainstream press for a clampdown on rampant Islamophobia everywhere in society. When a thing (“Islamophobia”) is named as if it were a psychiatric disorder, but treated as a deadly sin, it is a little difficult to understand exactly what the neologism means. But the word appears at least, to include any negative opinion of any aspect of Islam, Arab nationalism, or Islamist terrorism shaken together, such negativity being interpreted as the inevitable precursor of crimes such as we saw last week.

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