Category Archives: Philosophy

Creation and Magic

Posted on 31/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

The discussion on God’s “magical” activity on a previous thread managed to jettison the theme of the thread, and the overall theme of the blog too, that is the doctrine of creation. But it’s actually worth devoting a post to the subject of magic, because in many ways it is a magical understanding of the cosmos that the biblical creation doctrine subverted.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 31 Comments

Complex systems and top-down causation

Posted on 30/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

Lest you think that my last post  was merely whimsical (which seems a popular word here recently) have a look at the following YouTube talk by George F Ellis (quoted in that post), whose speciality as a physicist is complex systems.

Posted in Philosophy, Science, Theology | 24 Comments

Form, health and optimization

Posted on 29/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

One of the things that used to intigue me when I was in medicine (in those occasional philosophical moments) was the fact that, though I spent my life combating disease, it was rather hard to pin down what health actually is. The 1946 WHO definition of health is very worthy, but totally impractical: “A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Whilst I had a pretty holistic approach, I wasn’t going to sort out people’s social lives, and for some reason it was officially frowned upon to improve their mental well-being by sharing the gospel with them. But I knew reliably, … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science | 1 Comment

The myth behind the myth

Posted on 24/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

In the last post I referenced C S Lewis’s essay on the modern Myth of “Evolutionism” (as distinct from the scientific theory of evolution, just to remind you…), of which one major, and undoubtedly correct, point is that the ideological motivation to believe in evolution as an overarching principle precedes Darwin’s biological theory by several decades. But Lewis doesn’t attempt to explain fully why it should have developed in the first place. Here’s my attempt to do so.

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

Enduring myths and their aftermath

Posted on 23/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

When I cited Os Guinness in a recent post, I noticed a reference to an important essay by C S Lewis whilst re-reading Guinness’s assessment of humanism. It’s well worth reading, though from the 1940s, and gives that feeling you always get with Lewis that, although a mediaevalist, he was half a century ahead of his time.

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science | 115 Comments

When stories become science (and when they don’t)

Posted on 21/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

I hesitate to continue on the subject of maths in evolution, as it takes us into some deep philosophical waters, and especially as evolutionary programming is outside my comfort zone. But some useful stuff arose from the comments on previous threads, and there may be a couple of posts in it to make us think more critically.

Posted in Philosophy, Science | 14 Comments

How moral absolutes evolve by punc eek

Posted on 18/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

A shift in tack today, prompted by the UK parliament’s current discussions on the euphemistic “assisted suicide” (meaning your doctor is ordered to kill you). I’ve actually lost count of the number of times this has been debated nationally. Certainly I made a submission to the House of Lords Select Committee in 2004, and during a previous incarnation of the bill I discussed the matter with my MP Simon Burns, then the Shadow Minister for Health (and later the real one), whose opinion was that there was no significant support at all for such a move in Parliament.

Posted in Creation, Medicine, Philosophy, Politics and sociology | 6 Comments

Check out McGrew

Posted on 11/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

Lydia McGrew has done an excellent piece, Special agent intention as an explanation, which though not addressed to the same specific subjects, relates to the discussions we’ve had here over the last few posts, on frontloading, natural causes, etc. It’s in the comments that much of what is relevant to our concerns crops up, so I recommend reading those, and the article itself.

Posted in Philosophy, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

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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