Category Archives: Philosophy

A brief history of chance

Posted on 30/10/2016 by Jon Garvey

Somebody at BioLogos, following a common line, recently expressed hesitation about whether God intended the particular life forms that we have, and based this on what he said was the long-argued question of free-will versus determinism. The idea was that God, by allowing true (ontological) randomness in evolution, was in some way casting his vote for free-will rather than determinism.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 14 Comments

Discussion with Sy Garte on Teleology

Posted on 24/10/2016 by Edward Robinson

Sy Garte has replied to a post of mine on BioLogos. Because I am temporarily suspended from BioLogos, I’m replying to him here. I’ll write in the form of a column, but with some references to his own statements.

Posted in Edward Robinson, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 29 Comments

Time and chance

Posted on 10/10/2016 by Jon Garvey

The BioLogos comment of mine, to which I alluded in the last post, has generated a lot of discussion. I would (naturally!) say that those who disagreed with my basic position didn’t understand it, and I think a couple of possible reasons pertain to that.

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

Is natural selection science (or philosophy)?

Posted on 05/10/2016 by Jon Garvey

I intervened on one of the many current threads against about Intelligent Design at BioLogos yesterday in response to the oft-repeated claim that evolution is not random because natural selection is not random. I suggested that, as per my last post, part of the rational limitation of science ought to be the recognition that it can only construct theories about repeatable regularities, whereas it can merely observe and list the contingent – and natural selection is firmly in the latter category. I concluded my comment thus: If science is the study of the repeatable, what makes natural selection any more a scientific process, than is contingent history – which is … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 10 Comments

Wittgenstein on science as one tool in the box

Posted on 02/10/2016 by Jon Garvey

Jay Johnson, over at BioLogos (though he posts here too) pointed me to the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein in relation to science and its limits, a subject opened up by Joshua Swamidass’s airing of the issue over the last month or two. I’ve not read Wittgenstein, except in quotations regarding his dense analytical work on language, and suspect I would mostly find myself out of my analytic depth if I did. But his thinking on scientism, apparently a core concern of his, fits into a stream of ideas I’ve followed over the last couple of years via the work of Arthur Eddington, Michael Polanyi and others. Jay points to a … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science | 4 Comments

The foresight saga

Posted on 02/09/2016 by Jon Garvey

According to Open Theist Thomas Jay Oord in a BioLogos comment to our Eddie Robinson, Calvinists and Thomists are much less easy to persuade to change their views on the fundamental nature of God “from reason, Scripture and experience” than Arminians, Pentecostals, Anabaptists and others. Maybe that explains why I’m fated not to be impressed, though it does raise provocative questions about the reasons this might be so.

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Where the “undetectable God” takes you

Posted on 25/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

A new post on Fr Aidan Kimel’s blog Eclectic Orthodoxy caught my eye, because it references the late Hugh McCann, whose book Creation and the Sovereignty of God impressed me greatly recently. McCann seeks to show how true libertarian freedom is compatible with – and even depends upon – full divine sovereignty over all created events.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Theology | 25 Comments

Some thoughts on information and meaning (3)

Posted on 19/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

One of the most surprising things about the universe, until one takes the freedom of a Creator into account, is its contingency. Perhaps I dealt with that a little in the first essay in this short series, in which I mentioned the restrictive nature of “Humpish information”, excluding all kinds of other possibilities, as well as its communicative and teleological (and therefore non-scientific) nature. But it’s even more surprising when one considers the number of things that are true, such as valid mathematical constructions, but which don’t pan out in actual reality. One would expect truths of logic to lead to necessary reality (as the Greek philosophers seem to have … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy | 3 Comments

Some thoughts on information and meaning (2)

Posted on 15/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

This post is something of a speculative exploration of the relationship between “information” and “meaning”. I wondered as I conceived it whether anyone would find it useful, but in fact Sy Garte’s comment on Merv Bitkofer’s post seems to lead straight into it, so maybe it will lead to some fruitful reflections.

Posted in Philosophy, Theology | 2 Comments

Humanity, MN, and other boundary issues

Posted on 12/08/2016 by Merv Bitikofer

In this essay, I argue that our orientation should be a more important focus than the precise locations of boundary lines with regard to where our eternal hope resides.  And since boundaries come up at all for discussion, it should go nearly without saying, that I’ll have my philosophical and theological hat on as I examine a landscape that subsumes science (its modern form) as one of the included territories.  My route meanders a bit to include discussion of the contrast between the materialist agenda and the Christian one.

Posted in Merv Bitikofer, Philosophy, Prometheus, Science, Theology | 5 Comments