Category Archives: Philosophy

Ideological science

Posted on 14/11/2022 by Jon Garvey

Tom Nelson is running a series of YouTube interviews with climate sceptics. I note with interest that his own scepticism came, as an amateur ornithologist, from discovering to his surprise that “peer-reviewed science” was telling unreliable tales about a particular bird species, and then being told by a professional meteorologist that the same problems existed in climate science.

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

Help me out here

Posted on 29/09/2022 by Jon Garvey

These points were agreed by a number of friends, in a single conversation yesterday: You can’t trust the mainstream news – it’s all propaganda. We know Putin is evil incarnate, and it would be a good thing if God, or some good people, “took him out.” Everything we know about Putin comes from the mainstream news, and we haven’t tried to read other sources, or listened to Putin explain himself. Tell me, how do those ideas actually fit together in people’s minds?

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology | 5 Comments

The bureaucratisation of virtue

Posted on 28/09/2022 by Jon Garvey

From one viewpoint, the whole woke movement can be seen as an attempt to produce virtue through bureaucracy. Forget for a moment the political undercurrents at play, and the resulting redefinition of virtues into novel categories like “transphobia”: let us charitably suppose that the less ideological people at PayPal and so on, cancelling organisations and individuals’ accounts, are genuinely aiming to “stop hate” by preventing its expression.

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Disinformation

Posted on 16/09/2022 by Jon Garvey

Isn’t it funny how words nowadays rapidly come to have a specialist meaning entirely divorced from their origin? For example, “far-right” is now very seldom used for actual fascists or Neo-nazis. Our press does not use it for the Ukrainian Krakens, the out-and-out Nazis who advertised in advance that they were going to hunt down “collaborators” and who are now showing pictures of the mutilated bodies of civilian victims of “Russian War Crimes” in the villages they have “liberated,” just like they did when they regained the village of Bucha months ago. “Far right” now means “having family values and telling the truth,” so it really ought to be embraced … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology | 2 Comments

The old, old story

Posted on 23/08/2022 by Jon Garvey

I’m currently reading Michael Denton’s new book, The Miracle of Man, which explores some of the astonishing fine tuning of the Universe not only for life, but for human life. I must do a blog on it soon, but my first reaction was a sense of resentment at how the insane deception now surrounding us on every side has drawn me from a decade of study of such wonders of nature (and hence of God) to filling these pages with stuff categorised as “politics and sociology”.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Theology | 2 Comments

Truth will out

Posted on 07/07/2022 by Jon Garvey

Well, I’m not talking about the fall of Boris Johnson, though clearly the general principle applies, on the small scale, to habitual liars ant their parties and lies about one’s poor memory, and on the large scale to the West’s repeatedly claimed humiliation of the madman Putin by mighty victories in a proxy war, quickly turning to a rout for its own economies as well as for the Ukrainian regime. No, I’m thinking of identity politics.

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Moral Immunity

Posted on 03/07/2022 by Jon Garvey

Here’s a quote from an Unherd essay by Jacob Howland: Ideology is a highly communicable social contagion that infects people who are morally immunocompromised.

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Logic on fire

Posted on 19/06/2022 by Jon Garvey

A two-part essay by the excellent Nick Hudson, of PANDA, is available here and here. Nick discusses how the disastrous worldwide COVID response stems, in large part, from epistemic failure.

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RUSSIA – and the logic of final causation

Posted on 27/05/2022 by Jon Garvey

Joe Bloggs is a useful YouTube channel for analysis of the terminal state of many nations’ economies following the West’s sanctions against Russia, though of course it also notes their individual problems of corruption, COVID or whatever. Replying to queries about why each title begins with an accusatory “RUSSIA,” he explains that if Russia had not invaded Ukraine, the destructive sanctions would not have ensued.

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology | 1 Comment

Understanding Putin

Posted on 07/05/2022 by Jon Garvey

An old university friend who also follows The Hump wrote to ask me about the sources I use most on the Ukraine conflict, and shared some of his own with me. Among them is Postil Magazine which carries some weighty and worthwhile articles. One which I highly recommend is this one by Etienne de Floirac, giving a deep insight into the political (and irreducibly religious) basis of Vladimir Putin’s vision for Russia. It confirms what I had suspected since the start of this war, that to see Russia’s role apart from its spiritual aspect is an almost universal error in the West. To what extent that neglect is deliberate, and … Continue reading →

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