One man went to mow a meadow…

Posted on 17/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

…but he didn’t, or at least not yet. Our small piece of Devonshire hillside has acted as a one-and-a-half acre paddock for a couple of ponies since we moved here. The basic management has been to use the lower (damper) part in summer, and the drier upper part in winter, strip grazing both in as convenient a way as possible, mowing the unused bits if and when they get too long. It’s good exercise to walk a mower up and down a steep hill. Continue reading →

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Sharing Traherne

Posted on 14/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

I’ve mentioned before something of my enthusiam for the metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne. The Eclectic Orthodoxy blog has a piece which is just a fairly lengthy quotation from one of the better known parts of his Centuries of Meditations. Read, enjoy and meditate.

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Science and divine judgement

Posted on 11/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

There was a bit of a discussion on BioLogos not long ago about the possibility of miracles in relation to scientific laws. Interesting enough, but the subject has been treated quite frequently, in point of fact, from C S Lewis through to Alvin Plantinga. And it’s not really that controversial amongst contemporary Evangelicals, the target audience. As I pointed out there there’s been an intriguing change in general attitude to miracles within my lifetime, from something no modern man could countenance to something only old-fashioned atheists reject out of hand. But there’s a related field of divine action that’s both more ubiquitous and more controversial than that of occasional miracles. Continue reading →

Posted in Creation, Science, Theology | 12 Comments

And talking of Elizabeth II…

Posted on 09/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

Today is actually the day that the length of her reign overtakes that of Queen Victoria, making her the longest ruling of Britain’s forty monarchs since the Norman Conquest in 1066. As an individual she now has pretty universal respect. Opinions vary about the effectiveness of her reign, from historian David Starkey’s assertion that she’s never said anything that will be remembered, to others who consider that her management of the changes in Britain, from a stiff nominally Christian state to a secular one, and from an imperial power to a more modest world-player, has been masterful. Continue reading →

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Gregor Mendel: My Part in his Downfall

Posted on 08/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

The title, for Uninitiated Foreigners, alludes to this celebrated autobiography  by this mad genius, lest you think I really wish to denigrate the great monk.

Below the fold is a link to a British documentary about epigenetics. It’s primarily about the discovery of epigenetics in the transmission of disease down generations, but we need always to remember that the medical aspects are just a window on a process that must, by its nature, be primarily physiological and adaptive, and is turning out to be ubiquitous: Continue reading →

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Apart from the long reign of Elizabeth II…

Posted on 06/09/2015 by Jon Garvey

…last week marks the fiftieth anniversary of two events in my life.

The first was that I launched a message in a bottle from an International 14 dinghy in the Afon Dwyryd estuary in North Wales, expecting that… well, realistically, even at the optimistic age of thirteen, I expected that would be the last I heard of it. But what I hoped was that the river would sweep my pop-bottle out into Cardigan Bay and then the Irish Sea, and that the ocean currents would carry it hither and yon until many years later, I’d receive tidings back from some exotic shore. Continue reading →

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Early Christian timelines

Posted on 31/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

I decided to read some of the earliest Christian writings again, a decision triggered, I guess, by the discussion of New Testament “oral texts” in The Lost World of Scripture, which I recently reviewed. First up in my Penguin edition is the first letter of Clement of Rome to the church in Corinth. Continue reading →

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Psychological studies past and present

Posted on 28/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

An interesting news item in what is becoming an increasingly common genre of news: scientific non-reproducibility. Continue reading →

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Pentadactyly Live

Posted on 27/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

News being slow at the moment, I thought that for light relief I’d link to a video someone’s posted on YouTube of part of the set I did at Lyme Regis Folk Festival last weekend. After all, the song Pentadactyly arose from discussions about the pentadactyl limb both here and on BioLogos. Continue reading →

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The Lost World of Scripture

Posted on 24/08/2015 by Jon Garvey

 

WaltonSandyI’m beginning to feel that my reading of John H Walton’s books is in danger of resembling that of a Harry Potter fan: the next in the “Lost World” series is always a must-read. The Lost World of Scripture is actually a joint effort with NT scholar D Brent Sandy, and being from 2013 isn’t his latest work. And though it arises from Walton’s overriding concern with comparative studies in biblical understanding, its purpose is to apply such studies to the key issue of “Scriptural Inerrancy” in the light of American Evangelicalism’s recent loss of focus and confidence on this issue. It’s an important contribution. Continue reading →

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