Category Archives: Politics and sociology

The subtle art of distinguishing conspiracy theories from truth

Posted on 17/12/2023 by Jon Garvey

Another week, and another young sportsman has had an on-field cardiac arrest. In this case it was the 29 year old captain of Luton Town F.C., who apparently has a previous collapse on the pitch with atrial fibrillation, had it surgically ablated, and was passed fit for all activities again.

Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 7 Comments

More on “Civilisational Christianity.”

Posted on 12/12/2023 by Jon Garvey

The two pieces I recently did, inspired by Bret Weinstein, were not intended to do him down, since the piece I quoted from him was essentially apologising to Christians that the New Atheism movement, by denigrating them, had sidelined important allies against the same enemies of truth and morality. My main point was that he has failed to recognise that faith in God is the foundation of that morality and truth, not an unfortunate superstitious add-on.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

More on Bret Weinstein’s evolutionary distorting mirror

Posted on 08/12/2023 by Jon Garvey

Yesterday I critiqued Bret Weinstein’s proposed rapprochement of “science” with Christian morality, pointing out that he misunderstood the foundations of Christianity, and merely tried to replace them with an inferior, naturalistic evolutionary, narrative. In fact the problem is worse than that, because it’s not simply that his proposal hides the shaky metaphysical foundations of naturalism, but that even in materialist terms it is pseudoscientific. And that is because societal morals are demonstrably non-evolutionary. As I will now demonstrate.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Bret Weinstein’s evolutionary mirror

Posted on 07/12/2023 by Jon Garvey

Bret Weinstein has been one of the good guys regarding not only COVID, but the woke phenomenon that targeted him and his wife when he was working in academia. But he’s also an evolutionary biologist, and likes to frame everything from the viewpoint of random change and natural selection. That’s useful when dealing with the micro-evolution of viruses, but less so when dealing with human values.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 1 Comment

Unconstitutional monarchy

Posted on 02/12/2023 by Jon Garvey

I’m not a follower of royal news, certainly not when it involves Mickey Mouse accusations of family racism, and even more when our constitutionally constrained king chooses to speak at COP28, discarding the advice he received for the last such bash, that it would be political to attend, and therefore contradictory to his role to represent the whole British people and avoid politics.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology | 1 Comment

Bad theology exposed in the tabloids

Posted on 24/11/2023 by Jon Garvey

A story in the Daily Mail today caught my attention. Essentially the piece is in the genre “human interest hit job on religious cult,” the cult in this case being “Bigoted Fundamentalist Christianity.” But I noticed it because the strapline included “Guildford County School for Girls,” in my hometown, so I wondered if the youth club that changed her life for the worse might be the one I went to.

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A perfect jihad

Posted on 20/11/2023 by Jon Garvey

Outside observers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Andy Ngo (now based in London) point out the perfect storm of violence and cultural disaster now brewing across Europe, not least in England. This has been brought into focus, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, by the crude antisemitism evident in the response in Britain to the current Middle East war, combined with the (to say the least) easy ride given to Hamas amongst our British intelligentsia. One concerning thing, to me, is how these attitudes are shared even by many in the sceptical community.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

The religious apologetics of naturalistic materialism

Posted on 09/11/2023 by Jon Garvey

James Tour, as many of you will know, is a noted chemist who wears his Christian faith on his sleeve, unashamedly engaging in apologetics alongside his groundbreaking research, particularly that involving nano-particles.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | Leave a comment

Cambridge U.L. scuppers Jorge Luis Borges

Posted on 31/10/2023 by Jon Garvey

Back in 2015 I wrote about Jorge Luis Borge’s fantastical “Infinite Library.” Read my post to see how Borges envisaged it, and why it proved useless to imaginary readers free to browse its galleries, but unable to gain any wisdom from it. I guess the nearest real-world equivalents are legal-deposit libraries like the Cambridge University Library, housing every book published in Britain since 1662.

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology | 1 Comment

More on climate

Posted on 21/10/2023 by Jon Garvey

I’m about three quarters of the way through a book, the reading of which was prompted by a brief exchange here, and a slightly longer one by e-mail, with GD, whose professional expertise is as a fuel chemist. The book, The Frozen Climate Views of the IPPC (Clintel Foundation, Amsterdam, 2023), is an analysis of the IPCC’s latest report, AR6, by a range of “questioning” scientists including those who have been expert reviewers and contributors to IPCC reports. Such analysis is essential because – sobering thought – almost nobody in the world has read AR6, or any of the other IPCC reports, in their entirety.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 7 Comments