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- Does matter matter? 06/05/2026
- We meet the Word in the word, not in the world 02/05/2026
- The triumph of the cross 29/04/2026
- What I think I know about life in the deep past 26/04/2026
- How Darwinian evolution became plausible (for a time) 24/04/2026
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- Jon Garvey on We meet the Word in the word, not in the world
- Jon Garvey on We meet the Word in the word, not in the world
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Post Archive
Category Archives: Philosophy
Does matter matter?
A stimulating four-way discussion between mathematicians David Berlinski, Sergiu Klainerman, and philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, mediated by Peter Robinson, proposes that the existence of mathematics is a likely defeater for naturalist materialism, and a strong argument for theism.
Posted in Philosophy, Theology
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What I think I know about life in the deep past
Colin Patterson, FRS, was a palaeontologist and proponent of “transformed cladistics” based at London’s Natural History Museum, who raised a controversy in 1981 by rhetorically asking his colleagues at a conference, “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?”
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature
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How Darwinian evolution became plausible (for a time)
Here are some thoughts on what factors provided the fertile ground for Darwinian evolutionary theory to appear plausible when it was published in 1859. This is followed by some of the problems raised at the time the theory was published, showing that they have all become more acute, rather than being resolved, since 1859. The net result is that “variation and natural selection” as the origin of species is now thoroughly implausible, and remains a consensus only by academic inertia.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology of nature
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Immanence narratives for the post-secular age
A nice academic-sounding title for a blog inspired by my post-Christmas reading, by dint of an inspired present from my wife’s academic cousin. It is Planet Narnia, by Michael Ward. Ward’s 2008 book proposes that C. S. Lewis built his seven Narnia stories around a secret scheme that based both their distinctive “atmospheres,” and the varying aspects of the Christ-figure, Aslan the lion, on the astrological features of the seven Ptolemaic planets.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology, Theology of nature
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Was Einstein wrong?
Every once in a while, some sciencey YouTuber posts a video about a new scientific discovery that casts doubt on Einstein’s theory of relativity. I’ve no idea whether any of these have validity, but instead I want to ask whether scientific progress has refuted his view of God – that is to say his theology rather than his relativity.
Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology, Theology of nature
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Ideology is reliably replicable
I had an interesting short conversation with a couple of musician friends recently. A bright young chap doing psychology A-level was talking very sensibly about non-replicability in psychology studies. He mentioned Freudian psychoanalysis as untestable because if you disagree with its findings in your own case, it must be because you have repressed them, not because they are wrong. Astute of him, or his teacher.
Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology
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A bit more on NDEs
I closed my previous post with a quotation from Jesus in which he states that Scripture is sufficient for salvation if people are willing to believe God, and that even someone returning from the dead (he clearly means primarily himself, but it applies equally to the rich man or any NDE experiencer) will not convince evil men.
Posted in Philosophy, Theology
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Near death experiences
I laid myself open when I preached on the Ascension last Sunday. I majored on one of the things I find most wondrous – that there is an embodied Man in heaven, ruling all things on the throne of God. I unpacked scriptures around that. In passing, I warned people against the hundreds of YouTube videos along the lines, “God took me to heaven, and gave me this message for the world…” Even the apostle Paul was told to keep quiet about what he heard and saw, whether in or out of the body he knew not, in his one view of the third heaven.
Posted in Philosophy, Theology
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Old churches and the numinous
My pastor took an excellent line for his teaching on Pentecost Sunday last week. His main thrust was how the glory of God filled the completed Tabernacle in Exodus, and likewise the completed Solomonic temple, in 1 Kings, but after its judgemental departure (“Ichabod”) before the temple’s destruction by the Babylonians, it is not mentioned as filling the second temple built after the return from captivity. Instead, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel, at Pentecost God’s glory (later termed the shekinah) came to dwell within every believer born again in Christ. God is no longer represented in a sacred place, but in his sacred people.
Posted in History, Philosophy, Theology
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From Athens to Bedlam
Realising late in the day that I needed some holiday reading to supplement an Agatha Christrie novel, I hurriedly ordered the book that had been on my Amazon wish-list the longest, Prof. Stephen R. L. Clark’s From Athens to Jerusalem. To my surprise it went on the list as far back as July 2012, when I heard him speak at an Intelligent Design conference in Cambridge, hosted by the Philosophy of Religion branch of the Tyndale Fellowship. Time flies when you’re geriatric, doesn’t it?
Posted in Philosophy, Theology
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