Category Archives: Science

The Language of God

Posted on 05/02/2019 by Jon Garvey

No, sorry Francis Collins, not that one. Nor Galileo’s mathematics. I’m referring to the whole science-faith interface, and more.

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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

It’s always the naturalism that blinds.

Posted on 06/01/2019 by Jon Garvey

One reason I post decreasingly often at BioLogos (and also at Uncommon Descent) is that it seems that all origins sites (except this one, so far) eventually  become populated by a bevy of science-orientated positivists. These post on every vaguely physically-orientated subject, quite often picking on every sentence of a post and making criticisms grounded on the standard materialist line. They usually support each other whether claiming to be atheists or Christians (or ex-Christians – though seldom ex-atheists), and their main aim seems to be to drive home the message that “Science disproves that God acts in nature.” The net result is that anybody with the temerity to explore how … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 16 Comments

Happy 2019 – lots forward to which to look…

Posted on 31/12/2018 by Jon Garvey

I’m afraid things are still rather slack on the Hump post front, though not on the work front generally: I did a review of N.T. Wright’s fantastic chapter on Christ and the Cosmos  over at Peaceful Science; I got the indexing finished on God’s Good Earth, which means it’s now actually in press, and I’m simply awaiting news on availability (and price); and I’ve been beavering away on the new book, to accompany (one hopes) those on Genealogical Adam by Josh Swamidass (due out November) and Andrew Loke (due out I have no idea).

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What isn’t homologous converges

Posted on 18/12/2018 by Jon Garvey

I took part in a discussion over at Peaceful Science a week or two ago, in which the slam dunk evidence of nested hierarchies for evolution was (not for the first time) being disputed – by me, amongst others.

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Final causes and Brexit

Posted on 05/12/2018 by Jon Garvey

I think what irks me most about the scientistic mindset is how much it takes for granted about the world, as if needing no explanation – things like logic, reliable human faculties and so on.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, 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

The shape of things to come

Posted on 21/11/2018 by Jon Garvey

Reader Wayne Fair kindly sent me a link to this overview article on morphogenetic fields, which has nothing (directly, at least) to do with Rupert Sheldrake or telepathy, but which does address an important and under-investigated subject. The author of this review article, Michael Levin, is particularly interested in the highly practical goal of organ regeneration after trauma or surgery, and the theoretical basis of form is closely tied into equally important medical issues such as the causes of cancer.

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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.

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