Category Archives: History

How pseudoscience helped build the modern world

Posted on 06/09/2016 by Jon Garvey

Spending a sweltering summer bank-holiday Monday on an overcrowded Lyme Regis beach with my grand-daughter and her mother last week was a duty rather than a joy. The book on Lyme I’d brought along to read between building sandcastles and queuing for fish and chips told me that the town’s resident population of 3,000 expands to 15,000 on a hot summer’s day, and I could well believe it as they had all apparently encamped on the same small area of sand as us.

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

Methodological theology, naturally

Posted on 17/07/2016 by Jon Garvey

There’s an interesting new series of YouTube videos (of which I confess to having heard only two so far) of a conference discussing alternatives to methodological naturalism. The organiser is, of course, an ID group – which is hardly surprising, as according to most mainstream scientists MN is just fine and dandy. What you don’t doubt, you don’t examine that carefully. But as I’ve been suggesting here and here there is at least an argument for its being a hindrance not only to the consideration of God’s role in nature, but also to some aspects of understanding nature itself.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 35 Comments

Science as she is spoke

Posted on 14/07/2016 by Jon Garvey

Well, I see The Hump of the Camel has had another thread of its very own on BioLogos, courtesy of Joshua Swamidass. The effect is spoiled a bit by the fact that it’s mainly our own contributors here who have posted there. Perhaps Potiphar should organise a kind of roadshow in which we all turn up on blogs around the world and have private conversations, to their great surprise. That would certainly increase our profile!

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science | 4 Comments

God’s Good Earth – Chapter 6: Tracking the Fall of Creation

Posted on 14/04/2016 by Jon Garvey

Here is a link to chapter 6 of my book.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Prometheus, Theology | 6 Comments

God’s Good Earth – Chapter 5: Creation Fell in 1500

Posted on 11/04/2016 by Jon Garvey

Here is a link to chapter 5 of my book.

Posted in Creation, History, Theology | 2 Comments

The right time isn’t always now

Posted on 23/02/2016 by Jon Garvey

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” Romans 5.6. Doing a teaching series currently overviewing the narrative thrust of the whole Bible, one thing that struck me was the issue of God’s timing. It’s always slower than we might wish, though again Peter says “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.”

Posted in History, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

Reclaiming origins science for Christianity

Posted on 16/02/2016 by Jon Garvey

I apologise that posts are a bit thin on the ground at the moment, but that’s partly because I am forming a new band, with a mountain of arrangements and recording to do, and also because our granddaughter is staying with us this week. Today we took a trip to Lyme Regis, which although a seaside holiday resort was also the place where palaeontology became a serious occupation in the early nineteenth century. Accordingly it has both a dinosaur museum (where one could get quite a serious education in palaeontological concerns) and a town museum with an entire room devoted to Mary Anning, the first professional fossil hunter.

Posted in Creation, History, Science | 2 Comments

A short history of air

Posted on 16/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

Another BioLogos thread on the relationship of Genesis 1 to “modern science” got me thinking more about the phenomenology of that, and other ANE accounts like Enuma Elish. By this I mean to bypass, for now, the (more important) questions of “meaning” and “genre”, simply to try and get a better picture of what kind of world the ancients saw when they looked out of the window. It becomes quite interesting.

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

Outsiders’ insights

Posted on 03/01/2016 by Jon Garvey

I’ve in the past waxed enthusiastic about the BBC radio programme In Our Time, in which presenter Melvyn Bragg asks a specially assembled panel of (genuine) experts intelligent questions about some chosen topic, which might range from the Battle of Marathon to Alice in Wonderland, or from Genghiz Khan to Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Just before Christmas they did a good one on Michael Faraday.

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

Some bad scientists, bad theologians, bad philosophers – 1

Posted on 06/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

Well, it seems BioLogos and the Discovery Institute are once more locked in contention for the heart and mind of (I suppose) the Informed Christian. The recent spat seems mainly to stem from BioLogian Jim Stump’s review of a book on design arguments, and can be summed up (from that side) in the now well-worn phrase: Design arguments are bad science and bad theology.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 5 Comments