Category Archives: Science

Sciense educashun

Posted on 05/04/2019 by Jon Garvey

My eleven year old granddaughter is visiting this week, and is just at the stage of discovering that the i-Phone is a good substitute for looking at the world, thinking etc. Discovering a sat-nav app she was able to confirm that the short-cut we took to avoid the Exeter rush-hour was in fact correct, and to spend the rest of the journey reading off how long it would be before we got home. A shame she missed the views.

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Pay attention

Posted on 03/04/2019 by Jon Garvey

You may or may not have seen the following sports awareness test on YouTube. If not you can check your skills:

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In the footsteps of Judah’s spiritual collapse

Posted on 25/03/2019 by Jon Garvey

I’ve just read another very interesting book. In the Footsteps of King David describes the excavation of Khirbet Qeiyafa in Israel, just up the valley from the ancient Philistine city of Gath.

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

The tree in Berkeley’s square (no nightingale)

Posted on 13/03/2019 by Jon Garvey

George Berkeley is most famous for his immaterialist view of reality, which is nicely, if incompletely, summed up in Monsignor Ronald Knox’s limerick:

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 6 Comments

Predictability, reproducibility and determinism in chaos

Posted on 09/03/2019 by Jon Garvey

On a Peaceful Science thread I promised Chris Falter that I’d respond to his argument that chaotic systems are instrinsically indeterminate. The context, of course, as the thread title shows (Every Birth is a Statistical Impossibilty) has to do with the possibility of determination of events by God, as well as by us.

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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

The Road to Hell is paved with good inventions

Posted on 27/02/2019 by Jon Garvey

N.T. Wright comments, in this clip, on the Postmodern Movement.

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

Editing history

Posted on 25/02/2019 by Jon Garvey

Back in early September 2017 I was writing a Hump piece  on Aquinas and the special creation of humanity. Providentially I stumbled on a YouTube video posted just the week before in which Tim Keller, Russell Moore and Ligon Duncan discuss their “non-negotiables” on creation.

Posted in Creation, Genealogical Adam, Science, Theology of nature | 13 Comments

Divine action – smoke, mirrors, or sublety?

Posted on 22/02/2019 by Jon Garvey

1 Kings 11-12 tell the story of one of the most significant events in the history of the kingdom of Israel – that is, the defection of all the northern tribes from King David’s dynasty thus breaking up the chosen people into two kingdoms. Northern Israel quickly lapsed into apostasy and was destroyed by the Assyrians, essentially disappearing from history.

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