Category Archives: Politics and sociology

In the Brownies

Posted on 20/12/2014 by Jon Garvey

I can’t say that Girl Guide affairs feature heavily in my list of concerns, which is probably why last year’s new Guide (and Brownie) Promise slipped under my radar until my granddaughter brought it to my attention. A little online research shows that the Boy Scouts here, and even in America, retain substantially Baden-Powell’s wording, duty to God and all, with alternative versions for conscientious objectors.

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The Heptagrammaton

Posted on 03/12/2014 by Jon Garvey

This story in The Independent caught my eye over the weekend. For our transatlantic readers, I should point out that fracking is as unpopular in the UK as GM crops, firstly because we’re so highly populated that it is perceived to be likely to affect back gardens rather than distant wildernesses, which we do not possess. But there was also an unfortunate incident in which a pilot project caused a small earthquake, which has shaken the public confidence more than the bedrock itself.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 18 Comments

Léon Croizat and other lunatics

Posted on 20/10/2014 by Jon Garvey

Many years ago I was part of a group of doctors in Essex, UK, who met with local police officers to discuss drug misuse. The police spokesman, tongue firmly in cheek, said: “Essex doesn’t have a drug problem, because we don’t have a drugs squad.” Later, of course, one was formed, and as if by magic there was a problem to solve.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 5 Comments

Aposematism around the world

Posted on 15/10/2014 by Jon Garvey

This little chap was climbing the evolutionary ladder to our greenhouse recently. I’m referring to the warningly gaudy (aposematic) caterpillar rather than his cryptic slug friend, destined to be both drab and a toad’s meal. It prompted me to read a little on warning colouration and mimicry, which we debated here a little, some time back. I wasn’t too surprised that it has been a major, and contentious, topic of discussion since Darwin. Ernst Mayr said in 1982 that a biological concept which could clearly and unambiguously explain mimetic phenomena would also solve all other biological problems.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science | 14 Comments

Creation and Evil

Posted on 06/10/2014 by Jon Garvey

One of the baseline positions of The Hump of the Camel is the essential goodness of creation both before and after the fall of mankind into sin. I’ve probably written on it too many times to do useful links (try the search box), but I’ve argued for it from the Bible, extensively from church history and in other ways too. Carnivores, parasites – all come within the wisdom of God’s good creation. At the same time, I’ve never wished to deny that, in numerous ways, sin has corrupted creation in God’s eyes, and damaged it both directly and indirectly. Whether by God’s judgement or man’s corruption there are aspects of creation that … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Milgram revisited

Posted on 06/09/2014 by Jon Garvey

My attention was drawn to this news item. It stirs memories from nearly as long ago as the 1961 experiment itself, of my time studying social psychology in 1973. Milgram’s experiment was one of those most often cited on my Cambridge course, but not for the reasons given most prominence in the item.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 1 Comment

Cosmology through the ages #4 – Modern

Posted on 20/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

When Nicholas Copernicus first proposed his heliocentric model of the universe in 1543, it appears to have been primarily for the reason of returning astronomy to the Aristotelian ideal of perfect circles abandoned by Ptolemy’s equants, thus simplifying (and idealizing) the model. Though sources about his thinking are scarce, he was wedded enough to Aristotle still to consider the earth to be the lowest place in the universe, even though that was a problem for his cosmology: But the fact that Copernicus turned the earth into a planet did not cause him to reject Aristotelian physics, for he maintained that “land and water together press upon a single center of … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 11 Comments

The Third Way and God

Posted on 12/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

I’ve not yet commented on the new project called The Third Way, but my recent mini-series of posts on natural selection seems a good reason to do so. It was launched this May by James Shapiro, Denis Noble and Raju Pookottil, and has already attracted some notable names from various fields, some of whose work I have read, including Eva Jablonka, Gerd Müller, Eugene Koonin, Stuart Newman and Robert Austin – 29 names in all at the time of writing.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

Levels of certainty

Posted on 10/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

The 2009 Rescuing Darwin survey, to which I referred in a previous post,  was linked to a long essay by Nick Spencer and Denis Alexander, both theistic evolutionists by persuasion. Their own spin on the survey results is evident from early on in their essay (and perhaps even in the project’s title):

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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