Category Archives: Philosophy

Abstraction and the cover of God’s Good Earth

Posted on 05/03/2019 by Jon Garvey

In my last post I drew on George Berkeley in the context of probability theory, to show how western thought’s tendency to make abstractions from reality actually leads to a misleading view of the world. The generalisations of science are particularly prone to the reification of abstract notions.

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Abstraction and improbability

Posted on 04/03/2019 by Jon Garvey

I’ve been dipping into George Berkeley’s philosophy recently, mainly because his mind-only view of reality resonates with some other thinkers whose ideas on the matter of matter have impressed me over the years, such as Arthur Eddington, Werner Heisenberg and William Dembski.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 1 Comment

Molinism again

Posted on 18/02/2019 by Jon Garvey

A quick thought here, based on a heads-up to me on Peaceful Science on a thread that, for some reason, doesn’t give me the ability to reply. No matter, because I have more space to reply here.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature | 4 Comments

On distinguishing miracles from providence

Posted on 11/02/2019 by Jon Garvey

In my recent piece about Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, I mentioned how Bacon, supposedly the staunch supporter of methodological naturalism, included both a scientificcally detectable miracle and a providential answer to prayer in an apologetic for the new science that is only 22 pages long. He would appear to cut the world-cake rather differently from many of a scientific bent now, who divide the world sharply between the “natural” and the “miraculous.”

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Design and all that metaphysics

Posted on 28/01/2019 by Jon Garvey

A thread at Peaceful Science tosses around the usual argument-suspects about Intelligent Design. It was set up in an unhelpful way by the common ID argument contrasting Mount Rushmore (a large statue in America, m’Lud, in the form of a carved mountain) with Mount Everest, a “natural” mountain.

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Theistic Science and Bacon’s New Atlantis

Posted on 24/01/2019 by Jon Garvey

Francis Bacon produced what I suppose one would call a “Utopian Novelette,” unfinished at about 22 pages, just three years before he died. It seems to have been intended as a kind of manifesto for the new scientific project he had, to a great extent, initiated, and so it is worth looking at retrospectively in the light of that project’s enormous success. The Kindle edition is also free, which is another incentive.

Posted in Creation, History, Philosophy, Science, Theology of nature | 5 Comments

Final causes and salvation

Posted on 03/12/2018 by Jon Garvey

Here’s some theological musing inspired by the discussion we’ve had on “final causes” connected with the last couple of posts.

Posted in Philosophy, Theology | 2 Comments

No computation without teleology

Posted on 26/11/2018 by Jon Garvey

Support for the suggestion in my last post, that we are likely to be missing significant biological truths by not recognising Aristotelian formal and final causation, comes from a philosophical direction in a recent article by Thomist analytic philosopher Ed Feser .

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 16 Comments

Free will and final causation

Posted on 25/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

In a Peaceful Science thread continuing the discussion of the view mentioned in my last post, John Harshman criticises what he calls the incoherence of the very idea of free will.

Posted in Adam, Philosophy, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

Denying creation

Posted on 10/10/2018 by Jon Garvey

Writing on the gender differences in the account of the Fall in the garden prompts me to reflect on a factor in the modern (or actually, postmodern) zeitgeist that profoundly affects our reception of the whole biblical doctrine of creation, let alone Adam and Eve. This arises from my old bogey of Promethean thinking, spelled out at length in God’s Good Earth but in brief here, but which has its own peculiar manifestation only in our times.

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