Category Archives: Theology

Armchair theodicy

Posted on 11/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

When I was writing my forthcoming (promises, promises) book, God’s Good Earth, I added a disclaimer in the introduction that I was not going to attempt the kind of theodicy (following Leibniz) that is so often used to argue that the world itself must be evil through human sin, or through the autonomy granted by God to a demiurgic Nature.

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

Now you see them – now you don’t

Posted on 08/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

One of my current research aims is to demonstrate that the Bible itself has an awareness of other people existing in the world at the time of Adam, despite being overtly silent about them. I approached this from the point of view of the “compositional strategy” of the Torah and Tanach here, and from the point of view of hints about people other than Adam in the text here.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 9 Comments

Convergent evolution of origins discourse

Posted on 05/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

On Thursday I drove two hundred miles across England to attend a meeting on Christian approaches to origins – only to find the meeting had been cancelled and the organisers forgot to tell me.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 12 Comments

Religion before Adam

Posted on 01/05/2018 by Jon Garvey

On the Genealogical Adam model – and indeed on any model dealing with an historical Adam – one has to account for the fact that humanity appears to have had some kind of religious or spiritual life almost as far back as artifacts can be found.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Genealogical Adam, Theology | 39 Comments

The impossibility of ontological chance

Posted on 27/04/2018 by Jon Garvey

I want, again, to critique the notion that “God uses chance” in evolution, off the back of my last piece, whose main burden was that admitting such chance into the picture utterly destroys the already dubious ability of the laws of nature to achieve divine aims, such as the evolution of mankind. Now I want to consider “randomness” from the viewpoint of divine being. Consider, for a moment, what it means for us to exist, given the truth of Christianity – as far as we can consider what is a rather deeper matter than we are used to assuming it to be.

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 52 Comments

Critiquing bits of BioLogos

Posted on 25/04/2018 by Jon Garvey

How Hegelian! The pained responses to the unfairness of the large ID book critiquing Theistic Evolution has led to the clearer exposition of the various views within BioLogos that some of us have been calling for for years. This piece was drafted before Eddie’s recent post, which nevertheless arises from the same observation of self-examination within the organisation. I particularly recommend reading the discussion on this thread, and the clear theological and metaphysical water between, say, Ted Davis and Jim Stump there. In this piece, though, I want to examine one particular view presented by BioLogos president Deb Haarsma, not so much in her own recent “defence” piece, as more … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | Leave a comment

Paging Dr. Applegate: Please Call Dr. Haarsma

Posted on 23/04/2018 by Edward Robinson

After nearly 10 years of reading the writings of American TE/EC leaders, especially those at BioLogos, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is an unwritten code of conduct (probably the product of unconscious consensus rather than conscious collusion) which governs the public behavior of ECs. This code of conduct is rarely breached, at least on BioLogos (though Joshua Swamidass’s challenge to BioLogos regarding Adam and Eve provides a refreshing counterexample, and Darrel Falk’s principled dispute with Robert Bishop over Stephen Meyer’s second book constitutes another), and it could be stated in the form of a rule: “No EC leader shall directly contradict another EC leader in public, or at … Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Edward Robinson, Science, Theology | 40 Comments

Correcting the science of Genesis

Posted on 18/04/2018 by Jon Garvey

“Hullo, is that God?” “Yes, Yahweh speaking, can I help you?” “Yes, as a matter of fact. I have a problem with the fact that your account of the creation of the world in Genesis isn’t scientifically accurate.”

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 6 Comments

A fantastical tale

Posted on 15/04/2018 by Jon Garvey

This piece would possibly be classed as a thought experiment, except that, as I mentioned in a recent post, the kind of theistic evolution that was around in the nineteenth century came to be re-defined as “non-scientific” by the new naturalistic criteria. So since you can’t do thought experiments in non-science, this will have to be a fantasy. It just might happen to account for some features of the real world too, though.

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 7 Comments

Is Genesis real impossibility?

Posted on 12/04/2018 by Jon Garvey

Joshua Swamidass has become involved in what appears, at first sight, a minor disagreement on a BioLogos thread puffing a new essay by several authors entitled Is Genesis Real History? His objection was especially to one sentence (bearing the marks of John Walton’s hand, I suspect), which reads: Or consider Genesis 2:7, when God forms Adam from dust and breathes into his nostrils. This could not have happened exactly as described, because we know from other passages in the Bible that God is Spirit with neither hands nor lungs.

Posted in Adam, Creation, Science, Theology | 7 Comments