Some thoughts on information and meaning (3)

Posted on 19/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

One of the most surprising things about the universe, until one takes the freedom of a Creator into account, is its contingency. Perhaps I dealt with that a little in the first essay in this short series, in which I mentioned the restrictive nature of “Humpish information”, excluding all kinds of other possibilities, as well as its communicative and teleological (and therefore non-scientific) nature. But it’s even more surprising when one considers the number of things that are true, such as valid mathematical constructions, but which don’t pan out in actual reality. One would expect truths of logic to lead to necessary reality (as the Greek philosophers seem to have assumed) – but only some do. Continue reading →

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Some thoughts on information and meaning (2)

Posted on 15/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

This post is something of a speculative exploration of the relationship between “information” and “meaning”. I wondered as I conceived it whether anyone would find it useful, but in fact Sy Garte’s comment on Merv Bitkofer’s post seems to lead straight into it, so maybe it will lead to some fruitful reflections. Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy, Theology | 2 Comments

Humanity, MN, and other boundary issues

Posted on 12/08/2016 by Merv Bitikofer

In this essay, I argue that our orientation should be a more important focus than the precise locations of boundary lines with regard to where our eternal hope resides.  And since boundaries come up at all for discussion, it should go nearly without saying, that I’ll have my philosophical and theological hat on as I examine a landscape that subsumes science (its modern form) as one of the included territories.  My route meanders a bit to include discussion of the contrast between the materialist agenda and the Christian one. Continue reading →

Posted in Merv Bitikofer, Philosophy, Prometheus, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

Some thoughts on information and meaning (1)

Posted on 12/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

A recent thread on Uncommon Descent (now deleted for some reason) was discussing information in living systems. One of their resident skeptics commented that it was significant that, for all the ID talk about information, nobody could give a scientific definition of it. Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Philosophy, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

How law-abiding is God?

Posted on 09/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

I get the impression that Evolutionary Creation, especially in the shape of BioLogos, is less keen on “open process theism” than it was a year or two ago. It’s hard to be sure, though, because whilst individuals there will criticise people like our Eddie Robinson for tarring them with its brush, none of them seem to be saying, “Yes, that was the prevalent theology of theistic evolution, but we now believe that was an error.” Continue reading →

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Joshua assaults the walls of Jericho…

Posted on 07/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

I’m sure Joshua Swamidass will hate that heading, but he’s asked me to draw our readers’ attention to his new initiative (funded and everything!) to seek common ground between all positions from Naturalist Evolutionism to Young Earth Creationism. And if that isn’t a supernatural attack on the culture-war walls of the US origins discussion, I’m not sure what is!

The “manifesto” for the initiative may be found on his blog here. It’s great to see a relative newcomer to the table with the vision and initiative to makes such things happen. Please pray for it, because one thing that’s certain is that he’ll be accused of being  a Creationist by some, an Apostate by others, and by many others as “consorting with the enemy”, whoever they may happen to be!

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

Science’s self-imposed gaps

Posted on 04/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

Is the cosmic fine-tuning argument an example of the “God of the Gaps” argument? Biologos likes the first, as opposed to Intelligent Design, and dislikes the second, so their answer would presumably be “no”. I contend, however, that CFT does point to empirically obvious gaps in the understanding of the natural world which are instructive for answering the question of whether God’s activity is distinguishable in nature in the affirmative. Continue reading →

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The Designer revealed by his ways

Posted on 01/08/2016 by Jon Garvey

Argon (an occasional poster here in the past) made an ironic, but serious, point over on the Methodological Naturalism thread at Biologos.

After talking about a result in his own protein modelling research that seems to fall midway between the predictions of “chance” and “design” (whilst favouring neither), he concludes that God has a sense of humour – or, more seriously, that deliberate ambiguity is built into the Creation:

It is highly improbable that a designer would leave ambiguous, non-objectively discernible marks on its creation. Similarly, it is improbable that a purely natural, designer-less universe would leave ambiguous marks behind. Considering the great difficulty in demonstrating the existence or non-existence of a designer throughout the ages, this leaves one to conclude: The universe was designed so as to make the certainty of a designer completely indeterminable.

Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 4 Comments

Everyday miracles and methodological naturalism

Posted on 27/07/2016 by Jon Garvey

I’ve written before that miracles are not the most important theological issue I have with methodological naturalism: special providence is, because Scripture describes it as all-pervasive in the affairs of both man and the natural world. God is constantly active, according to the Bible, in managing his household, including by the answering of prayers, and I remain unconvinced that we can properly understand the physical world without somehow accommodating that truth. But nevertheless I want today to consider specifically miracles of healing rather than daily providence, because I’ve been reading about them recently. Continue reading →

Posted in Medicine, Science, Theology | 5 Comments

The real MacKay

Posted on 24/07/2016 by Jon Garvey

MacbigWith a large tome in the post from Amazon, and a trip to the beach imminent, I picked the thinnest unread book on my shelves to take. This was part of a job-lot I acquired last year from a Baptist minister, and was The Clockwork Image, by Donald M Mackay: at 111 pages even shorter than my online book God’s Good Earth (plug). Sadly most of his books are out of print now, though he was one of the most important (and both theologically and scientifically competent) writers on science and faith until his relatively early death in 1987. See this obituary from the ASA. Continue reading →

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