Category Archives: Philosophy

The impossible takes a little longer

Posted on 10/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

Hanan (what useful links he gives!) drew our attention in a comment on my previous post to a recent quotation from John Polkinghorne on the compatibility of naturally-occurring processes with God’s will. Eddie and I both agreed that this is unexceptionable as it stands, but that it requires some contextualisation if it is to be fully endorsed.

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A potted guide to potato peeling

Posted on 08/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

Hanan’s query on the last thread was trying to sort out what I meant by “guided evolution”. He, Eddie and I all made the same distinction between a universe created with “frontloading”, so that “natural laws” elegantly do all that God might wish in a hands-off way, and a “guided” process where God continues to be active in “nudging” evolution the way he wishes it to go.

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Let’s go back

Posted on 07/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

The summer I went up to University I had a job decorating somebody’s house. Hearing I was a Christian and that I was going to Cambridge to study medicine, the owner tut-tutted and said it would be hard to keep my faith. I’m not sure if that was because religion has no answer to suffering, or because it has no answers period. One reason I didn’t lose my faith, though, apart from the stubborn desire to prove her wrong, was that I expected to run into all kinds of different belief-systems, promoted by people far cleverer than me, but I told myself that all other things being equal my beliefs … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 14 Comments

The plausibility and credibility of materialism

Posted on 04/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

One of the perennial issues underlying the poll to which Edward Robinson draws attention in his post is the question of loss of faith. The most obvious reading of the trend towards support for evolution not guided by God, and away from guided evolution, is that believers see the evidence for evolution (in its original undirected, unpurposeful guise) and are persuaded that God could not have been involved. For all its theological faults, this is one of the central concerns of BioLogos – kids brought up in Creationist churches get to college and, realising the truth, lose their faith. The fact that the poll suggests this is rare (Creationist numbers … Continue reading →

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On worldviews

Posted on 27/06/2014 by Jon Garvey

Dr Arthur Jones’ brief visit to The Hump’s comments reminded me that it may have been he, back in the 1980s, who first introduced me to the concept of worldviews. Amongst other useful stuff on his website there is a pithy description of “worldview” as the spectacles behind our eyes with which we view the world. Because we look through them, we generally don’t look at them, and more often we’re not even aware that we have such a pair of specs. It’s like vocal accents – I speak ordinary English, you have a strange American drawl/ plummy British dialect. This has obvious implications in the matter of education, but it goes wider.

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Terms and conditions apply

Posted on 27/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

Time to move away from free-will, I think. I’d like to take a look at the appropriateness, or otherwise, of the term Evolutionary Creation. Not that I would expect, or want, to achieve any change of usage. Short descriptive terms are always of ambiguous value, as Eddie Robinson pointed out in his comments on “classical theism” here a week or two ago, but we couldn’t really do without them. My historian cousin was saying just that last week when we were discussing the shortcomings of the term “Renaissance”. Still, it’s good to question exactly what such labels imply, because that sometimes reveals deeper assumptions or blind-spots in the coining of … Continue reading →

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Determinism isn’t dreary (whatever else it may be)

Posted on 23/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

Having done a piece recently on free-will, referring back to the work of one of America’s greatest philosophers, Jonathan Edwards, I see that V J Torley has done a new column on the same theme. His interest is more the denial of the will in materialism than the theological debate, but I want to pick up on one of his intial points for my own purpose:

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Roots and branches of openness theology

Posted on 18/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

A week or two ago I finally got down to reading Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will, of 1754, which I downloaded a while ago when the discussion on the blog drifted from “nature’s autonomy” to “free will”. These discussions have a tendency to do that, and Edwards seems to confirm my previous view that this is almost inevitable, given the theological roots of both.

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Francis Bacon, Owen Barfield, Ian Dury, ID

Posted on 11/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

It’s just astonishing how things fortuitously/providentially connect together. PNGarrison has kindly sent me a chapter of a difficult (oh dear…) book by Owen Barfield, which he has painstakingly transcribed for me. Thanks Preston. Barfield was C S Lewis’s great mentor – which has to be a recommendation – and the book, Saving the Appearances, is about the development of the way humans have viewed the world across history. The Amazon reviews tend in general to say, “This book has changed my life: I don’t understand much of it, but I keep coming back to it.” Having read one chapter, I see what they mean. It’s on my Amazon wishlist, and I’ll … Continue reading →

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Jaki – Science and Creation

Posted on 10/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

One of the books often cited with approbium on the Christian roots of science is Fr Stanley Jaki’s Science and Creation. It’s one of the best early (1986) attempts to reverse the Victorian myth that science and religion are incompatible, by showing, to the contrary, how only the Judaeo-Christian concept of creation really made science as we know it possible.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science | 1 Comment