Category Archives: Philosophy

Selfishness in evolution: which self?

Posted on 24/11/2015 by Jon Garvey

A comment by Sy Garte on a recent post, and some recent reading, prompts this. He said: In fact, I am in quite the minority of environmentalists, since I do not necessarily view ALL extinctions as a bad thing by definition. For those who do, I tend to ask, “bad for whom?”

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Power

Posted on 21/11/2015 by Jon Garvey

Merv Bitkofer, responding to physicist Tim Reddish, kindly introduced my name into another BioLogos discussion in which the autonomy of creation came up. I responded along my usual lines about the illicit (and incoherent) fusing of ideas of genuine secondary causes with the language of freedom and coercion. I don’t want, or need, to repeat all that here as the piece Merv linked to there says enough. But I feel the need to say something more of the kind of theology underlying “freedom of creation” ideas, partly because it was strongly hinted at in Dr Reddish’s posts, and partly because, by the power of God fortuitously I received an academic … Continue reading →

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The muzak of heaven

Posted on 10/11/2015 by Jon Garvey

The discussion board at BioLogos is much more “lively” than it was a while ago, which I suppose is a good thing. Sadly that largely means that in any thread one encounters a complete smörgåsbord of religious opinion from Deism at one end to any number of special revelations about the real meaning of Scripture, the world and everything at the other. If the project is to create a current of integration for science and faith, then the more likely result is a maelstrom that drowns many and goes nowhere.

Posted in Philosophy, Theology | 2 Comments

Design and difference – both scientifically elusive

Posted on 08/11/2015 by Jon Garvey

First molecular biologist: What’s the difference between a Creationist and a Crustacean? Second molecular biologist: I don’t know – what is the difference between a Creationist and a Crustacean?

Posted in Philosophy, Science | 8 Comments

The classical Hebrew God and the classical Scholastic God

Posted on 03/11/2015 by Jon Garvey

One of the minor ongoing spats in the origins debate is the objection of some analytical Neo-Aristotelians like Ed Feser to the idea that one can perceive divine design in nature, or anywhere else, come to that. My own reaction to this is here, and I’ve also referred to another dissenting Aquinas scholar, Logan Paul Gage, an essay by whom is here. There are, in other words, objections to such ideas within the writings of Aquinas himself.

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Fallen or flawed? Form and finality

Posted on 28/10/2015 by Jon Garvey

Had a spat over at BioLogos with a guy named George (who makes rejection of the Fall his strapline, it seems), who was replying to GJDS to say that the biblical creation story is flawed because of Hebrew lack of scientific knowledge, and in particular because there was no Fall, and humans were actually created flawed. He hasn’t replied to the question of just how he knows what happened so long ago, and the details aren’t important here. I just want to use the opportunity to look at what has been a pretty constant motif in “evolutionary theology” since Victorian times – that evolution is entirely incompatible with a fall … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam, Creation, Philosophy, Theology | 6 Comments

Tangential thoughts on the will

Posted on 22/10/2015 by Jon Garvey

I find the concept of “free will” to be a very unfruitful one, as I have argued, for example, here. (I’m considering now not the philosophical issues relating to physical determinism, quantum randomness and what not, but the daily experience of choice and its theological consequences). The Bible doesn’t even mention free will, which ought to be significant. It assumes men makes choices, according to common experience, and holds them accountable for them even to the point of acceptance or rejection before God. But it deals with this in relation to character, not to freedom. Its concept of freedom on the other hand, beyond the commonplace and trivial, has to … Continue reading →

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Prothero, Eldredge, Gould – Eek!

Posted on 16/10/2015 by Jon Garvey

I continue to be intrigued by the ubiquity of evolutionary stasis as described by Donald Prothero, for example in this piece. It is the breadth and depth of his evidence that makes his case so striking, but the strapline would be: In four of the biggest climatic-vegetational events of the last 50 million years, the mammals and birds show no noticeable change in response to changing climates.

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The Wright stuff

Posted on 05/10/2015 by Jon Garvey

I’ve just been re-reading Tom Wright’s excellent book on eschatology, Surprised by Hope, for the first time since 2009, a couple of years before I began to think more intensely about the doctrine of creation in relation to science and all things modern, culminating in this blog. I’d quite forgotten how much the book focuses on the goodness of the current creation, and the stress of the gospel on ushering in a whole new creation, which burst into the world for the first time at the Resurrection and begins to transform it, in preparation for the parousia, by the Spirit’s work through the Church.

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Redundancy and teleology

Posted on 02/10/2015 by Jon Garvey

The Independent reports some research from the “1000 Genome Project”, under the headline “Human genome study reveals certain genes are less essential than previously thought”. The gist is that in 2,500 individual genomes studied (a supererogatory number in terms of the project’s name): “…we were surprised to see over 200 genes that are missing entirely in some people,” said Jan Korbel of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, who led one of the genome project’s studies.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science | 7 Comments